Addiction Myths #1: “You Need To Do The Work”

What if you’ve been doing the work for 20 years and you’re still suffering?

More therapy
More meetings
More healing
More self-awareness
More inner work
More things to fix

And when nothing fundamentally changes?

Apparently, you haven’t done enough work!!

You need to go deeper
You need to be more honest
You need to surrender
You need to work harder
You need to do another step 4
Pray more
Go to more meetings
Get a new sponsor

Can we see the problem here yet?

We’ve created an explanation in which the person can never succeed in challenging the approach

If they get better, the work is working
If they don’t, they haven’t done enough work

But what if the entire premise deserves questioning?

Who decided you were a project that needed fixing?

How much work does it take to become yourself?

And what exactly are you working towards?

I spent decades trying to improve myself

Trying to become someone who wouldn’t feel the things I felt

Trying to get rid of the parts of myself I believed were wrong

And much of that effort was organised around one unquestioned assumption:
That there was something fundamentally wrong with me

What if the endless effort to become better is sometimes the very thing keeping us trapped in the belief that we’re not good enough as we are?

I’m not suggesting therapy, recovery or personal development cannot help

Of course they can

I’m questioning the assumption that transformation must be the result of continuous effort

Sometimes change happens through an entirely different kind of seeing

Not another technique
Not another intervention
Not another 10 years of trying to become acceptable

But discovering that the person you’ve spent your life trying to fix was never the problem you thought they were

And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all!

If you’ve spent 20 years working on yourself and you’re still suffering, why is the first assumption that YOU haven’t worked hard enough?

Why aren’t we questioning the work?