There are times when to be alone is just what the doctor ordered. To sit in a well of presence in the simplicity of solitude is necessary at times, to replenish the spirit and body. This kind of aloneness is luminous and full, allowing us to connect more deeply and enjoyably to all of life.
On the other hand, there’s a kind of aloneness that comes from being walled off in a bad way, inside the confines of the injured self. When we go into solitude not to be more lovingly with ourselves, but rather out of pain, shame, or fear, or because we are listening to the lies of the inner addict who hopes to take possession of us again, then we are going into shadowlands. From this kind of isolation, we can’t connect with anybody or anything, not even ourselves.
How does this kind of isolation come over us, and what can we do about it? Read on for Villa Kali Ma’s take on how to overcome isolation, through a positive path of recovery.
How is isolation defined?
When we’re isolating, we stop communicating with others. We don’t reach out, and frequently, don’t respond to the outreach of others. We skip meetings, don’t return calls, don’t answer the door, and duck away when we see someone we know at the grocery store.
As a general rule, recovering people need daily contact with recovery people. Ideally, we open and close each day with a re-dedication to the recovery path. Sharing our feelings, telling on the addict, and doing step work with a sponsor are all necessities of sustaining the gift of sobriety, and these all require another live recovery person on the line or with us in the room. It takes a lot of action on our part, especially in the early days, to put ourselves in the right conditions and circumstances for the many blessings, miracles, and gifts of recovery to take root in us.
Isolation in recovery is a sign that the inner addict is on the prowl, hoping to pull us back into a relationship with it, in which its dark voice is the only thing we hear any more. Therefore part of recovery usually involves taking action steps to counteract the urge to avoid other recovery people. If you are isolating, we suggest you get into the presence of recovery people again, right away.
Tips on how to combat isolation in recovery
To overcome the urge to isolate in recovery, it’s helpful to take an “act now, ask questions later” approach, and just do the recommended recovery behaviors, whether we feel like it or not.
In the beginning, and during any other wobbly phase, we need to just take the actions that recovery elders suggest, without thinking about it too hard. We act as if, we fake it ’til we make it, we one day at a time it, because we’re in no condition to be deciding based on our thoughts and feelings.
So rather than consulting our mood, energy levels, thoughts, and feelings, asking “Do I feel like going to a meeting?”, we need to just get our shoes on and go. Get there early, set up chairs, and override the ego.
The reason is, it’s far better just to follow the plan, for a good long while, while we are being gradually restored to sanity because if we go off the plan, it’s almost certainly for the wrong reasons.
Take heart that at some point later on in the path, we will have more trust in ourselves again, and that the flame of the addict will be small compared to the roaring fire of our real, positive, loving self. But until that time, we are best off just following the recovery recipe.
In that spirit, here are some practical steps to take if you are isolating:
- Daily Meetings. Commit to daily meetings for a predetermined period of time. 30, 60, or 90-day meeting commitments are always powerful for breaking isolation.
- Get a Sponsor and work the Steps. If you don’t have one yet or don’t have one right now, share in meetings that you are looking for a sponsor. Working the steps will break the ice barrier that isolation has formed, and get you back into flowing emotion and aliveness.
- Recovery friend-dates. Go for coffee with recovery people. Do it whether you feel resonance with this person or not. The purpose isn’t so much to make best friends, but to counteract the urge to isolate. Remember, being around any other authentic recovery person will weaken your addiction and strengthen your true self.
- Use the meeting phone numbers list. Every meeting, put your name on the list to receive calls and make sure you get numbers. At least once a week, call someone from recovery circles, to connect and talk. Leave voice messages if they don’t pick up, and respond to any messages you receive, always.
- Schedule professional help. Schedule appointments with a therapist, counselor, or healing professional and talk about your isolating.
What is the connection between isolation and addiction?
Addiction thrives on isolation. While in the grips of addiction, we were almost completely separated psychologically from others, living in a fake world created for us by our disordered minds.
Authentic connection with another human being is the inner addict’s worst nightmare. The addict within will do everything it can to keep us away from genuine, truthful, loving presence in a human body. The addict within prefers isolation, or if others must be involved at all, the presence of other addicted, disconnected people.
That’s because the illness of addiction is connected to the artificial, programmed mental self, whose goal is disconnection. Addiction thrives inside the prison of our ego defenses. The fort we built for ourselves, originally as a trauma response, then reinforced through a lifetime of dissociating from our feelings and true perceptions of unity, is also the house of the negative ego, and therefore the house of the addict.
In the absence of addiction, we can, if we pay attention, sense the false mask of the conditioned self and not be completely identified with it. We can still feel the deeper murmurings of the living self and heart. But when addiction takes hold, we become the mask, and the true Self is fully eclipsed until we get into recovery.
Once we are in recovery, therefore, it is wise to recall that isolation, even if it seems easy, or comforting, like getting back into a small cozy space, is an invitation back to the locked ward of addiction.
