How Alcoholics Cope with Low Self-worth

Addiction is an overpowering attack upon a person’s sense of worth. To protect their self-esteem, alcoholics and addicts unconsciously invoke psychological defences that perpetuate increased dysfunction. The compulsion, obsession, and increased tolerance are destructive; the defences are worse.

Addiction is a profoundly serious illness; recovery from chemical dependency can be equally profound. One of the most significant hurdles in chemical dependency is that the addicts cannot see their condition. In time, you can see it, I can see it, the whole world can see it, but the addict cannot.

The conflict within

To understand the conflict that the alcoholic faces, it is helpful to recognize the distinctions between the inner and outer worlds we all inhabit. Each of us has a private inner world, a psychic world, separate from our intellect. This inner world is where our instincts and conscience reside; what goes on in our inner world is in considerable measure governed by interactions between our instincts, conscience, and the outer world, which contains essential people, our behaviour, and physical reality. Conflicts between our instincts and conscience or our inner world and the external world often result in an erosion of our self-esteem, which is our blueprint and guide to our ideas, feeling, and actions.

To be healthy, we all need to regard ourselves and be regarded by others as worthy. The need for self-worth may very well be one of the most fundamental human needs. When we are in psychic conflict – for example, when our behaviour violates our values or is rejected by persons important to us – our self-esteem is cast in doubt, and we must find some means of resolving this doubt. Wesafeguard our self-esteem by developing coping mechanisms.

Coping strategies

Coping means that we acknowledge the conflict, confront it and modify our behaviour to be more in accord with the values and prohibitions of our conscience or of society. As Daniel Anderson describes in his pamphlet “Psychopathology of Denial”, coping does not base self-worth upon a childlike idealistic image of the perfect self but values the self despite its imperfections.

If we do not cope, we must defend ourselves by unconsciously invoking a psychological mechanism. Rather than facing up to the conflict and attempting to overcome it directly, we evade the threat to our self-esteem. Our sense of self-worth is thus preserved through self-deception.

Using a psychological defence mechanism is not a conscious avoidance of a problem, nor does it have to do with willpower, perseverance, or turning to others for help. Instead, defences are subtle, automatic, and largely unconscious psychological processes.

Generally speaking, the better we feel about ourselves, the less defended we need to be. Nevertheless, defences are necessary. Being without them in a mild crisis would be like being in the rain without an umbrella, and in a severe crisis, like being in a blizzard without proper clothing. Defences can oil the machinery of everyday life, as when we displace anger by kicking a chair instead of our boss. Defences can give us the time out we need to heal, as when we face the death of a loved one and go through the various stages of grief.

Addiction is too strong for coping

Chemically dependent persons are in trouble right from the beginning. Their addiction compels them to behave in ways that conflict with their conscience, which causes erosion of their self-esteem and results in a significant number of negative feelings. Addicts and alcoholics can face their conflicts occasionally. Still, they cannot effectively resolve them and thus preserve their self-esteem by coping for the very simple reason that they are compelled to use chemicals and, therefore, ever repeat behaviour that conflicts with their inner world.

The power of their addiction is beyond coping.  Because of an ever-increasing store of negative feelings, chemically dependent persons must protect themselves repeatedly and rigidly. Such unhealthy use of defences causes a decrease in emotional health and an ever-increasing need for defences. As the addiction progresses, the defences become stronger. They say they give little thought to alcohol or drugs when, in fact, they thought of little else; or insisting they had a wife problem when they are the problem. They become arrogant and angry at those who offer to help.

Hitting bottom

All the crazy, irrational, insane thoughts, behaviour, and attitudes displayed by alcoholics and addicts reflect the underlying forces of addiction and their desperate use of defences to reduce the stresses associated with their reduced sense of worthiness. In time, they suffer such a marked loss of self-esteem that they come to believe, on some level, that they are less than human. Along the way, they suffer drastically increased levels of hostility, until at last, they become volcanoes, festering with resentments, steaming at the slightest provocation, dripping with cynicism and sarcasm, and set to blow at any moment.

Eventually, they become so depressed that death seems attractive; then, they scream out in defiance of God while they pray for help, feeling hopeless, helpless, and alone amid their families. The fact that the addict uses chemicals more heavily in the face of all this is not surprising. The fact that so many recover is a miracle.

Give yourself a chance to be a miracle!

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