A dictionary definition of addiction is simple: “a strong compulsion to have or do something harmful.” Simple, or is it? Who defines what is harmful? And to whom? Addiction throws up barriers to answering those questions about what is harmful.
I encourage you to consider your truth. Are you able to recognize it? Has it become obscured by denial, shrouded in secrecy, deflated by minimization,or inflated by maximization?
The Barrier of Minimizing
Madison alternated between “things are so bad” she didn’t want me to tell her parents and “things aren’t so bad,” so there was no need to tell her parents. We had to wrestle for a while before she could see that the goal in both of those opposites was not to tell her parents. Her life was broken and she wanted to keep the damage from them, through either outright secrecy or obscuring the truth by trying to minimize it.
