I was talking to friend recently about language. He said to me, “You are honest and smart. I think you owe it to yourself to be more precise with your language.”
I had told him in a text message that I was feeling unloved that day. Specifically the word “love” was the lack of precision he was referring to. Right away I felt that he was right. I had misused the word. What did I mean by saying I felt unloved?
My friend suggested, “I think you actually mean you feel unwitnessed.”
Yes. That is what I felt—unseen, unnoticed. As I acknowledged the new words as a much closer approximation to what I was feeling, a great swell of emotion suddenly rose in me and spilled out. I cried for a few minutes as I felt the totality of the emotion. And then I felt peace wash over me.
I felt lighter. The heaviness and rigidity of the stuck emotional energy had moved. I was in a rather different state in mind and body. This is alchemy.
Addiction recovery is essentially about discovering what is beneath the addictive behaviour. What feelings, thoughts, memories, fears, are trying to be numbed, blotted out, eradicated?
In active addiction to sex, relationships, validation, drugs, alcohol, spending, and so on, there are thoughts and emotions occurring below our level of awareness, driving us. We are turned into a machine: hard, mechanical, automatic, and repetitive.
Because we are human, we do not function well being driven by unconscious forces like machines. We wear out, and eventually things start to break down. Our lives become unmanageable.
When we begin to look deeper and are willing to see what is there, we make the unconscious conscious. Then we are practicing alchemy, turning our pain into what heals us, like I did with that gentle nudge from a friend.
But before I became aware of what I was feeling—unseen and unnoticed—I was like a machine, being driven. I was trying to soothe the emotions I was unaware of through unhealthy behaviour—in this case, by spending money. I was searching and not finding, trying to fill a hole that, in fact, does not exist.
But I accurately named what I was experiencing, with the help and (virtual) presence of a friend. Through this, I witnessed the emotion rise, be fully felt, expressed through crying, and released, all in a matter of minutes.
This is healing. This is addiction recovery. This is alchemy. This is how pain becomes serenity and grace.
And, while language can be limiting and even damaging, if used rightly it can also be powerfully transformative.