5 tips for spiritual healing from addiction

One way to engage in spiritual healing for addiction issues is to address abandonment or rejection. How can you start? Five (5) tips from Ester Nicholson, celebrated vocalist, teacher, and author.

4
minute read

Rejection Takes its Final Bow

Five tips on how to heal from addiction, abandonment, and rejection

The man of my dreams, my beloved, the love of my life, would kiss me on the forehead, and say goodbye as he walked away and gently close the door behind him. I’d stand at the door screaming at the top of my three year old lungs, “Daddy please come back, please don’t leave me.” My heart would break into a thousand tiny pieces. My howls and cries were so pathetic and loud, that he would be compelled to come back into the house after he started the car to warm up the engine, and take me into his arms. He would rub my little shoulders and whisper in my ear, “Sweetheart, daddy’s right here pumpkin. I’ll see you first thing in the morning honey.” Night after night, my father and I would go through this same ritual as he prepared to leave for work.

When my older brothers who were musicians would prepare to leave town to go on tour with their bands, I’d hear my mother whispering in the next room, “For god-sake hide those suitcases, you know she’s going to have a fit when she finds out you’re leaving.” And have a fit I would. I’d chase cars down the driveway begging my brothers, “Please don’t leave me, I’m sorry if I was bad, I’ll never do it again.” Someone would take my hand and lead me back into the house, saying “Sweetheart, they’ll be back, it’s going to be okay – calm down.”

And on and on it went for the majority of my lifetime.

The deep insidious fear of abandonment was the running theme of every relationship I ever had. I’ve experienced the pain of abandonment with women when a girlfriend that I would dub “my new sister” would suddenly go south, and out of nowhere, wasn’t my friend anymore. However, my pride was stronger than the pain when it came to the women in my life, and I’d bury the feelings of abandonment by saying “screw them,” and move on – or so I thought.

But men – well that’s an entirely different story!

I used to jokingly share with people “I hold onto relationships to my nails are bloody.” I said it jokingly, but it wasn’t really very funny – it was actually quite sad and kicking my butt.

It was excruciatingly painful to experience absolute bliss for the first six or eight months of a relationship, where I would give my heart, soul, body and every frigging waking thought to some dude (maybe therein lies the problem), and then homeboy would all of a sudden have “commitment issues,” and forget that he knows me. I had this knack for choosing men that could call me the love of their life one minute and the next treat me as if I was their gardener’s ex-wife’s third cousin. I of course would always blame them, and truly believed I was a victim of unavailable men.

Well, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, but what to do? Clearly I was choosing the wrong people to hook up with, but based on the spiritual principles that I now believe in, were they really the wrong people or my perfect angels?

You heard me, my perfect angels. Yeah, I know, me too. When I was initially introduced to that concept, I was like – there is no way that horrible @#$$ is my angel – “Do you know what he did to me?” Well, I was also told, those guys that had broken my heart didn’t actually do anything to me – they did something very valuable for me – if I was willing to accept the gift.

What’s the gift? The people that have hurt you the most were placed in your life to rip the bandages off the wounds that were there all along. If your core wounding is abandonment, rejection and betrayal, and that is the dominant theme of your most important relationships, guess where the problem really lies? Within you! Without those almost debilitating painful experiences, you probably wouldn’t be compelled to do the deep inner work that restores you to wholeness. Most people would never do the “spiritual warrior” work that being on the floor in the fetal position inspires. So from that perspective, we can thank our angels whose presence in our lives have shaken us awake to our own magnificence and lovability.

Here’s five tips to healing Abandonment and rejection.

1. Acknowledge that you’re feeling abandoned by the person you most closely identify your abandonment issues with.

2. Just for a moment, take that person out of the picture, and see if this issue is the case in most of your close relationships.

3. Claim the courage to look at your patterns of abandonment and rejection in your relationships – ask yourself “who is the main character in my play?”

4. Lovingly acknowledge the pain of your inner child and let them cry.

5. Find a mentor, therapist or counselor that can support you in reconnecting to your inner child, your spirit and your wholeness.

You are loved.

About the author
Ester Nicholson, renowned vocalist for Bette Midler and Rod Stewart, author, teacher, speaker and former addict uses her own astonishing story as the core of her powerful teaching, book and new Hay House Radio Show: Soul Recovery - 12 Keys to Healing Addiction and 12 Steps for the Rest of Us. Please visit: soulrecovery.org for more information.
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