Addiction & Codependency Pattern

A couple of days ago, Teal shared a video and asked: “what is it that you are the most proud of yourself?” My answer is my courage. I have always been so brave to take risks, jump into the unknown, and leave behind what doesn’t serve me anymore even it’s hard as fuck! Today I wanna tell you a story about my courage that I’m genuinely proud of: I broke the cycle of my addiction and codependency pattern!

I started to smoke tobacco when I was 17, I started to smoke marijuana at 18. These two were everywhere in my hometown and Istanbul. And I have always been a curious girl. I believe “trying and learning is always better than saying ‘what if’ later in life.” Therefore I always trusted myself, and my willpower; and jumped into experiences. 

I’ve used alcohol as a social drinker, I’ve tried various chemical drugs in music festivals, I’ve smoked marijuana for a looong time, I’ve worked with many psychedelics and sacred plants for healing purposes out of curiosity. Even though I was a regular tobacco smoker, I always had a good relationship with any substance until 2017. In 2017 my relationship with marijuana started to be more intimate and regular.

With years, my social habits have changed. I started to hang out in my place rather than bar hopping and drinking outside. I had a close friend group and our routine was coming together, smoking marijuana, listening to music and chilling. I really respect marijuana as I respect all sacred plants that are gifted by Mother Earth. But I didn’t realize how it became a part of my life, how it became an escape from my own anxiety in time. 

Sneaky Addiction

Addiction is really a hard type of conditioning to realize and accept. It is so sneaky and it has so many excuses and so many different versions. After a while, my relationship with marijuana has started to change from socializing to calming myself down. I was working in a very stressful environment and I was looking forward to going home, rolling a spliff, listening to music and relaxing. During the day time, I was smoking tobacco; at night I was going home and smoking marijuana.

After my Ayahuasca ceremony, I stopped smoking cigarettes in 2018 but I held onto the excuse that marijuana is a natural and sacred plant, and I kept smoking. When my day had been so hard and stressful at work, I was not even able to sleep if I didn’t smoke marijuana because of my anxiety. Later on, I quit my job but couldn’t quit smoking marijuana. It was everywhere and it was a part of my understanding of ‘joy’. It was embedded in my identity, I can even say I was proud to be a marijuana smoker in the name of freedom. 

The Law of Attraction…

Of course, my frequency attracted like-minded people and I ended up with a smoker partner. I moved to the US at the end of 2018 and got married to my partner. I got married before I had a clue about my true self. Due to my Ayahuasca ceremony, I had just recognized that I was a musician, dancer, writer, and healer besides being an engineer but I had no clue about how to use all those gifts. Ultimately, I had just quit my corporate job and started to live abroad for the first time. I was in complete unknown. I was still soul searching. I was still trying to find my purpose in this life.

Not so long after we settled in Florida, all my shadows started to show up. I was away from my family, my friends, my cats, my house, my yard, my job, my title, my clothes, my jewelry, my routines… Everything I belonged to was not with me anymore. Everything I defined myself with was taken. And I had no fucking idea who I was without them.

Insecurities

I was not feeling confident to express myself in English. Although I used my English for my whole business life and during my travels, I had never expressed how I feel in English. Using English in daily life was completely different from corporate English, especially in a country where English is the native language. I was perfectly able to describe all the technical requirements for a software architecture but I had no fucking clue about how to open up my vulnerability. Ok no lies, let’s admit: I had no fucking clue about sharing my vulnerability even in Turkish since I always had to be that powerful, self-contained, young woman! But vocab in English was really killing me 🙂

I had traveled to 26 countries before coming to Florida.

But everything was different in the US from the whole world. All measurements, the temperature, height, weight scales, transportation… I felt alienated, I felt inadequate, all my insecurities started to show up… I didn’t feel like I belonged. The only thing that I felt belonged was my husband. I was deeply in love and I was committed to building a life with him.

