What Causes Addictions

In this article I’d like to discuss the causes of various addictions: drug addiction, alcoholism, smoking, workaholism, and so on.

In our society this is quite normal to have negative attitude towards people suffering from any kinds of addictions. This is understandable, because addictions have many negative side effects affecting the society, the family. However this is only the surface of the situation. There are already plenty of researches on the topic of addictions. The author of the family constellations method, Bert Hellinger, while working with many clients, has found that any kind of addiction, especially among men, very often has to do with the lack of connection to the father. In other words, it is the lack of father’s masculine energy that causes addictions. And people, especially man, try to find this energy in drugs, alcohol, smoking, work, and so on.

For men relationship with the father is very important. For women it is, of course, also very important, however in a form of addiction luck of father’s energy usually shows in men.

Connection with the father might be interrupted after the parents’ divorce, but not any divorce is this harmful. The strongest damage happens in case of such divorce, where the mother does not respect the child’s father and tells negative things about him. If the people got divorced respecting each other, if the mother speaks about the father of the child in a nice and respectful way, and, which is very important, allows the child to love the father, if she does not stand on the child’s way to the father, this is much easier for the the child to go trough the trauma. Also, this is helps the child a lot if the father of the child tells that he is always his father, no matter what. The connection to the father can be interrupted even when the parents live together. And very often this is the mother, who is standing between the child and the father. This may occur when the mother carries her own problems or problems with her husband on the child. Another cause can be a traumatic event in the life of the father (for example, in his childhood) or in the previous generations (the so-called “flow of love” could be interrupted even before the birth of the father).

What can you do for yourself if you have an addiction? If the father is not around, you can try to find a picture of him and keep it somewhere close. If you do not have a picture then, according to Bert Hellinger, if you, for example, drink wine, then drink it imagining you drink it with your father. There are many ways of how to restore the movement to the father. And, of course, you need to learn taking your father the way he is, with gratitude for the life he gave to you. Yes, it may be the work not of just one day, this might take time.

Family constellations by Bert Hellinger – this is the way that helped to discover the underlying cause of addictions, and this is the work that helps to restore the inner movement to the father.

Elena Nesterenko, Family & Systemic Constellations Practical Workshops
www.constellations.work/workshops/ | (647) 367-6073