Binge drinking

[Cygnus]

I just try to take care of myself as best I can by doing therapy and all my personal healing work.  When I drink I can go too far also, but I don't think it's uncommon or bad, in IFS they call it the firefighter.  It's natural for the brain to try to block out the pain. The brain is doing what it's supposed to. Instead of focusing on the drinking, which is a symptom, I focus on the pain underneath.  That takes time and dedication, caring for myself daily because I'm not a bad person, I have developmental trauma that affects my adult life. 

[PeTe]

Social "demands" can be a bit of a predicament. If you're able to stop at one drink, that sounds like a great way of dealing with it, Estella.

Cygnus, I can identify with drinking to dull pain. It feels like caring for myself, but I know it's not. Drinking might be easy in the short run, but I realise it would be very hard in the long run 

[Cygnus]

There are things the brain does naturally that can cause us harm in the long run.  Dulling pain with drugs and alcohol.. dissociating in all it's forms is natural function of the brain and not a flaw to be ashamed of.  The brain is doing what evolution made it to do, it's about survival.  But if we want to get better we have to come out of the dissociation and heal the trauma underneath.  We were meant to be in communities that naturally evolved ways of releasing trauma and healing the person through connection with others, but in modern times we don't have that and so get stuck.  We have new ways now of healing though, with modern therapy methods. I do EMDR with a therapist.