Long in short, 2019 was a deep retreat of self-awareness, as well as a long search of identity. It was constantly stressful. I was completely out of my comfort zone. And as a human, I needed to feel belonging again. I needed to be a part of something. Therefore I attached myself to my husband and my husband’s smoker environment in Florida. Because they were the only thing that felt familiar, that felt like home…

“Be cautious of connections that feel like home if home wasn’t always a safe place for you!”

I spent my whole 2019 completely high. I also started smoking tobacco again. Whenever I felt anxious and didn’t know how to deal with the conflicts, I needed to smoke something. I needed to space out myself so that I can escape from the current situation and feel better.

I kept numbing myself and my anxiety under the name of joy and pleasure… Whenever we came all together with friends, all we did was just smoking, playing music and dancing. No one was talking about the real shit, no one actually had an idea about each other’s emotions, each other’s pasts, hardships or wounds.

We were all anxious, we were all in pain, and we didn’t know how to deal with life and how to love ourselves. But the most important thing was; we were not aware that we were all addicted. Having drugs or marijuana or alcohol around was the prerequisite of having fun. I don’t remember one sober day we spent all together. I don’t remember one single day that we just sit and talk about our emotions altogether. We were all trying to escape from our lives by numbing ourselves. Because misery loves company and this is how addiction works; you attract the people who go through the same escapism so it will seem all good.

What is addiction? What is codependency?

Addiction is seeking something outside yourself that can take the pain, stress, or anxiety away. Addiction is running away from problems or suppressed emotions through something that gives you joy. The main reason for the addiction is having difficulty loving and accepting yourself. Furthermore, addiction has a very sneaky version, which is the most common one: codependency! Codependency is the addiction of people-pleasing to gain the love and approval from others that you are not able to provide yourself. And these two always walk hand in hand…

Rejection Trauma

The root cause of addiction and codependency is the lack of self-love, the lack of trusting life, the lack of belonging to life. This pattern starts with the ‘rejection trauma’ in the subconscious. Rejection trauma occurs when we couldn’t get the love, attention, and nurturing we needed when we were a child. If the parents or caregivers had been constantly arguing, if parents or caregivers had been overcriticizing and perfectionist, if the parents or caregivers had been abusive, or if the child had to grow up in a violent environment due to parents or an outer circumstance like wars; these experiences are being coded as rejection trauma in our subconscious. Because the child was not able to get the attention and nurturing that he needed; he felt rejected and lost the feeling to belong to this life. Let’s give some examples:

Growing in violence

Let’s suppose a child grows in a violent environment due to an addicted parent. Or the parents always fight for some reason. In most of these cases, parents gaslight the child and tell him “nothing is going on, they just love each other so much, or the violent parent is just so tired…” The parents avoid confronting the situation or telling the truth to the child; instead, try to normalize the violent behavior. As the child witnesses the denial from parents under the name of love, he starts to question his own reality: Is this violence really love? Then he learns to doubt his own judgments. These experiences are getting coded precisely as how the experience is being learned. The child starts to believe that arguing, fighting, violence, and pain is normal in loving relationships because the first source of love contains painful experiences.

Or being overly criticized

Let’s suppose the child grows with over-critical parents and is never able to satisfy them. This also can be so painful for a child as he starts to believe whatever he does is not going to be enough to be validated. In this case, he learns to doubt his own adequacy. And then he starts to seek external validation to believe in himself and his judgments again.

As a result of all these experiences, the child learns to reject himself, his judgments, and as well as the painful experiences hence; starts looking for an external solution to feel better, to hold on to life, and to belong again. Unfortunately, the solution is going to be a repetitive action, a repetitive emotional cycle, a substance, or a person… Whatever makes life meaningful and tolerable. It can be work, it can be a partner. Addiction has many faces.

My childhood…

When I was a kid, I witnessed the war in 1994 in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey, on the Turkey-Syria border. That was a huge trauma in my life which has broken my bonds with this Earth. I didn’t want to belong to this life because I didn’t feel safe in it.

