People feel emptiness. Unrelieved, they resort to something outside of themselves.
Something external like alcohol. Drugs. Food. Sex. Gambling. Shopping. Or, relationships, just to name a few.
Pablo was a severely abused, unloved child. When he became an adult, he tried to fill the “empty” inside him.
He did that with heavy smoking, drinking, and marijuana addiction. On top of that had been a string of sexual and emotional abuses of women.
Sadly, even when in therapy, Pablo constantly slipped to relapse after resolving to stop his destructive activities.
In session, so slow though he may be, Pablo has been confronted with hard questions he needs to hear and process.
“Why do I feel alone?”
“Why am I drinking, smoking, or taking drugs so much?”
“How come I’m so unable to be in a relationship that lasts?”
“Why am I so angry all the time?”
The beginning of recovery depends, in part, on your finding healthy alternatives to fill the inner void.
If you’re trying to fill it with externals - substance or activity in an excessive way - it can’t work.
These externals are often only short term relief for a moment. A lot of it have damaging after-effects and never work with long-term or deeper issues.
You will never find true, enduring happiness in anything external.
Your healing, your happiness, is an inside job.
www.drsubida.com
Dr. Angelo Subida is a clinical psychotherapist, author, and speaker. He is author of books "Inner Healing," "Secrets Of Your Self," "Chess and Life," among others, blogs, and articles. He has appeared frequently as an expert on psychotherapy/life recovery issues on national television, radio broadcasts, print media, and webcasts, including GMA 7, TV 5, ABS CBN 2, Q-11, 700 Club, Radyo Veritas, Inquirer Radio, Smart Parenting Magazine, Business Mirror, among others, and has served as resident therapist/counselor for parents and kid-artists in the highly popular ABS-CBN 2 Voice Kids TV singing reality show. Dr. Subida is an eclectic, multidisciplinary therapist and originator of his own revolutionary high-tech, high-touch counseling plus model. His areas of specialization include parent-child therapy, clinical infidelity treatment, relationship/marital counseling, separation/divorce therapy, anger management, depression, addictions, psychotherapy-spirituality integration, and innovative chess therapy. For more of Dr. Subida, you can find him at www.drsubida.com.