“Recovery is about living more in truth than in lies. It’s about facing reality and growing up.”

Pia Mellody

Over 2,500 years ago, in Athens, Greece, playwrights like Sophocles introduced a form of theatrical art known as tragedy. Greek tragedies typically dealt with weighty themes such as betrayal, loss, pride, jealousy, rage, love, courage, honor, life, and death. Often these dance dramas also explored man’s relationship with God and the existential challenges that are part of the human condition. Actors wore elaborate masks with exaggerated facial expressions so that their character’s role, emotional state, and intentions might be accessible to the audience. Commonly, one actor played several characters during the course of the theatrical performance, changing masks for each character and sometimes for each scene. Bringing this into the context of addiction treatment can help us with facing the truth about ourselves.

Greek Tragedy Is a Metaphor for Trauma and Addiction Recovery

Fast-forward to our lives today, and the Greek tragedy might be a metaphor for some key trauma and addiction recovery aspects. Like actors in a play, we often react to life’s existential challenges according to a script. This script can influence how we move about in the stage of life; it can spell out our roles in relation to others, how we think and feel, and how we act in various situations. From the first moments of conception and throughout development, through ongoing interactions between ourselves, others, and the environment, this narrative is written into our psychobiology. It becomes an implicit script in the mind-body system.

Moreover, similar to actors in Greek tragedies, our implicit scripts encourage the use of specific masks or personas. In many ways, this is entirely natural and necessary for a life in which we play many different roles. For most of us, the scenes on life’s stage constantly change. We may transition from a family mask to a work mask, then to a friend mask, and back to a family mask, all within the course of one day. However, unlike the actors in a Greek tragedy, these personas are not distinct, separate people. They are aspects of a single being, linked together by the person behind the masks.

For some of us, our life resembles a Greek tragedy, with painful experiences of betrayal, loss, abandonment, and emotional trauma. These experiences are written into the mind-body script that tacitly flavors our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Some of these life events can be so traumatic that we don’t even want to look at the script – we would rather not face the reality of our situation. It’s just too painful. Yet, our bodies and minds still play the part, even when we ignore the script; something happens in this stage of life, and we react according to our past experiences, maybe without even being aware of the script.

Also, when there are painful and traumatic aspects to our life scripts, wearing a mask can become an adaptive way to hide our vulnerabilities from ourselves and others. The various personas create a sense of security and a safe distance from the troubling realities deep behind the masks. While this strategy is protective, over time, it can further obscure the truth of our scripts and disconnect us from what drives our thoughts, feelings, and actions. In fact, under these circumstances, we risk becoming over-identified with the persona, forgetting who is looking through the masks. We become disconnected from the truth of who we are and cannot see the truth of others around us.

Moreover, sometimes these protective measures fall short, and the truth of our scripts threatens to bubble up into awareness. In those moments, the pain, fear, and shame can seem overwhelming, leading to desperate attempts to push it all back out of awareness. Compulsive behaviors with drugs, sex addiction, relationships, and food will temporarily relieve the vulnerability and pain of our tragedy scripts. While addiction can force the rawness of our reality out of awareness for a while, it comes with a whole host of complicated problems. In time, addictions only add painful prose to the narrative of our mind-body scripts and further disconnect us from our truth and the people we love.

Codependency and Addiction

For several decades, Pia Mellody has encouraged people to remember and rediscover the truth behind the masks and to face reality without addiction. For her, what started as a journey to understand the disease of codependence so that she could better help her clients turned into an elegant, comprehensive model for addiction recovery. This model continues to be used at The Meadows, a world-renowned treatment center and has been a source of healing for many patients and practitioners.

You might ask, “How is codependence related to addiction?” Pia Mellody kept asking herself this same question when she repeatedly encountered the coexistence of these two conditions in her clients. She and her colleagues understood that a history of childhood abuse and neglect frequently links codependence and addiction. These traumatic experiences can be overt (i.e., big “T”), as in the case of physical or sexual abuse, or covert (i.e., little “t”), as in the case of emotional abuse, abandonment, enmeshment, and loss/death. Relational trauma often results in deep wounds and painful paragraphs in our mind-body scripts, which can lead to developmental immaturity and negative consequences for adult functioning.