On top of it, I also witnessed domestic violence in the family. My parents were in love and I can say I received the love that I needed as a child. But I grew in arguments and fights. I always had to be the judge of the family and was asked who is right, mom or dad? Whoever I chose, the other one got offended and I had to carry the guilt as a child. Especially if I said dad was right, my mom got so offended and blamed me for holding the side of my dad. I learned not to speak up my truth not to create more conflict.

On the other hand, my dad was a genius and very silent man. I can’t say I received the affirmations and physical affection that I needed from his side. But he always has been a perfect provider. He is the first male role model for me. So my mind automatically and unconsciously started to seek familiarity when it comes to the male image. I didn’t know because of this conditioning in my subconscious, I was always going to choose partners who are not expressive, emotionally unavailable, tend to shut down, but also a perfect provider as well…

Also, my parents are both teachers…

I always had to be the example child. I grew with “you should be an example, if not, how the parents of our students are going to trust us?” So I had to be their proof of success. Whatever I’ve done, there was always a better way to do it. Even if I get 97/100 from physics, the first thing to say would be “why it is not 100?” I always had to dress up as an example. I always had to do my homework not to make my parents ashamed in front of their colleagues.

As they had to deal with so many hardships in life, they really wanted me to save myself. They really wanted me to be ‘successful’. I’ve spent all my life to be the example child, and to get their validation. And I did. I became very successful on their terms. I became a successful IT manager who makes tons of money. I became an independent woman and learned to take care of myself without asking for any help. I learn to be self-contained and self-sufficient. I became fearless. But I was also damaged. I forgot my own true passions. I lost trust in myself to follow my own passions. I forgot that I also need help and support sometimes and my needs are always valid. I was successful but deep down I was inadequate, insecure, and in search of constant validation.

Our purpose in this journey!

I don’t blame my parents, and I believe; no one should blame it on the parents. They did their best, and I’m so proud of my parents. This was our agreement that we made before coming here to this physical realm. I had to be born into these patterns, I had to be raised this way so that I can break all those patterns today. Thanks to all those wounds I am who I am today! I shine bright today! We choose our own wounds before coming here. Our wounds are our capacity. Our purpose in this journey of consciousness evolution is to work with our subconscious; make the unconscious conscious and be our authentic self, and create our own truth. 

It’s always easy to blame others, “I’m this way because my parents did this, my parents are this way because their parents did that… Alan Watts says “It goes till Adam and Eve and we can never get out of it. And that’s the proof of responsibility.” Only you can save yourself and reshape who you are. That’s why your soul agrees and chooses to be born into these patterns. So that you can break them, go to the opposite side of what you have been told and discover and be your own true self.

Steps of Healing from Addiction

The first step of healing from addiction comes suddenly: Realization.

Because of the prevalence of the situation, it is really hard to realize if you carry this pattern or not. You should really be aware of the patterns and tendencies of your family. If you depend on a substance regularly to deal with life and stress, you might need to check in with yourself. Or if you constantly feel the burden of living for others, you might need to learn more about codependency. Most of the people who suffer from addiction or codependency are not even able to start the healing process because they don’t even recognize that they carry this pattern.

How did I realize my addiction and codependency pattern?

As my shadows started to appear while living in Florida, I gave myself to the healing practices that I’ve learned and studied in many years, in many countries during my travels. Alchemy manifestations, energy healing sessions, mindfulness practices, breathwork, sound healing, ecstatic dance, all kinds of meditation but mostly Vipassana, journaling, chakra alignment, etc… I started to work on healing my shadows one by one.

I also started to write about them more and that’s how this blogging journey has started! 💜 I also began providing healing sessions from IG to people who suffer from similar struggles. I saw a piece of myself in whoever came to my path for me to heal them. I worked for free with dozens of people for months. I never ever liked to put a price on this gift as I see myself as just a vessel. I’m a lightworker, just a mediator for healing to happen. As I healed people, I realized a part of me was also being healed. As I give with no expectation, life always pours abundance on me. During this time, life paid all those free works back to me in many ways but especially paid back with self-awareness.

