My talk is about the mental hospital and how I miss it sometimes. I tell the crowd that I landed there partly because of my addiction, and I landed in addiction partly because of my wiring and partly because of the world’s wiring. Very young, I looked out at the scary world and decided I was too broken, too different, to risk revealing my true self to it. I felt too weak to survive the pain I knew was the price of love. So I hid.
-Love Warrior, Glennon Doyle
I explain that addictions are safe little deadly hiding places where sensitive people retreat from love and pain. No one can touch us there, so we feel protected. But since love and pain are the only things that grow us, we start dying as soon as we hide. The cage I built to protect myself from the world’s toxins also stole my oxygen. I didn’t know I needed to be seen and known like I needed air.
Everyone wants to be seen and loved.
Everyone wants to be seen and loved.
And oh, man…it’s terrifying to move into a position where you can be seen.
Because, what if they don’t see you true?
What if they don’t love you?
What if they see just enough to be effective at being cruel?
Everyone wants — craves — to be seen and loved. But, most of us have piled up around us (by ourselves and by others) decades’ worth of barricades and injury.
(Clearing paths through those barricades, by the way, is what therapy is for. Generally speaking.)