Why Substance Use Feels So Hard to Break—And How Your Childhood Might Be Connected
Most people don’t realize this, but the way you learned to deal with emotions as a child often becomes the blueprint for how you cope as an adult. If you were taught that your feelings were inconvenient, to minimize them, or happiness/contentment was the only accepted emotion in your home, it makes sense that substances later stepped in to help you handle what you were never taught to navigate. And guess what—you're not the only one.
Many adults were never taught how to understand their emotions, let alone cope with them. Not because their parents didn’t care, but because their parents didn’t know how to model that level of emotional support either. Avoidance becomes a learned, generational pattern without anyone meaning for it to happen.
When Emotions Weren’t Safe to Express
If you grew up hearing things like:
“You’re okay, don’t cry.”
“Just forget about it.”
“Be happy.”
“It’s not worth getting upset over.”
…your nervous system may have learned early on:
My emotions are too much.
I need to hide or hurry through discomfort.
Hard feelings should disappear quickly.
So as you grew older, when sadness, stress, anxiety, shame, or loneliness surfaced, your body naturally reached for something that brought fast relief. People often use substances to fill that role—not because you’re weak, but because that’s the only strategy that seemed to do the job.
Why Substances Become the Default
Substances do something very predictable: they interrupt difficult feelings.
Not permanently.
Not helpfully.
But temporarily.
If you were never shown how to move through discomfort, your brain learned that numbing is quicker and less emotionally painful than feeling. Of course you reached for something that made the moment easier. That’s a survival strategy, not a moral failing.
But emotional relief through substance use never lasts. Eventually, the original feeling returns, often with even more intensity, leaving you stuck in a loop that feels impossible to climb out of.
Reparenting Yourself: Learning What You Missed the First Time
A big part of recovery—and the work we do together—is helping you build the emotional skills you didn’t get growing up. Not in a judgmental way, and not by digging into shame, but by creating new pathways for handling the moments that feel too big.
Here are skills we often focus on:
1. Naming What You Feel
Many people were never taught how to identify emotions. When you can name what’s happening internally, the urge to escape softens.
2. Slowing Down Before Reacting
Instead of jumping straight into numbing, we explore what triggered the feeling and what story your mind is telling you. That pause creates options.
3. Validating Your Own Experience
You learn to tell yourself, “It makes sense that I feel this way.”
Validation is grounding, and it reduces the intensity of the moment.
4. Building Distress Tolerance
We work on gradually increasing your capacity to sit with discomfort without running from it. You don’t have to love the feeling—you just learn that you can survive it.
5. Practicing Healthy Coping Strategies
Grounding tools, breathwork, sensory regulation, and emotional processing techniques become alternatives to reaching for a substance. They don’t erase the emotion—they help you move through it.
6. Developing Compassion for the Parts of You That Have Been Coping the Only Way They Knew How
Substance use helped you get through moments you didn’t have skills for. That part of you deserves understanding, not blame.
You’re Not Behind—You’re Just Learning Skills No One Taught You
The truth is, many adults today are learning emotional regulation for the very first time. If avoidance was modeled for you, you learned exactly what anyone in your position would have learned.
And now, you get the chance to do it differently.
Recovery isn’t about perfection.
It’s about understanding yourself, building new tools, and slowly rewriting what your brain does when life gets hard.
You don’t have to rush the process.
You don’t have to figure it out alone.
And nothing about your story is something to be ashamed of.
If This Resonates With You…
If any part of this feels familiar—if you recognize these patterns in yourself, or you’re tired of using substances to cope with feelings you never learned how to manage—support is available.
As a Certified Drug & Alcohol Counselor, I help teens and adults:
understand their emotional patterns
build new coping skills
reduce or stop substance use
reconnect with themselves with compassion instead of shame
You deserve support that feels safe, hopeful, and grounded.
If you're ready to begin, you can schedule a session, reach out with questions, or simply start the conversation. Healing begins with one small step—and you get to take it at your pace.
Sincerely,
Morgan Brown, CADC-1