Sobriety Trials

I was living a good life in Florida, we created a beautiful environment with my ex-husband for our dreams. He was working on his music projects, I was writing my blog and teaching yoga. We were having fun and smoking our days off together. When we were high, everything was perfect. When we were sober, we were not so happy. Especially when I didn’t smoke, I was another person. Angry, frustrated, irritated, unhappy, sleepless, and in pain. I was constantly on guilt trips, I was constantly judging myself or my ex-husband. I was constantly blaming him then I was feeling guilty again.

I knew it was not normal but I didn’t know it was another version of addiction. Addiction to an emotional cycle, addiction to chaos. Somehow I found the strength and decided to stay sober in September of 2019 to address what was going on. I even posted this decision on IG and invited everyone to stay sober until the new year.

I started not to smoke and my body didn’t like it. I found myself in withdrawals. I couldn’t sleep for two weeks, my body was sweaty, and in pain all the time. I was shivering and nervous or angry or crying or yelling at my ex-husband for any reason. I was miserable. I was dealing with my situation by practicing Vipassana meditation and breathwork.

Also, I was trying to stay away from weed, but my ex kept smoking. All our friends were coming to our place and all they were doing was smoking all day. Even though I decided not to smoke, I was being exposed to the smoke in my own place. It was making everything harder and creating a huge distance between me and him. I tried to explain, asked for support from him but he didn’t understand me. So the energy was not flowing in the same way as it was, we slowly started to fall apart. It was so hard for me but I kept staying sober. Suddenly I started to realize some unpleasant things about my marriage!

The Unpleasant Truth

Being in Florida was not our dream? We had to come here to save some money so we can continue traveling! But then my ex-husband decided to create a project with his friends, we started to spend tons of money on weed instead of saving, and I was there trying to fit into my partner’s environment! There was no mutual dream; I was not even in the picture… It was his projects, his family, his friends, his dreams…

Realizing this truth shook my bones, and slapped me on the face! Wait a minute! This was so similar to my previous relationship?! In 2013, I had left my promising career in Turkcell, left everything behind, and moved from Istanbul to Izmir just because I fell in love. And again I had tried to fit in my ex-partner’s environment, just to be able to build a family. And I had ended up with the same scenario; his family, his friends, his city… Holy shit! This was no good…

What goes around comes around

As a conscious and spiritual person, I always take responsibility for the positions that “I created” for myself. If I don’t value myself, of course, I can not be valued. If I don’t respect myself, of course, no one would. Whatever was happening around me was merely a reflection of how I was treating myself within. I was not loving myself, I was insecure, I was not chasing my own dreams, I was not prioritizing myself, I was nobody… And of course, my first mirror, my ex-husband, was reflecting all of these back at me. All of this situation was the result of my own actions and my own choices.

So I don’t blame my ex-husband at all. Actually, I’m so grateful for him because he showed me my biggest shadow in my subconscious. Thanks to him, I realized I was the one who repeats a pattern, who sacrifices herself in the name of love, who gives her everything till she stays outside with nothing left. I realized I was so codependent and so addicted to him, that I was forcing myself to stay in an environment with the people that I wouldn’t normally choose to associate with. And to be able to stay in that environment, I was just lowering my frequency and continually keeping myself high.

I was so afraid to vibrate higher. I was just holding onto my comfort zone and my love because that pain and discomfort were familiar to what I grew up with. I had learned love as a painful experience when I was a child; so I knew how to tolerate it and/or cope with it pretty well. I chose to stay in that familiar pain.

Fears

Because the other option was so scary. I didn’t want to end my marriage. I didn’t want to move on without him. I thought we were going to be together forever. Even thinking about separation was like death. I didn’t know how life would be without him. All of a sudden, I was there with the ugly truth: I was the one who doesn’t give the love and attention that I deserve to myself; I was just giving my all to everyone around me, and then expecting to receive the love and attention from the ones who are not emotionally available for me.

Even if I was brave enough to move on with my life without him, what was I going to do all alone in fucking Florida? I also had financial obstacles… I was in one of the most expensive cities in the US with no papers, no job, and no income. I freaked out, I denied taking an action…

And, unfortunately, I went back to smoking weed again… I smoked every day, until December… Until I got sick in bed…

The second and hardest step is: Acceptance.

