INSECURITY
Insecurity
causes addictions; addictions then feed the insecurity and creates the
beginning of a vicious cycle of insecurity that regenerates from one generation
to the next.
Insecurity
is the root of addictions. Insecurity creates an inability to cope with, or
accept any negative reality or truth, thus leading one to drugs and alcohol to
escape that reality. Then the results of using drugs and alcohol feed the
insecurity by adding to it and compounding the negative reality that existed initially.
Then, over time, denial takes the place of insecurity. Denial and addictions literally
become the addict’s security blanket. The denial becomes a false sense of
security.
Some of the
definitions of insecurity, including Abraham Maslow’s, who describes an
insecure person as a person that "perceives the world as a threatening
jungle and most human beings as dangerous and selfish; feels rejected and an
isolated person, anxious and hostile; is generally pessimistic and unhappy;
shows signs of tension and conflict, tends to turn inward; is troubled by
guilt-feelings, has one or another disturbance of self-esteem; tends to be
neurotic; and is generally selfish and egocentric." (Maslow, 1942, pp 35).
He viewed that in every insecure person is a continual, never dying, longing
for security.
A person who
is insecure lacks confidence in their own value, and of their own ability to
achieve and accomplish great things, they lack trust in themselves and others,
and fear that a present positive position or situation is only temporary, and
will not last. This is a common trait, which only differs in degree between
people. They feel hopeless and useless.
Insecurity
may contribute to, and encourage compensatory behaviors such as alcohol or drug
addictions or other escape mechanisms such as the development of shyness,
paranoia and social withdrawal, and depression. Many will turn to varying
sexual dysfunctions, such as pornography, homosexual behavior, or promiscuity.
I’ve noticed for years that every homosexual person I’ve ever met, it seems
that their insecurity stands out like a flashing neon sign, many of them seem
to communicate among themselves and others like 5 year old children. Insecurity
results in immaturity! Escaping reality by any means is building an
impenetrable wall which blocks access to all truth and maturity! An insecure
person is a highly vulnerable person who can easily be mislead into believing
almost anything! Our world is filled with exceedingly insecure people today,
believing everything but The Truth of God!
A much
shorter definition of insecurity would be a person who has no idea of who they
are, or why they’re here. An insecure Christian, is first of all, a misnomer or
a contradiction, and second, a sign of possessing little Faith. Matthew
14:31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of
little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” Matthew
17:20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell
you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to
this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will
be impossible for you.” A Born Again Christian is empowered by the Holy
Spirit (Acts
1:8 ), and should never feel insecure. However our Churches today, because of a complete failure to communicate
The Gospel Truth, are filled with insecure people who have no idea who they are
in Christ, or why they’re here. Led by so many false teachers and doctrine, they
live in constant fear, with little or no Faith, and act as if they’re
powerless. They live in complete disobedience to God and defend or excuse their
sinful behavior by taking 1
John 1 out of context and making foolish comments like “we’re all sinners,”
or Paul’s words in Romans
7:14-20, while paying no attention to his words in Romans
6:1-7,
or 7:24-25. God’s Grace is NOT a license or permit to sin, but a gift of
forgiveness when our repentance
fails us! This fear and insecurity leads millions to addictions to drugs
and alcohol, and other sinful behavior, and the consequent guilt leads them
away from God.
An obvious
sign of insecurity amongst many of those in the Christian addiction recovery
community is the overwhelming, paralyzing, almost frenzied need for personal prayer.
Addictions have drained all life, hope, and Faith from alcoholics and addicts
who become almost hysterical, frantically seeking immediate answers from God
and all those in the groups and meetings, sometimes selfishly demanding all the
attention and prayers. Years of insecurity and addictions stunts our growth and
maturity which in turn hinders future development in sobriety. Of course prayer
is vital in the lives of all Christians, and even critical in extreme trials,
but with the Faith
of a mustard seed we will see our prayers answered according to God’s will,
and we will not need to frantically panic!
Secure
Christians are mature Christians, who know who they are in Christ and in the
world, and are secure in that knowledge, and in their Salvation. They’re
confident and assured of their Salvation, possess and display a strong Faith,
and need not to show fear and trembling in their walk with Jesus. As mature
Christians, our prayers need to be focused on others needs, not on our own. In the
thousands of Christian addiction recovery meetings I’ve attended, it’s always
been just the opposite. A selfish pleading for self interests and gains is the
norm, along with a complete lack of maturity and the holding to scripture such
as, 1
Corinthians 3:1-3, “Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who
live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ.
