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Almost everyone in early addiction recovery wants to forget their addiction entirely—to erase it, outrun it, or bury it somewhere in the past. But what if true healing requires something different: not disowning the addiction, but understanding the story behind it?

People in addiction recovery who focus primarily on stopping a behavior may unintentionally miss the deeper healing that recovery can offer. Addiction recovery is more than behavioral modification; it’s also about understanding how the addictive behaviors started and continued despite numerous attempts to stop.

It’s often a confluence of family, cultural, and societal factors impacting healthy attachments and emotional intimacy that leaves someone more prone to addiction.

As a therapist specializing in Asian shame and addictions, it’s disappointing when I hear clients disowning their addiction. When they disown their addiction, they are, in essence, disowning a part of themselves. Their addiction story is part of their life, and while it may have led to extremely destructive consequences, it should never be a story that is banished from their life. This is akin to ripping a significant chapter out of a book.

It makes sense, though. Some clients have been so negatively impacted by their addiction that they want nothing to do with it ever again. They want to stop their addiction, move on, and leave it in the proverbial rearview mirror. This is compounded because clients may have partners, friends, and other well-meaning support people who are exasperated by the addiction and may also add to the hatred of the addiction.

I take a different approach and try to have them reframe the addiction as an honored guest who is no longer in control of the steering wheel of their lives but is now an honored passenger in the backseat. Why is a stance of curiosity, empathy, and compassion toward the addiction important? I borrow the IFS (Internal Family Systems) mantra of “no bad parts” to explain this. While an addiction can have “bad” consequences, at its heart the addiction has a positive intention or protective function meant to help stabilize the system—no matter how extreme or damaging the addiction can be.

Understanding and embracing the positive intention of the compulsive or addictive behavior is when true healing can occur. When people finally learn that the addiction was a means to help the system deal with past and/or current hurts, burdens, or adversity, they allow the addiction to possibly relax, as the addiction feels heard for the first time. Many people in recovery experience a surprising shift when they realize their addiction was not trying to destroy them but was instead trying—however imperfectly—to protect them. Further healing then allows the addiction to be viewed with dignity, honor, and remembrance rather than with scorn, shame, and contempt.

With this lens, the addiction isn’t viewed as a hated entity that needs to be discarded and disowned. Instead, the person in recovery can be loving toward all parts of themselves, thus holding sacred the story behind their addiction rather than abandoning it.

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