It was really so hard for me to accept that I was addicted to these substances and as well to my ex-husband. I was not able to make decisions without considering him. I didn’t even have an idea about what I wanted from life so I kept putting his wishes and plans first.

I was not just addicted to my partner, I also was addicted to pleasing others. I was constantly sacrificing myself and trying to satisfy the expectations of the people around me so that they can love me. I was trying to give my all to others so that they can proceed further in life and I can feel better about myself due to my contributions. I was not able to speak up my truth not to break others’ hearts, instead, I was breaking my own heart by choosing to betray myself. I was not able to say ‘no’ with an unconscious desire to avoid conflicts. I was saying yes to everything and I was putting myself in many uncomfortable positions just to make others happy with an unconscious expectation of validation and love in return.

And also, as a healer, I had another excuse to blindfold myself.

I believed that the purpose of my existence is helping people at any cost. I thought if I help others first, then I can develop a healthy identity. I thought I have to fix others so everyone can evolve in this consciousness journey. I didn’t want to leave my husband behind. I wanted to carry him with me, I wanted to save(!) him too! I was so attached to him and I was so clouded, so deluded and so in fear…

I couldn’t see that I was suffering from codependency. I couldn’t see that I was just creating excuses not to vibrate higher and my people-pleasing pattern was driving my life. I was constantly taking myself out of the picture to gain the approval and love that I needed. But ironically, it was working in the opposite way due to the law of attraction. I kept feeling unseen and unappreciated in my relationship.

If you don’t love yourself, you attract people who reflect that lack of love back at you. If you are codependent, you attract people who take advantage of you. If you are not comfortable in your own skin, you attract people who doubt you. Thus, my mirrors were just reflecting back the lack of approval and love; because I didn’t have it towards myself. That’s why I was desperately in need of their approval. That’s why under the name of ‘helping others’ I was just trying to cover up the fear of being rejected again.

That’s when I accepted my situation. I admitted that I was dealing with addiction and codependency.

The second step is the most critical one on the healing journey of addiction because in this phase people mostly get stuck in denial and do not accept their situation. When you accept you’re dealing with addiction, the healing journey continues with sharing your situation, which takes you to the third step.

The third step was not so easy as well: Confession.

I started to talk about addiction and codependency pattern to my husband first. I shared what I realized about myself, and how I was abusing this sacred plant to escape from my own pain. I wanted him to see the pattern that we both carry as well. He was not receptive at all… He was not ready to hear me… He said I take life so seriously and do not allow myself to enjoy it. He said marijuana is always going to be in his environment and if I have problems with it, I have to deal with it.

Then I started to share my situation with the friends around me. It didn’t work out pretty well either because everyone I called ‘close friends’ around me was carrying the same pattern so no one wanted to hear or talk about it. I couldn’t reach anyone, actually, they were getting so offended when I talked about our addiction pattern. Everyone around me was still in denial of the abuse that we all were in. 

You can run you can hide but you can not escape…

During my sickness, our relationship started to fade away as well.. I was not able to sleep, I was constantly coughing, I was with fever… This time I had to stay away from marijuana mandatorily, I was hardly able to breathe. However since my ex-husband was a regular smoker as well, it was always in our house, in our bathroom, in our bedroom, always in front of my eyes. 

I was suffering… And my ex was so busy with his phone, his priorities, his family, his friends, his music projects, his life… He was checking on me from time to time, but emotionally he was not there. It was nothing personal, he was just high all the time… So he was doing his best. As I stayed sober, we started to break apart more and more each day. In the end, I couldn’t escape from my rejection trauma and had to face it in many ways.

When you accept you are dealing with addiction, confession is so important. Do not feel ashamed and please share your situation with the people who can support you. If you don’t feel supported enough by the people around you, do not give up! Keep yourself motivated, trust that you are always supported and the support you need is going to be provided by life. But you have to make a decision first. Are you committed to saving yourself?