2, I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed,
you are still not ready. 3, You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy
and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere
humans? Or, Hebrews
5:11-13, We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you
because you no longer try to understand. 12, In fact, though by this time you
ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of
God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13, Anyone who lives
on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about
righteousness.
Children of
alcoholics and addicts, and grown up adult children of alcoholics and addicts,
are highly susceptible to suffer with insecurity.
Children
growing up in the homes of alcoholics and addicts are usually subjected to
various degrees of abuse, including rejection, shame and guilt, abandonment and
neglect, even physical and sexual abuse, which
results in various levels of insecurity. In many of these situations,
children, even infants, are being raised by siblings, often mere children
themselves, who have no business raising another child, and are usually
incapable of doing so. In some cases however, the older children are more
capable than the parents, if the parents are constantly high on drugs or drunk.
There are many cases when children do remarkable jobs raising their siblings,
but most of the time it ends with tragic results. The point is that a sibling
should never be put in such circumstances. They’re being robbed of their own
childhood.
In the worse
case scenarios, this rarely is allowed to go on for very long before
authorities are alerted and become involved, usually resulting in child abuse
charges against the parents, and the children being placed with other family
members or with child welfare agencies. The younger the child begins this life
of abuse and neglect, the more vulnerable they are to growing up alone and
insecure. All too often these children are also exposed to violence, and
physical and sexual abuse, and all sorts of other horror that no child should
ever have to endure.
We’re living
in a society today populated by millions of adults who were those children, who
remember vividly their broken childhood, who all too easily remember and still
can feel the pain, hear the screams and yelling from the violence every time
they turn on the TV or see a movie. For far too many of us, remembering our
childhood, no matter how hard we’ve tried to hide and bury the pain through
drug and alcohol use and abuse, the memories never completely vanish, and are
just a “click” away on the TV remote. Some of us have managed to escape from
the prisons of our past long enough to recognize some positive advantages that
have come out of it. Some experiences that have helped us grow and mature into
who we are today.
What needs
to be understood is that the degree, and period of time that neglect and
abandonment is present in a child’s life is in direct proportion to their
chances to survive. The hard truth is that in any home where there is any use
of drugs and alcohol, no matter how often, or what the circumstances, parents
who use drugs and alcohol at all, whether it’s abused or not, there is always
some degree of child abandonment and neglect. Any time, and for whatever reason
or period of time a parent is high or wasted on drugs or alcohol, the child or
children are being abandoned, neglected, and left in danger. The use of drugs
and alcohol by an addicted or alcoholic parent render that user intoxicated and
incapacitated and irresponsible, incapable of protecting their children! The only
reason alcoholics and addicts use drugs and alcohol is to get completely wasted
and escape reality and responsibility. I’m not speaking here to the casual, social
drinker, the person who occasionally has a glass of wine or a beer, or even an
occasional hit on a joint. This message is for hard-core alcoholics and
addicts, whether in denial or not, or in recovery or not, this is a message to
reveal a very hard and ugly truth that few will admit, and most will deny. The
truth is always painful, and denial is always hard to accept and then to
overcome, just as the denial of addiction is what keeps alcoholics and addicts
away from recovery. An addict can’t begin recovery until he or she overcomes
their state of denial. It is far more difficult for the addicted parent to
admit that their addictions are causing them to be child abusers! The sooner
they realize the damage they’re doing, or have already done to their children,
the sooner they, and their children can begin to heal and rebuild their lives.
When do we
need counseling, and where do we find it? I believe that some of the most
successful counselors involved in addiction recovery today, are those who
survived some very difficult childhoods themselves. I’d even go so far as to
say that a difficult childhood, growing up in a home where drugs and alcohol
replaced love and affection, should be a required prerequisite for the right to
counsel others. No one can understand the pain and suffering of an alcoholic or
addict, better than someone who’s been in their shoes. You can’t feel the pain
and suffering, and understand the circumstances, by reading a book, or a
thousand books! Degrees and licenses on walls only means that the person
sitting at the desk in front of them, understands the thoughts and ideas of men
like Freud, Nietzsche, Jung, Reich, or Fromm and many other psychologists and philosophers. That doesn’t
mean that they understand you, and what you’re going through, or have gone
through to lead you to where you are today. You can’t earn degrees in streets
and alleys or homeless shelters and prisons, or in 12-step meetings, but you
can get to know the stories of the men and women whose lives have been ruined
by addictions. Through compassion you can learn to feel their pain and
suffering, and learn that they need hope more than anything else. Until we’ve
walked in their shoes, “done some time” in the gutters and cesspools of
addictions,” we have no business pretending or assuming to know and understand
the heart or mind and the past of an alcoholic or an addict.
