Acquisition Addiction

Last December, I wrote an article for the MMWI Blog entitled Filling The Bottomless Pit of 'Not Enough' about how sexual abuse survivors end up feeling like they are never 'good enough' and how all the struggles they go through in their lives in an effort to fill in that 'empty hole' in their hearts often feel like they are for naught. This week's article, written after an almost two-month hiatus, discusses some further aspects of that primal fear and how I, as a sexual abuse survivor, have tried, with a variety of different paths, to overcome those wrenching anxieties.

When I was wracked by deep insecurities as a younger man, I turned to substance abuse to 'kill' the emotional pain that resulted from being a survivor of physical beatings and torture, and from being sexually molested by both of my parents. Like many sexual abuse survivors, I spent much of my life, at least until I was 40, in a state of dissociation, sufficiently coping with my daily life such that I 'functioned adequately' in professional employment, but felt emotionally conflicted about my gender, or at least conflicted about the gender that I both felt that I really was and/or wanted to be. More on that in a later article.

My point is that substance abuse became my 'addiction of choice' until I was 32. Shortly before I 'hit bottom' and 'cleaned up', I had started mental health work and group therapy. I have had, in the course of my life, the wonderful 'blessing' of having many really skilled and caring mental health therapists, who have been very thoughtful guides. (When one first enters therapy there is, often, the mistaken belief that the therapist will 'cure' the patient; but, in fact, the best therapists are guides who encourage the client to find the pathway that is most effective for themselves.) After going through a very stressful nervous breakthrough that lasted about 7 years, with the assistance of my guides I managed to come out into the light of greater clarity on the other side.

However, like many sexual abuse survivors, I merely traded one very destructive addiction (substance abuse) for a less destructive one (acquisition of 'stuff', or 'collecting'). [Addictions are used, often unconsciously, by individuals to avoid feeling their personal emotional pain.] So while my new addiction was healthier than the life I had lived before, it wasn't healthy. In the process, I acquired a lot of nice 'stuff', in addition to several graduate degrees, but the primary point here was that each new item (or bit of academic education) failed to 'fill that empty space in my heart' and failed to make me feel any more safe.

Now, I should note that acquisition addiction isn't particular solely to sexual and/or physical abuse survivors. Many people in American society have this addiction, and the credit industry in our country does everything it can think of to deepen the society's addiction to the acquisition of 'more stuff'. Two excellent books (and associated documentaries) on the subject have been written in recent years. Affluenza is a tongue-in-cheek documentary about the addiction to buying far more 'stuff' than anyone really needs, and in the process destroying the ecosystem with our 'American Way of Life'; and Maxed Out discusses, in great detail (with its own humorous explanation of quite serious subjects) how the credit industry has convinced Americans that 'debt is good', and in the process has destroyed many people's lives by offering them far-too-easy-to-use credit cards. Further, the banks and credit industry have encouraged them to use additional loans and credit cards to pay off the previous ones, driving people into often endless rounds of debt that have, eventually, lead some people into poverty and/or spending the rest of their lives paying on credit bills which only get worse over time.

Hence, many people in America suffer from acquisition addiction, and if the credit industry, mortgage and loan brokers, check cashing services, and banks have their way, most of the population will end up like putty in their hands, to be manipulated and abused by this most pernicious addiction. For sexual and physical abuse survivors, though, the addiction is magnified. They are enticed by the offer of images of security on the outside (which turn out to be anything but security) and wracked by profound emotional insecurities on the inside, in their heart and souls. We tend to use 'stuff' that we purchase to wall the world off, to create a sense of security by purchasing yet another item that we hope will fill that empty hole in our hearts. But the 'fix' of purchasing is only temporary -- and in fact extremely transitory -- to be replaced in short order by a deepening sense of emptiness and a further need for another 'purchasing fix'.

Abraham Maslow talked about this sense of transitory fulfillment in his Hierarchy of Needs study: that giving an employee a higher salary only temporarily 'satisfied' him, but as soon as his life 'acclimated' to the greater income, his dissatisfaction returned. What employees needed was to be psychologically, rather than materially, valued. Over time, that kind of real, emotionally healthy, and sustained difference in their lives tends to lead to a far greater degree of personal satisfaction.

The media would have us believe -- and much of the populace drinks this elixir with tremendous enthusiasm -- that by having the 'right' kind of vehicle, or using the 'right' kind of deodorant, or purchasing a house which has more space than you'll ever need in your lifetime, or filling our lives with this or that purchase, the individual will be more satisfied and content. But, in fact, the results are just the opposite: the more we acquire, the more we want to purchase and accumulate. It becomes a vicious never-ending cycle -- and it is that 'cycle of consumer spending' upon which our economy, at least since the 1880's, has depended for growth and prosperity. [Well, at least prosperity for some, and poverty for many others.]

For a sexual abuse survivor, who was 'taught' [by the abuse] that his or her primary value was sexual, gaining a sense of personal value is far more stable and leads to a greater degree of contentment than all the 'stuff' which the culture around us tries to convince us to purchase. What I have learned over the years of mental health therapy and working on my spiritual quest was that if I couldn't figure out how to love and care for myself, then all the 'stuff' from the outside wasn't going to make me feel any more safe or content. And it isn't going to 'substitute' for my need to learn how to manifest a personal sense of gender comfort.


I plan to write more about this subject in the future, as this is a very deep and pernicious addiction that, lacking care and concern, could lead me into penury, and a total lack of contentment and emotional and physical safety.