Why do women isolate in recovery?
Isolation in recovery refers to the urge to seclude oneself to avoid other recovery people. Why do women do this, if it’s so clearly the path back to misery?
If we are observing ourselves keenly, we may detect that what we resist in recovery people is actually the awareness that they have. Recovery people have opened eyes that see and recognize the machinations of shadow material operating within us.
In addition to the addict trying to operate undetected, our own shame, guilt, and remorse can make the light of recognition feel like a flashlight shining into our eyes. When the pain is too much, a part of us may try to wriggle away from being seen. We may not catch it, though, due to rationalization, in which the mind makes up stories that cover up the real reasons we are isolating.
Here are some ways the urge to isolate may show up:
-A feeling of strong irritation with everything about recovery and the recovery community
-The thought that people in the recovery community judge us or look down on us
-A feeling of not belonging, being different, and misunderstood by the recovery community
-Thinking that we are being excluded, we aren’t liked, or that there’s an in-group
-Thoughts that emphasize the ways we differ from the recovery people around us, versus focus on the shared reason we are together
-Getting overly offended by something someone said to us in a meeting, and using that as an excuse to distance ourselves
-Starting to think we’re all better and know better than the people in the recovery community
-We think we can’t share our darkness or the other way around – we can’t share our light, in this group
Whatever combination of ego-defenses, inferiority, self-doubt, pain, and weaponized victimhood has most haunted us in our lives, will return again, suggesting we get away from those recovery circles.
Part of the reason this can happen is because we are extra raw in early recovery, and in truth, it can be a lot. It’s scary and different to recover, and we are learning many new skills. We feel shaky and uncertain inside.
That is all ok, and it is normal to feel that way, but we must look out to keep leaning into that vulnerable, quaky space, rather than running away. What helps lessen the urge to run is relentless honesty: as we keep sharing as authentically as we can about the truth of our experiences, we will find the need to escape lessens on its own.
Why women were made for connection
All human beings are wired for connection. We are social animals, and we feel best in families, groups, and communities of safe others. Everything about our nervous systems and our survival strategies reveals the fact that we are designed to live our lives in relative harmony and collaboration with other humans.
As women, we are especially wired for emotional connection, as evidenced in our biology. Hormonally speaking, we are set up to be oriented towards nurturance, bonding, and caring for others, as well as receiving care. Emotionally and relationally we are more prone to value close relationships. Women are, broadly speaking, more attuned to the subtleties of connection and disconnection, and to the needs of those we consider to be part of our sphere of influence.
For all these reasons, it is especially important that women in recovery learn to counteract the toxic urge to isolate: isolation may hurt us even more than it does men.
Recovery is the antidote to isolation
Isolation and addiction go together, and the pain of one is supposedly treated by the numbing of the other. Because the addict wants to grow in influence inside us, it steers us into greater and greater isolation, so that it has even more reason to expand its territory within us.
On the flip side, recovery from addiction cures isolation. This is a beautiful secondary outcome, which we may not have fully considered before getting into recovery, but it is true.
As we slowly heal over the many scars of addiction, we find that in place of the old negative self, who has been our prison guard our whole lives, we have now a loving kind inner guardian. This inner guardian, whom we gradually realize, with astonishment, is our own self, who we actually were meant to be all this time, connects to the goodness and love in another, not to the negative false self in another.
Whereas in the past we connected phantom false self to phantom false self, mask to mask, and disordered mind to disordered mind, if we connected at all, we now find that we connect heart to heart, realness to realness.
If this sounds like something you want, please know that you deserve it, no less and no more than any other being in this world. It is actually our natural birthright and the way life was meant to be!
Recovery will lead you to this place of deep, quenching connection, not only with other people but to that within you, which is worth connecting with. Your healing self-connection proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, to yourself, at last, why others connecting to you is a good thing, and you will be freed of the feeling that there is something bad about you.
Villa Kali Ma can help women combat isolation in recovery
All of life exists in a back-and-forth rhythm of union and separating. We come together, then we come apart. Into the sweet bliss of oneness, then away into the sweet fierce joys of individuality.
The difference between healthy solitude, in which we have the possibility of deep intimacy with ourselves and with subtle energetic presences which can only be contacted from within our own heart space, and the poisons of isolation, is all the difference in the world.
Isolating means that we retreat into our own pathology, not so that we can be alone with ourselves and connect more deeply, but rather so that we can be alone with the addict inside, and disconnect more deeply.
Here at Villa Kali Ma, we have a deep understanding of the subtleties, as well as the simple truths, of how isolation divides us from that which would heal us, and how recovery does the opposite. If you are looking to reunite yourself with the goodness that is, we promise, lying in wait so patiently inside you, consider one of our many programs for healing women. Our expertise is exactly this: how exactly women can and do recover, from the nightmares of addiction, mental illness, and traumatization.