The most
important thing a Christian in addiction recovery needs to consider in seeking
help is the source. Is God the primary source? Or secular philosophy? God tells
us in Col. 2:8, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow
and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental
spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” Again,
the fundamental reason an alcoholic or addict becomes one, is because of
insecurity, for whatever reason. A Christian needs to find security in Christ before
they can defeat satan and overcome their addictions. The only way for a
Christian to become secure in their relationship with God, is through God. God
can, and does use spirit filled counselors to show us the way to victory over
our addictions, but we must be very vigilant in who we choose, or what program
we choose to follow. With so many false teachers in the world today, it is
crucial for our recovery, that we be sure our counseling and or mentoring be of
sound scriptural doctrine, straight from the Gospel, through the Holy Spirit.
When in doubt, be assured that the Holy Spirit is probably not present. Doubt
is sin, and God will not be present in sin. When in doubt, be as the Bereans in
Acts
17:11, and read the scripture for yourself to see if what the counselor
said is what God says!
Can we
restore broken relationships? The restoration of broken relationships can be a
long, difficult, painful, and all too often seemingly impossible process. I’ve
counseled 100’s of people who’ve waited far too long to get sober enough to
begin rebuilding broken relationships with family and friends. The longer a
relationship remains broken, the more difficult it is to be repaired and
healed. I’ve also listened to 100’s upon 100’s of stories where solutions and
restorations were never successful. It seems everyday I talk to someone in
recovery who is still suffering in a lot of pain over the relational loss of a
loved one, or the entire family. Sometimes the loss is between spouses and
siblings, but most often between children and parents. This is a tragedy that
seems to exist in 90% of the cases of addictions, whether active, or in
recovery, family relationships are almost always destroyed, or permanently
damaged. And in most cases, insecurity, formed and developed in childhood is
the foundational cause. This becomes a vicious cycle, where addictions are
caused by insecurity, and then goes on to produce a new generation of
insecurity.
Addictions
create dysfunctional thinking which leads to insecurity, which breeds distrust,
and distrust breeds more insecurity. Neglect and abandonment is a form of
betrayal, and betrayal will create more distrust, leading to more insecurity. A
vicious cycle of emotions feeding other emotions. Relationships will never
survive distrust. Trust is the glue that holds a relationship together. Even
childhood relationships, whether a friendship between 2 children, or siblings,
or parents, if the trust is lost, whether because of betrayal, or neglect, or
any other kind of abuse, the relationship will be broken. The heart is broken,
and the pain sets in. Insecurity being the overall result of the resulting
distrust.
Insecurity
leads to hopelessness. Abusive childhoods, whether physical or emotional, that
result from addictions, lead to broken family relationships, that result in
insecurity and hopelessness. Every day in America, millions of innocent
children are being recklessly abused by drunken or drug addicted parents,
parents who have lost all sense of reality and responsibility, who are overcome
with denial and guilt, and any sense of right from wrong. Parents, who when
confronted by anyone, friends, family, co-workers, pastors or counselors, will
deny they have a problem and tell us to mind our own business!
Insecurity breeds deceitfulness to hide an individual’s
weakness. The insecure person quickly learns to deceive others to protect their
weaknesses. Drugs and alcohol produce a false sense of security, leaving an
insecure person vulnerable and reliant on deceiving others for protection from
the evil world they’re trying to escape from! Soon strangers, as well as old
friends and family members have no idea who they’re dealing with. “By the very
nature of deception, a man doesn’t know when he is being deceived, or deceiving
himself”. Whenever we see gross acts of violence today like mass shootings and
bombings, whenever the news media catches up with the family or neighbors, we
always hear exactly the same words from them. “Not my sweet little Johnny”! “He
was such a good little boy”! Or, “Not my neighbor, he was such a nice quiet
young man”! “By the very nature of deception, a man doesn’t know when he is
being deceived, or deceiving himself”. While “sweet little Johnny” was sitting
in his room planning an attack, and building a bomb, he was going to work and school
and integrating with family, neighbors, friends, and co-workers, deceiving everyone
in his circle. His insecurity had led him much earlier to escape from all sense
of reality and believe that he didn’t fit into society.
