Fantasy & Illusion
why we buy it & how to stop doing that

Hey, good people. As always, I'm presenting a topic that is near and dear to my own developmental heart. This week I'm talking about fantasy and illusion. If you're the child of addiction, if you're a codependent, you probably know a whole lot about the creation of fantasy and illusion in your life. It can literally keep you going.

Why do we do it? Well, we create it for a whole host of reasons. For me personally, it's an escape from reality. It's a way to ignore knowing what the truth actually is. In the realm of dating, I've dubbed it the "Pink Haze". So it can look like, going on one date with someone and then imagining what it would be like to be married to them. Wondering what it would be like to create business and pleasure with them. All of this with very, very little tangible evidence to support the fantasy. So primarily we do stuff like this, we create illusions and fantasies to keep from being in the present moment. And in the realm of dating, fantasy keeps us from acknowledging that someone is late, that they've shown up with alcohol on their breath, or that they are wildly inconsistent. We create fantasies to prevent ourselves from actually knowing what is.

How do we negate that? How do we look at that? How do we stop doing it?
We fall in love with brutal honesty. Which is not easy. Giving up our fantasies is not easy. To give up our illusions is to give up our preconceived notions of what security actually is. And the good news is that you can actually have security. The bad news is that nobody, but nobody can provide that for you. But you, I don't care if you are married. I don't care if you have children. I don't care if you have wonderful parents. Nobody can give you a sense of security, but you, for you.

So another way to look at this, especially if you've got repeating patterns in your life where you keep choosing the same addictive partners or people who disappoint you or jobs that lay you off, whatever that might be, and however that looks in your life, is to really begin to contemplate, how did I create that? Why did I create that? Why do I continue to lean into abandonment, abandonment, rejection, disappointment and hurt?

There are answers to these questions in your body. And when you've been pretty beaten up, metaphorically or literally from a young age, especially in an environment with addiction and abuse, those are really familiar feelings and sensations in the body.

So if we can identify them and locate them and even celebrate them and accept them, we start to create distance between them and what we could actually choose that might be different.

So it's a bit complicated, but the body is a pretty good place to begin to tangibly identify hurt, pain, and suffering, especially from repeated patterns.

So take a look at all that. Fall in love with brutal honesty. And begin to identify those sensations in your body – where you lean into those feelings of discomfort, and pain.

From there, you can actually begin to make new choices. A new day will dawn, miraculously. It's not a one-and-done type of process. This is a thing we do over and over in recovery.

But if you need some support, I'm here for you. Otherwise, ciao for now.