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Addiction and Avoidance
Addiction and avoidance go hand and hand. Addiction doesn't exist without avoidance. We addicts avoid EVERYTHING. We avoid our feelings most of all but we also avoid conflict, true intimacy, dealing with our problems, we even avoid healthy people because our brains are wired to reach out to toxic people. Until now. In her book, Crazy for You, Breaking the Spell of Sex and Love Addiction, Kerry Cohen defines sex and love addiction as using "sex and love to avoid real intimacy and connection and to escape uncomfortable feelings." Just the way alcoholics reach for a drink to escape when things get tough, codependents and love or sex addicts will reach for a person (usually an unhealthy and avoidant person) to soothe and evade their difficult emotions.
In this class we learn how to soothe ourselves using various tools including essential oils, in order to stop the addiction and avoidance cycle.
Addiction and Avoidance Essential Oils
Class Participant’s Emotional Wins/Breakthrough/Check-in: Emotional Coach shared that when she has strong emotions, this triggers physical pain in her neck, head, back, and body. She had injuries growing up but, that is also from a deep-rooted response that stems from her mother, this is her addiction and avoidance cycle.
Her mother has a hard time with boundaries and wants to please and help others. In response, her body will manifest pain, this way she allows herself to say no and will then take time for herself. Saying yes to everyone and not being able to say no, was what the learning coach learned as a child and has replicated that behavior. Pain has become the signal to take time for herself. She doesn't like that she has to reach the point of pain to take a break. She has felt shame and anger from that reaction and wants to be able to stop before she is in pain.
In AA there is a term called avoidance which is a behavior, the Emotional Coach has a hard time with conflict, and expectations, and wants to avoid hard conversations. She feels she needs to show up as a mom and wife in a way she hasn’t before.
What Essential Oil did you use: Vetiver and Serenity doTERRA essential oil, this helped her be grounded and less flighty, this helped her with being present.
Feedback from group and coach: A class participant said she also has the negative behaviour of addiction and avoidance, she looked up what oils are for avoidance in the Emotions Essential oils handbook and read from the book: Avoiding: What will it take for me to confront the discomfort in my situation? Declare out loud: I now trust the process of healing. I am now open to seeing the truth. Visualize: See yourself as a tree with roots anchored in rich, nourishing soil. Receiving everything needed to be safely present in life. Oils to support: Deep Blue, Vetiver, Helichrysum, Balance, Juniper Berry, Jasmine, Turmeric.
The class participant said she understands showing up as a mom, in the past she wanted to have a power career, and then she got pregnant and changed from the influencers around her. She became an at-home mom and vegan. She realized she was trying to be something that she wasn’t. She says this is when she started becoming a co-dependant and started trying to be everyone's mother and trying to do everything, a supermom.
Emotional Coach shared the example of the movie Green Mile when the healer in the movie took everyone's negative energy and then all the little flies came out of his mouth. Another example the Emotional Coach gave is when a rabbit that is afraid and escapes from a predator, he runs to his hole and shakes and releases trauma. She said humans do not do this naturally, we hold the trauma in. She feels the Wim Hof breathing exercises help release that negative energy.
Emotional Wins/Breakthrough/Check-in: A second class participant saw a mouse in a mousetrap and thought what if the mouse gets out of the trap it will win and it scared her. She said she sees that the connection around her as people are fighting to provide for our families and for our success, what if we give up fighting, the negative forces that are against us, for the person starting their new business, or for the new parent. She feels that there is a negative force that comes from some people when others are trying to succeed.
What Essential Oil did you use: Fear of not being enough, people are projecting on us, learning to be aware of emotions that do or don't belong to us. Use Frankincense and Balance blend, massage 2-3 drops over the heart, to self soothe and remember you are a beautiful creation and there’s only one of you, a unique individual with gifts only you have.
Feedback from group and coach: Emotional Coach suggests the book, Blue Ocean Strategy, to help find a true calling, blown out of the water for competition. Circus and Cirque Du Soleil, there is a huge difference. We don’t have to participate in what other people are doing. She feels that possible people are jealous of the class participant and feel there are people in her life who do not want that person to succeed. She said in this emotional coaching call that she wants everyone to win and feel safe. She said, “I can help get you out of the mousetrap”.
The class participant responded by saying that she needs to not let the people around her reflect those negative emotions on to her, and just love them.
