Addictions – Guilt & Shame Cycle

When a person is addicted to a substance like drugs or an experience like sex, it usually causes them to feel guilt and shame about their addiction. Addictive behavior exposes a weakness and a dependence on something outside of ourselves to give a sense of well-being.

When we see our self as weak and needy, it often causes us to feel ashamed of our weakness, which actually intensifies our neediness.
Addiction creates a cycle of ever increasing addictive behavior resulting in guilt and shame which in turn motivates an increase in dependence on the addiction for comfort. This cycle is a guilt and shame cycle that at a point in the addiction history, becomes self perpetuating and makes it difficult to break

All of us are the products of our parental care and training. When our parental training is good, it builds a positive image of our self within us. When our parental care is unhealthy, it creates a negative image of or self in or minds. Good parenting will create self-esteem in the heart of a child. When they are loved, they believe themselves to be worthy of love and loveable. Self-esteem, which is a positive image of our self, is necessary for a human being to be a healthy person. What we believe about our own person has a lot to do with how we feel within. If we see our self as strong, desirable and worthy of love we are able to move into our life with confidence. If we see our self as weak, undesirable and unworthy of love, we will move into our life with fear and self-hatred. Those who feel poorly about self will feel an overall inner pain because they think they are flawed and unlovable. There is a link between poor parenting causing a negative self image and addiction that uses pleasure to distract us away from feeling hurt because we are unlovable.

Those with a negative evaluation of self will be more vulnerable to an addiction than those who believe good things about self. When addicts enter into treatment, one of the goals is to uncover foundational pain in the heart of the person. The addicted person will have linked pain related to poor self-esteem to their addiction with the pain actually driving the need for the pleasure distraction. If you are struggling with an addiction, one of the positive steps to take is to recall you inner feelings of self-loathing so that you can unhook them from your addictive behavior. Low self-esteem has a better solution than covering it up with an addiction.

• My addiction is my most important need and relationship – replaces love

These negative statements used as inner dialogue cause a feeling of hopelessness, making people vulnerable to entering into addictive behaviors.
Most sex addicts use similar statements in their self-talk to describe their opinion of themselves.

– Rev. Al Rosenblum.