Julia Reeder LLC

People have been bringing trinkets and photos (not featured) for the altar in my office and I’m blown away at the amount of love that comes in the form of grief. What a privilege to hold that with someone.

I have worked with addictions of all kinds throughout my career, be it alcoholism, codependence, or some other numbing/problematic behavioral pattern. And a common statement I hear is: “I don’t know why I do this.“

The intellectual case we are implicitly making with this statement is: if only I knew why I did this, then I would change. Since I don’t, I guess I can’t 🤷‍♀️

Essentially, it’s a cop out. In fact, many people I see who say this (including myself on occasion ) DO in fact know WHY they do the problematic behavior in question.

Knowing why we numb out or seek comfort in damaging things can indeed be helpful. But actually changing the behavior is more of an emotional and behavioral process. When you catch yourself saying “I don’t know why I do this,” consider the notion that you are collapsing a bit. It’s a resignation — a shield against doing hard things.

Understand why you’re partaking in an addiction can help you summon compassion for yourself, which is an important part of behavioral change. It is worthwhile to investigate your motives. When you’ve done this, don’t then create for yourself the speedbump of convincing yourself that you don’t make sense. You do, you just need to now grieve or cry or break up or go to a meeting or whatever it is that you don’t want to do but know you need.