The fourth step: Decision.

When you accept and confess your situation, there are still two ways ahead of you. You can choose to stay in that familiar pain, or you can decide to bet on the other horse: to jump into the unknown to save yourself. That was the hardest decision of my life. How could I leave my partner behind and choose myself?

But on the other hand, I was choosing my love and my relationship and sacrificing myself for what? I was not living the life that I wanted. The love was there but we both were not happy… We kept living like two ghosts in the same house. Even if it was not physical yet, our separation had already begun. It was so painful. I knew I had to detach myself from him… But how was I going to do it? As I was trying to heal, I kept praying for the highest good of all. I constantly asked for clarity. And finally, I surrendered…

Then one day, I received the guidance: 

“If you really want to help people as a healer, you have to build a healthy identity first so that you can lead by example. You have to trust the divine’s plan. The people who are meant to be in your life, will be in your life. You can never lose what is meant to be yours. That’s why you have to detach, you have to always choose your welfare, so that you can create a better opportunity for others, and you can invite them to vibrate higher as well.”

Thus, I had to make a decision… Was I going to live my life like that or was I going to create an independent life for myself so maybe I can lead the way for others? I decided to take myself out of that suffering. I knew I deserved better, I could do better! All I needed to do was loving myself unconditionally. Only after that, my mirrors could reflect true love to me. I had to trust myself. 

You don’t have to be a healer to make this decision. All you need to decide is your own worth. You have to believe that you deserve a better life and can do better. You have to choose yourself so that life can honor you as well. YOU have to BE first so that YOUR REALITY can BE! We are always supported, we just don’t let the universe take care of us out of fear. Just trust yourself and trust life. When you start to love yourself, life is ready to pour miracles on your way! And when you trust and feel ready, you need to take yourself out of the old environment of old habits and build a new castle for yourself.

The fifth step: Change of Environment.

When you decide to heal, it is really important to keep yourself away from the behavior that you suffer from to gain some clarity. It was still not easy for me to take myself out of that environment. I was still fearful of my financial situation. I started to work in a coffee shop but I was barely making money. Plus, I only knew a few people in the city. But my courage saved me again. I was going to do this, I believed in myself, and I was committed to being independent and free. Thus it was necessary to change my environment to create a healthier life for my own growth.

When I decided to treat myself better in this life, the whole universe was like waiting to help me. I found an amazing place to stay due to a friend whom I recently met. I found a better job and started to make good money. I even had a driver to take me from home to work. However, I still had attachments like friends who were still dealing with codependency and addiction. I couldn’t cut them so easily.

I found myself still trying to save people from this pattern. But it didn’t work out as well. I learned my lesson in harsh ways: you can not help anyone in this life as long as they are ready to receive. Everyone is exactly where they need to be, and you are no one to decide what is better for them. You can not save anyone, they must decide to save themselves. Trying to carry others with you, only slows you down… Because everyone is perfectly fine wherever they are at their own pace.

Trying to carry those friends on my shoulders brought me to the sixth step: Disengagement.

It is really vital to surround yourself with the people who support you on your healing journey and cut the cords with people who carry those substances or unhealthy behaviors into your life. It is really hard to heal from addiction with the people who still choose to stay in the same pattern. So I had to cut all the connections with everyone I know who carries the same pattern till I completely felt detached from the addiction and codependency pattern that I carry. But I always had support. Life gave me amazing friends who were there for me in my liberation journey. I was given transparent and conscious people and relationships after I decided to walk away from my own misery. Life said “As long as you choose to love yourself, we’re gonna uplift you with real love that you deserve! Keep on rising!” and kept saving my ass!

Regarding the point of cutting all the cords with everyone who doesn’t serve your growth, all you need to do is keep trusting yourself and the process. You had the bravery to step out of addiction, chose to heal yourself, shared your awareness with others, created a new space for yourself, walked away from the people who are not ready to heal, and now you are ready for the final and the most important step! Till now it was based on your courage and faith, from now on it is going to be based on your commitment.

