Dear Dee:

Yes, I believe you are on the right track: recognizing the voices you described in your note to me is being on the right track. You wrote about one of the voices: “in the middle of a project it told me to stop any of my efforts for it’ll never washed away the disappointment I caused to those who loved me.”-

In my first post to you I wrote: what if it doesn’t matter that you disappointed others? Truth is you can not undo what was done; you cannot wash away what was done. So no point trying. The past is out of your control. It is done and cannot be undone.

Regarding the demon concept you mentioned in another note: ” I’ve been feeding the demons inside me… Sometimes it’s even hard to tell the difference between the real me and that demon inside.”-

From all your sharing on this thread, I don’t see a demon in you (literally or figuratively). What I see is fear. I experienced addiction myself, addiction to a certain behavior that got me in trouble, again and again. At the time, when engaged in it… yet again, I felt that I had no control on the matter. I did not experience having an option to do it OR not to do it. It, the addiction, took over. I know with certainty, that a CHOICE was not available to me. But it was not a demon in me that took over. It was fear and desperation. It was fear.

Only through building my ability, tolerance, endurance of distress – without reacting to it impulsively- that I was able to disengage from the addiction. That took time. Also, arranging the physical circumstances of my life in such a way that engaging in the addictive behavior was not possible or extremely inconvenient was necessary, to start with.

Hope you post again. If this is somewhat or potentially helpful to you, then I would like to continue communicating.

anita