Is Your Relationship Your Heroin?

This week, it is a great honor to introduce you to my dear friend and colleague, Fawn Gilmore Kraut. She is an amazing relationship coach and this month is going to be sharing some of her best thoughts about relationships, dating, and connection. While Fawn primarily works with single women, I believe what she shares can be of help to anyone seeking to find a love that lasts.

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It was an honest but rather scary admission.

“He is like heroin to me,” she said again and again. I shuddered inside but was glad at what she was finally seeing. For some time, the symptoms had shown up like flashing neon signs in her language and behavior.

“He’s been under so much stress.”

Some of her ongoing excuses for his self-indulgent behavior.

“I still miss him. His good side.”

Good side? He routinely abused her physically and mentally for years.

“I am pretty sure that I am co-dependent!”

You think?!

“Help!”

It’s on the way!

This college educated, mother of three was addicted. Not to drugs, porn, or hoarding. Oh no. This unusually sympathetic mother had gotten herself addicted to the very difficult man she married – and she was far from alone on that score.

Relationship addiction is real. It can happen more easily that we realize. Known for his work with chemical dependency, Canadian physician Gabor Maté reveals that the source of an addiction is unresolved pain. The addiction is our coping mechanism to cover up the pain that lies awake in the shadows.

Unfortunately, the more we run from our pain, the more painful life becomes. Like an infected wound, our emotional pain operates in our body much the same as a physical injury, often becoming quite crippling.

Do you think you might be addicted to someone? Past relationship? Sibling? Even one of your children?

Well, here is some evidence that would indicate that you are a relationship addict:

* You call or reach out to the person practically every day. However, they rarely reach back.

* The person dominates your thinking. 

* You can’t get them out of your mind.

* You can’t function until you have some kind of contact with them.

* You make excuses for their behavior. You are blind to reality.

* You don’t care what it costs you to be in the relationship. You even overlook the negative consequences of your actions on yourself and others.

* The relationship affects everything else in your life. It prevents you from moving forward and growing as a healthy human being.

If you are addicted, what is the answer?

According to Dr. Mate, the antidote to addiction is to stop avoiding the pain. To become free, we need to process the source of the problem: our pain. Facing the pain we have been avoiding can be difficult but if we let the pain come to the surface and then, feeling it fully, express the pain in a safe manner with a compassionate person, we can begin the process of healing.

I know. Sometimes the pain has been buried so deep and for so long that you have no idea what it is or how to bring it into the light. In these situations, here is what I recommend to my clients.

First, remove the “drug.”

Stop the behavior that you are using to cover up the pain. Practically, this can mean cutting off all contact with the person. I am talking, “cold turkey.” Without rudeness or blame shifting. You simply stop calling, texting or commenting on Facebook. Whatever the behavior has been, you stop doing it.

Second, you allow your emotions to surface with someone else, preferably a good friend or compassionate professional who has their feet on the ground.

The key here is that your emotions will lead you to the source of your pain, if you are willing to let them surface. Many times our pain is rooted in fear such as fear of abandonment, rejection, or being alone.

Then, as the pain surfaces, you give yourself permission to grieve. However that might show up, anger, tears, screaming, whatever, you allow yourself to mourn.

Finally, when grieving is over, you release, let go, heal and move forward. You forsake the pain and its memories. You begin to rebuild your life with a stronger, healthier, and more hopeful outlook. You are much stronger than you ever realized.

Addicted to someone?

The great news is that, if you are willing, you can be free from behavior that keeps you locked up in the prison of the past.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Have you ever been addicted to someone? How did you get through it?

Sending you love,

Fawn

Read Part 2 of Fawn's series...

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Happy clients around the world call Fawn “Their relationship guru.”  For single professional women serious about creating an amazing life-long passionate love-affair, Fawn is their go-to expert to discover and claim their feminine power and attract great men who are ready to love, respect, and cherish them. Clients learn to radiate their unique confidence, love, and beauty in a powerful way that makes them irresistible to the men who are the perfect match for them. With confidence and joy — and with her inspired guidance and support — they learn to repel the men who only want to use them, and magnetize and inspire real, quality men into their lives to create real and lasting love for a lifetime.

Fawn spent most of her twenties and thirties with a series of dead-end relationships and broken hearts. When she was almost forty, after one last devastating heart-break, she decided she needed to start taking responsibility for her relationships with men and the pain she was creating. (Either that or become …a nun!) She began working with a coach who ever so gently asked her the questions that opened her eyes and her heart. Within a year, at the age of 40, she married the love of her life and they’re still going strong.

After years of informal coaching and transformational work, Fawn graduated from the prestigious Coaches Training Institute as a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach.

She is passionate about women finding real passionate love while being true to their authentic unique selves.

Learn more at www.fawngilmorekraut.com.

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