More specifically, Pia Mellody found that people usually entered recovery treatment because of addiction, mental/emotional symptoms, resentment/anger, negative control of others, intimacy/relationship problems, and impoverished spirituality. However, these issues usually become “problems” because other people tell the person in treatment that they are indeed problematic! Yet, given an opportunity to step back from the tornado of unmanageability created by these issues, most people in treatment can admit that help is necessary.

Pia Mellody understood that these presenting problems were only “secondary symptoms” of more profound, core developmental issues frequently related to childhood trauma. She surmised that relational trauma causes an individual to become polarized along five core dimensions of development:

• Self-esteem (less than versus better than)
• Boundaries (too vulnerable versus invulnerable)
• Reality issues (bad/rebellious versus good or perfect)
• Dependency (too dependent versus needless or wantless)
• Moderation (too little versus too much self-control)

Furthermore, she discovered that when people can address their childhood wounds and identify their core issues of developmental immaturity, they discover a measure of reprieve from the secondary symptoms of addiction and relationship turmoil.

Pia Mellody has consistently taught that the recovery process requires that we honestly and courageously face the truth of our past, both what has been done to us and what we have done to others. It is no coincidence that she titled her now-classic book “Facing Codependence.”

As suggested by Pia Mellody, “The recovery process is about living more in truth than lies.” Yet, paradoxically, the painful truth of our mind-body scripts drove us to hide behind the masks and disconnect through addictive processes. The prospect of facing the reality of our condition doesn’t appeal to many people. That’s why the bottom can be so low.

Uncovering the Masks

Here are some suggestions for facing the truth of our scripts and reacquainting ourselves with the person behind the masks.

1. Develop a Willingness to Surrender

In recovery, a willing heart can take us a long way. The path of recovery has many twists and turns, and very often, we don’t know what is around the next bend. Remembering the powerless and unmanageability of our past can invite the willingness we need to surrender to the recovery process.

2. Be Willing to Accept Help

Recovery isn’t a solitary affair. Often we need the help of a director or producer when facing the truth of our tragedy scripts. Guidance and support can be found in friends and family, recovery communities, professional treatment, and something or someone wiser and vaster than us (i.e., nature, spirit, higher power, etc.).

3. Cultivate Self-Compassion and Patience

Under the gentle, soft stage lights of self-directed compassion and patience, we can begin to peer into the darkness behind the masks and face the perilous paragraphs of our mind-body scripts. Rugged honesty isn’t the same as self-defeating judgment and blame. Let us be kind to ourselves.

4. Some Discomfort Is Inevitable

As we learn to accept and be with the uncomfortable sensations, emotions, and thoughts associated with our implicit scripts, we find that these mind-body states are generally transitory, like storm clouds moving across a desert landscape. Gradually, our recovery can become imbued with a quiet confidence that we can weather life’s storms.

5. Recovery Is About Growing Up

If trauma leads to developmental immaturity, as suggested by Pia Mellody, then recovery must be a maturational process. Don’t fight it – let go of old ways and exercise a willingness to embrace new, more mature ways of living.

6. Recovery Involves Grieving

As we more fully inhabit and live from our truth, we can expect to grieve what we didn’t ever receive, what we lost along the way, and the gradual disillusion of the fantasies we created about ourselves and others.

7. It’s a Process, Not a Destination

It’s tempting to think of recovery as a goal or a to-do item to be checked off. But, in recovery, no one ever truly arrives… each step on the path brings fresh challenges and opportunities.

“Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.”

Søren Kierkegaard

Trauma and Addiction Recovery

Perspectives and practices like these support a recovery process where we begin to live more in truth than in lies. The traumatic narratives of our tragedy scripts are not necessarily erased, but they can be rewritten and reinterpreted on the stage of life. Gradually, we become less invested in and identify with our various masks – we can embody the person looking through the masks more comfortably.

In many ways, the recovery process is about becoming more conscious—more connected with the truth of ourselves and others. Within this field of heightened consciousness, there begins to be enough space and security for the emergence of an authentic self.

Generally, this kind of conscious presence brings us into contact with our humanity, our foibles, shortcomings, character defects, and our deepest wounds. However, at the same time, we can make intimate contact with our immutable and unconditional worth.

In that authentic space of conscious awareness, we return home to ourselves, and if only for a moment, we experience our wholeness. When we’re at home with ourselves, we are better able to make meaningful connections with other humans, all creatures, nature, and a higher power. This is the essence of spiritual practice. Ultimately, this is the spiritual path. May we all find and inhabit this path of recovery by facing the truth behind our masks.