About the Addict / Comforter Personality Subself

    Premises: Most people have several reactive Inner Child personality subselves who activate periodically and cause the host person signifi-cant inner pain. People raised in low-nurturance childhoods develop Guardian personality subselves to survive. Two well-intentioned Guardi-ans seem to work together to cause toxic compulsions like addictions - the Addict / Comforter and the Magician.

     When one or more young subselves cause the host person over-whelming pain, the narrow-visioned Addict subself causes the host per-son to self-medicate with distracting chemicals, actions, relationships, or "states" like rage, zeal, or sexual arousal. If other subselves warn "This is dangerous!," the Magician creates persuasive reality distortions ("I am NOT addicted - I can stop any time I want!"). True addictions are self-amplifying, for they inevitably increase inner pain. Because the Ad-dict subself is devoted to protecting Inner Children and sees no better way to do so, s/he will never listen to "logic" or "common sense."

    Lesson 1  in this nonprofit, ad-free site provides an effective way to help free the resident true Self to use other subselves and human help to protect and comfort the inner kids. This frees the Addict subself to adopt a new role in the personality, so compulsive self-medication can recede.

More detail