Millions of
children become the innocent victims of this nightmarish, traumatic experience
that will impact their lives forever one way or another. Some will be able to
suppress their feelings at least on the surface, but the pain will always be
there, deep in the darkest shadows of their soul. It will stay hidden and
suppressed for many, and never appear to affect their lives, but for millions
of others, it will rise to the surface on occasions, when something triggers
certain emotional memories from the past. Only God can restore and heal the
broken heart and mind.
If we’re
Christians, and we’ve been plagued with addictions since childhood, we need to
realize the damage that drugs and alcohol can do to children. If our addictions
were, or are the result of being raised by abusive parents, which is often the
case, there are some very hard facts that need to be looked at, and taken very
seriously and examined. We learn to barricade our emotions behind the walls
that we build to hide and block out the pain and trauma of the negative reality
we’ve experienced growing up as children. This inhibits our ability to mature,
and as Christians, our ability to mature spiritually, and to break down those
walls, we must learn to turn over and trust God with our pain… until we get
past this, we might not get beyond the denial of addictions, but continue to be
trapped in the bondage of sin and its consequences.
Many
children growing up in the homes of addicted parents feel guilty, that somehow
they’re to blame, and that it’s their fault! A lie from the devil!
Denial is a
direct result of insecurity. Denial and insecurity is part of our human nature
in the flesh led by satan. There is one thing every human being has in common
with alcoholics and addicts, the natural instinct of denial. We see denial in most
of our daily routine. “I’m fat, I’m not pretty, I’m not smart, I’m not popular
or loved, my husband doesn’t love me, I can’t do this or that, my children are
perfect, (even when they’re not), my boss doesn’t like me, (even when you’re
his best employee), God doesn’t Love me!……When you know He does! All of these examples
of denial, just as the drunkards favorite, “I don’t have a problem with
alcohol”, just before passing out, that keeps alcoholics and addicts in their
addictions, are the result of insecurity and self deception. Our insecurity is
the inability to face reality, and ourselves in the mirror without being
deceived by satan. The inability to love or trust anyone including ourselves. “By
the very nature of deception, a man doesn’t know when he is being deceived, or
deceiving himself”! Until we learn to fully trust our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ, security and confidence will elude us. Job
11:18 (KJV) 18 And thou shalt be secure, because there is hope; yea, thou
shalt dig about thee, and thou shalt take thy rest in safety. Hebrews
10:35 (KJV) Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great
recompence of reward.
Most Adult
Children of Alcoholics and Addicts inherit their parent’s insecurity. They may
not inherit their parent’s propensity to turn to drugs and alcohol to escape
reality, but most likely, because of the unavoidable and immeasurable trauma in
their lives while growing up in the home of dysfunctional parents, they found some
way to escape and hide from that brutal reality! When a child is being abused,
all they want to do is hide and escape. It is difficult, if not impossible for
them to rationalize reality and especially God’s Truth! Many will never find it! Those few who do,
will be the only ones who understand this message.
Perhaps the
epitome of insecurity and denial is seen when the seemingly, perfectly normal
parent first discovers their children are using drugs or alcohol! The reaction
is almost always the same; “Not my sweet little Susie”, or “Not my precious little
Billy”! Sometimes the addictions slip by undetected for years until Susie or
Billy commits some heinous crime, but the parent’s reaction is exactly the
same! Most of these parents can rest assured that there were plenty of warning
signs that couldn’t be seen through the cloud of denial they had created in
their own lives. Drug and alcohol addictions are not the only addictions people
turn to seeking a way to escape reality. There are far too many to list here, but
most likely, out of insecurity, you have found at least one to hide behind! Unfortunately
we are living in an insecure world, filled with, and governed by insecure
people who would rather watch it go down in flames, wasting their lives away, while
munching on Doritos, watching a Super Bowl, then face reality and God’s Truth! Susie and Billy’s lives may have been saved if anyone was paying attention, and
cared about their future! The world’s attitude is; “there’s nothing I can do to
fix the problem, so pass me another beer”!