And the final step: Remedy.

After all the steps I’ve been through, the final step was more like building a new habit for me. The remedy for addiction comes from learning how to love yourself, how to deal with stress, and how to have inner peace and joy regardless of the outer circumstances. This step contains physical, mental, and spiritual practices. 

Physical Practices:

Never undermine the importance of movement! As humans, we need to move to remain healthy. All you need is to find a physical exercise which is not going to bring a burden to you but only joy. It can be walking, jogging, working out, yoga, pilates, or dancing. All you need to do is just move that body whenever you feel like going back to the same pattern! 

When you have an addiction, your body develops a need for an external sedative under stress. All you need to do is to change the habit of the body and create an outlet to let that stress out. 

As an ecstatic dance and yoga instructor, my physical outlets are mainly dancing and practicing yoga. I bet you already know how these two help calming the mind and releasing tension from the body. Whenever you feel stressed out, just try to dance for 15mins a day! And let me know about the results 🙂 

I would also recommend breathwork.

Breathing techniques are really the easiest way to release the old patterns of the mind. You wouldn’t believe how magical they are. Remember one of the main reasons for addiction is feeling like you do not belong to this life. This feeling keeps the sympathetic nervous system activated all the time. Which makes you produce more adrenaline, which keeps you more anxious. Give a chance to breathwork. It is the best way to activate the parasympathetic nervous system aka digest and rest system. We can not function properly without activating the digest and rest system. It’s the system that should be consciously activated for us to heal from addiction. And breathwork is the most effortless and beneficial practice to activate the parasympathetic nervous system.

And make a habit of kissing your body! We kiss people we love right? How often do you really kiss yourself? Kiss your hands, kiss your shoulders, kiss your knees. Try to build a more intimate relationship with your body. Self-love is always the key!

Mental Practices:

Mental practices are really the key during this final step. This pattern occurs due to mental conditioning, therefore you need to recode your subconscious. The mind can be resistant, thus just be patient and treat your mind as a child.

Never forget, you are the most magnificent being in this universe and your word is an order. Therefore journaling and using affirmations are pretty effective in the process of rewriting the subconscious! You can keep a journal daily about how you feel, write down all your negative emotions and thoughts then burn that paper, repeat self-love affirmations, remind yourself of the qualities you have that you love the most about yourself, write love letters to yourself! This way you can rewrite your conditionings and reshape your beliefs about yourself. 

Spiritual Practices:

Meditation is the most common and beneficial way to connect with our spirituality. As you start to observe the mind, you will realize you are not just your thoughts simply because you are able to observe them. So there must be something else that observes your thoughts! Some call it spirit, some call it soul, some call it higher consciousness. Tapping into the perspective of the observer changes the whole physical reality because it gives you the power of observing the way you think. When you begin to observe the way you think, it gives you the power to choose what to think. And it changes everything because what you think becomes your physical reality…

I also love chanting and singing mantras as my prayers. You would never believe the power of prayers and sounds. If you are into these types of practices, just open a mantra from Spotify and sing along with it! Let those magical sounds and frequencies work for you!

Healing from codependency is more about learning how to say no, more about self-care. 

When it comes to self-care, mostly we think about nutrition, facials, body lotions, physical exercises, massage, mainly “taking care of the body”. Which is also so important but the real meaning of self-care is prioritizing your intuition and your own needs for your own well-being and happiness. It’s ok not to answer the phone if you do not want to. It’s ok to say no to something that you don’t feel like being a part of. It’s ok to not reply to all the messages that you receive. It’s ok to take your time and retreat. It’s ok to share your decisions and not to explain your reasons. It’s ok not wanting to see anyone and enjoy your solitude. It’s ok to not behave out of courtesy if you don’t feel like doing so. It’s ok to say no to the expectations of others for your highest good.

Self-care is always setting your own needs as a priority. Hence you gotta learn to prioritize yourself. Practice setting healthy boundaries. Being able to say “no” is the only remedy of codependency! 

Hallelujah Independence!

