A leading African descent voice in mindfulness for addiction and international Keynote speaker on Addiction Trauma, Vimalasara is also a Founding Compassionate Inquiry® Facilitator and an award winning author. They co-founded 8 Step Recovery, Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery Train the Trainer and Freedom Together, a global Mindfulness Teacher Training program designed BY and FOR Black, Indigenous and People of Color. Vimalasara is a senior teacher in the Triratna Buddhist Community.
This post is a short edited excerpt of Vimalasara’s personal experiences with triggers and addiction, and their work with others. Listen to their full interview on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast.
One day, as I was waiting for the train to take me home, I could hear in my mind, “I hate myself. I hate myself, I hate myself.” I could turn the volume down on this voice, but I couldn’t turn it off. “Why isn’t this voice going away?” I began to investigate and realized what I hated was the negative narrative, the voice in my head that said, “I’m no good, I’m useless, there’s something wrong with me.”
This went on for years, until one day it occurred to me: “There is no self to hate!” This insight gave me the freedom to look into myself and see what was really happening, but it didn’t end there. Over time I noticed that the old, “I hate myself” refrain arose only when I was experiencing vulnerability, an emotion so yucky, so messy, so mucky to stay with, I would turn to the familiar, “I hate myself”, to avoid it.
Even now, that refrain arises occasionally, letting me know vulnerability is present. But now I respond differently. It’s not, “I’m a loser” but, “Oh, vulnerability is here.” I’ll take a breath, pause, pay attention to what I’m feeling in my body, and give myself some love. I’ll take care of the vulnerable 6-year old or 20-year old that has arisen. That’s how that voice, that refrain, that negative narrative, is silenced.
In my early 20s, I was diagnosed as an extreme anorexic and bulimic. I really struggled with disordered eating. Anybody who’s had that experience knows it’s a hell-realm. I remember letting go of my gross addictions, letting go of the food, letting go of recreational stimulants, letting go of alcohol. Then one day, a realization hit me like a thunderbolt. “Oh my God. My biggest addiction is my stinking thinking.” So I had to start the letting go process all over again. The easiest part was to let go of all the adaptive behaviors that covered up my innocence, my playfulness, my love of life, and my freedom.
What I’ve learned through my work in addiction, is that when we let go of the adaptive behavior(s) or substance(s), we often come face to face with the depression, the thoughts, and the realization that the role of these behavior(s) or substance(s) was to mute the thoughts and stories that demonized us. A big part of this work is to not demonize them, because they protected us, kept us safe, isolated us for specific reasons.
So when I came across Epstein’s book Thoughts without a Thinker, I reframed that as, Thoughts Without a Stinker. Because to gain our freedom, we have to have thoughts without a thinker. We have to have thoughts without a stinker. Of course our thoughts continue to arise and cease. That’s just what thoughts do. And what we humans often do is identify with a thought when it arises, attach to it, think, “This thought is me, mine, I.” But it’s not. In the words of the Buddha, “This is not me. This is not mine. This is not I.” So instead, we begin to allow the thoughts to flow; to arise and cease, arise and cease. This is a truly beneficial practice because so many things can trigger us. We can all be activated, so let’s spend a moment looking at the process of triggering.
Our bodies have six sense doors. The mind is one. Whenever it connects with an external or internal stimulant—there’s contact. When I was in that hell-realm of disordered eating, if I walked past a trigger like a bakery and my nose contacted the smell and my eyes contacted the baked goods… Upon contact sensation, hedonic tone would arise in my body .
In the mindfulness world, there are only three feelings, unpleasant, pleasant and neutral, which to me is so liberating. Just three feelings. Often we’ll say, “I feel abandoned. I feel unloved. I feel they don’t like me.” These are stories. Feelings are hedonic tones in the body. Walking past the bakery, when my nose was activated by the smell, a pleasant sensation arose in my body. I might salivate just like Pavlov’s dog, get itchy palms or an itchy groin and experience excitement. Along with that pleasant emotion of excitement, facilitated thoughts arose. “I deserve that cake. I need something to eat.” Through those thoughts, an emotion of excitement arose, and before I knew it, I was in the bakery buying cakes. I had started eating before I’d even left the bakery, and I had found somewhere to purge in the street. It can happen that quickly. That’s why, as we know in Compassionate Inquiry®, it’s so important to come back to the body.
Gabor, our teacher, our friend, says, “The trigger is such a small mechanism, and yet it unleashes so much.” And that small mechanism is the connection between one of our senses and an external or internal stimulant. A thought can be an internal stimulant. So when one of our sense doors opens and connects, we can’t avoid feeling. It’s impossible. That’s the trigger. We’re always being triggered, we’re always being activated. And we can see the emptiness in the trigger. It doesn’t mean anything. We can see the emptiness in the hedonic tone in the body. It’s just a sensation arising, nothing more. We don’t have to identify what it’s for. We can see the emptiness in thought. We don’t have to identify it or go into the narrative that gets us acting out these old stories. – – –
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, healing, transformation, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the interview, and if you like it, please subscribe, rate, review and share it.
