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The Meaning of Our Symptoms

The Meaning of Our Symptoms

Addiction, Disorders and Symptoms

By Mary Cook, M.A., R.A.S.

Drug abuse symptoms typically symbolize numbing of pain, releasing or acting out repressed emotion, and artificially creating external distractions from either internal chaos or feelings of emptiness. Additionally the chemicals provide false feelings of confidence, energy, power, pleasure and peace.

The addicted wants drugs to do for them what they feel they can’t, because their life experiences and role models did not provide a sufficient reflection of these feelings. So they look outside of themselves for a solution.

Eating disorder symptoms commonly attempt to comfort, control, protect and punish self, and can be symbolic re-enactments of prior sexual abuse. The need to control what goes into and leaves their body indicates that they couldn’t trust others to comfort, nurture and protect them, and they didn’t experience healthy models of control and punishment.

Typically they have a history of violations and failures from others, resulting in distrust. Their control over their food and body is a substitute for a positive relationship with themselves, mental and emotional nurturing and healthy boundaries. The over-focus on the appearance of their body is to avoid internal pain and suggests a lack of healthy valuing and acceptance of their physical selves.

Compulsive sex is usually a response to prior sexual abuse, or premature sexual stimulation. There is an over identification of self with sexual functions, and a sense of power or attractiveness from sex, which is typically missing in other aspects of self.



The focus on needing sex comes from past failures to feel a loving union with family, healthy affection, and a sense of belonging and acceptance. The feeling of power and adrenalin from sex addiction is meant to distract from feelings of fear, emptiness, loss, depression, vulnerability and past trauma.

Promiscuity and prostitution can be an example of repetition compulsion, where they focus on the differences between past trauma and current circumstances.

They deny the similarities of using and abusing bodies as objects disconnected from heart and soul energy, and non-sexual aspects of self.

Codependents project personal needs, problems and pain onto others, and falsely believe that if others change, they will experience well-being. Co dependence occurs because of a lack of a healthy childhood dependent experience, and prematurely adopting the role of a caretaker for others.

The codependent would rather focus on feeling powerful enough to attempt to help or control others, than feeling scared of the absence of healthy, reliable support for them. This means that until they heal, they will continue to need others to have problems so that they can be distracted from their own pain.

As a child with poor role models for parenting, their care-taking abilities can’t help but be deficient. Thus their judgment of others is typically a transference from their childhood caretakers, as well as a projection of their own inadequacy.

Workaholism is an attempt to derive self-esteem and positive feelings about life, without risking personal, emotional investment in relationships. This indicates painful failures and disappointments in past relationships, resulting in fear, and the perception of emotional unworthiness. The workaholic does not know how to feel comfortable, validate or nurture the emotional, personal aspects of others, or self so they focus on feeling important for external achievements.



Gambling can reflect an attachment to adrenalin charges to compensate for loss, worry and depression. A defensive sense of entitlement arises to distract from feelings of fear, vulnerability, and inadequacy to provide for oneself in some manner. This typically originates in feeling a lack of support and internal value, in childhood.

Entitlement also stems from anger toward those who failed to demonstrate adequate assistance and reliability when it was sorely needed. The gambling addict doubts their ability to build a foundation for their life, from inner talents and work. They gamble money on a false hope that something big outside of them will support them.

In life it is inevitable that we become wounded in some way. And this can take us onto a battlefield, where we try to feel powerful or just survive and demean, deny, damage and destroy what is vulnerable inside and outside of us, falsely believing that vulnerability is our enemy. We exert our small-minded willfulness in offensive and defensive thoughts, feelings and actions in order to hide the vulnerable, needy, wounded child within us.

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We never can slay this internal child, however. That’s why our negative thoughts, feelings and actions continue. We can’t get beat up by a parent, go to a park, beat up a kid that’s younger and weaker than us, and say whew, now that energy is out of me, I feel happy, peaceful and free.

Whatever energy we give outwardly, returns to us magnified. We can’t substitute healthy love, affection, attention and interest for a dozen donuts. There is no amount of money, sex, shopping or work that can compensate for wounded child energies. But we have the opportunity to experience our own “dark night of the soul,” where we realize that we haven’t seen clearly and have gone astray.



When willfulness becomes willingness, deceit becomes honesty, and rigid habits become open-mindedness, we can receive what Heaven wants to give us; the memory that we are divinely created miracles surrounded by divinely created miracles.

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About the Author

Mary Cook has a Master’s degree in psychology and is a registered addiction specialist with over 33 years of clinical practice and 29 years of University teaching experience. She is a writer, a national speaker and a counselor with a private practice in San Pedro, CA. She is available for telephone & office counseling, guided meditation & speaking engagements.

Mary may be contacted by calling (310) 517-0825 or visiting WWW.MARYCOOKMA.COM.



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