And here I am today with pride! It’s been months that I didn’t even want to escape from my physical reality through any substances. Today I really don’t care if people are going to like me or not because I love myself unconditionally. Whatever the circumstances are, I choose my own needs, my own welfare, my own joy so that life can surround me with this love that I have towards myself. I’m not begging for love by people-pleasing anymore. I am creating it!

Never forget, what you carry in your subconscious becomes your frequency. And your frequency becomes your physical reality. This is what we call the law of attraction. As you heal yourself, your whole reality starts to heal. 

Healing from addiction is not an easy process. Especially when most of us are not aware of it and most of us think that addiction comes with serious physical harm. But actually, it is mostly psychological destruction that might look so ordinary just because it is so common! Notably in the US, so many people abuse marijuana without even realizing it because it is a part of the culture. It is so normalized especially when it’s being used for medical purposes.

Medicine and Pharmaceutical Industries are just businesses!

Let me tell you something, I stopped using western medicine three years ago. I had migraines but I was trying not to take painkillers just to be able to hear the message of my pain so I can heal myself. But our modern habits are quite the opposite. Looking for an external solution to feeling better is embedded in society. This is what we have been told and grew with. These medicine and pharmaceutical industries taught us; taking something ‘external’ is the only way to heal yourself. 

Actually, the whole medicine and pharmaceutical industry is just a business. The truth is, all sicknesses, diseases, and disturbances we suffer from are messages from our emotional body to our physical body so that we can address which emotion is being suppressed and what is blocking us in our subconscious so that we can pay attention to it and heal ourselves. We all have the capacity to heal ourselves by listening to those messages that our bodies convey to us. No one teaches us this truth because then, there would be no need for hospitals, doctors, pharmacies and it would be a huge loss of money. 

Thus, over here in the US, the usage of medical marijuana is legal. Because it’s another business, another market. They also want everyone to carry the pattern of addiction:

“Seek something external to feel better, deal with your anxiety by numbing yourself out, do not pay attention to what your soul is trying to tell you, do not heed the messages hence do not wake up!”

The good intentions of those beautiful people who work in all these sectors are being used so that more money can enter some other people’s pockets. Here is the system we live in! It’s time to know and see this. It’s time to wake up!

Be Attentive When Using Sacred Plants!

I do not reject the benefits of marijuana. Actually, I strongly recommend everyone to work with sacred plants and psychedelics consciously. But there is just a very critical and thin line between conscious usage and abusive usage: If it is used to deal with anxiety, and pain regularly, it becomes escapism, and escapism opens the door for addiction. When it becomes regular, it becomes abusive and that’s how you find yourself in the arms of addiction. Because it’s always easier to take something external to numb the pain or anxiety rather than dealing with it and trying to find the root cause of the pain. Root causes require so much work, hitting the bowl is always easier. 

Make Peace with Your Feelings

You can heal from addiction. You just need to ask yourself, how you feel when you expose yourself to the thing or behavior you are addicted to and teach yourself to feel the same way without needing something outside yourself. You can give yourself what you need! Actually most of the time, all you need is you, your own attention, your own love… 

Your anxiety and your pain are not your enemies that you need to run away from. They are there to teach you what you need to heal in your life. I know it’s not easy. I’ve been there. I’m still learning how not to fall into people-pleasing patterns and prioritize my own needs and wishes. It’s a constant work, it requires constant awareness and courage. But if you are born into this pattern, it means that you have the strength to end this pattern.

The minute you realize you carry this pattern, it means you have already overcome the hardest step. You realized it and now you have an opportunity to work on it, to heal it. This pattern has already been carried for so long! It’s essential for us to heal it and not to carry it to the next generations. Today I want to kindly invite you to look at your own parental patterns. If you see addiction or codependency, then look deeper at your own patterns honestly. Do not be afraid. You are always supported. The moment you decide to vibrate higher and give yourself a better life, better relationships, better standards; life is ready to take you higher. Trust yourself, and trust the process. You can heal. If you need support on addiction or codependency, please feel free to contact me. You are never alone.

With love.