Dancing In The Dark

"We are as sick as our secrets," the adage goes. As gamblers, we protect our secrets with lies, double lives and a lack of integrity (integrity is defined as the person you see on the outside is the same as the person on the inside). Our secrets are part of our dark side, those elements within us that we disown and which we are ashamed.

As long as I could not integrate my gambling into who I was and remained in denial, I was destined to keep gambling. Once I brought my gambling into the light, then I was able to deal with it, integrate it and saw what it represented to me.

For me, gambling was an escape and a drug that anesthetized me from having to deal with day-to-day stress. It allowed me not to have to deal with feelings of inadequacy, low self esteem, and invalidation.

Once I started to admit and acknowledge my compulsive gambling, I was able to see what feelings and other elements of my dark side I was repressing. It was my first step towards mending my fractured self and becoming whole again spiritually and psychologically.

The process led me to discover what psychologists and shamans have said for generations, that it is in the dark and disowned parts of ourself that we find the paths to our salvation (integration of selves). For most of my life, I suffered from a low self esteem and a fuzzy identity of who I was. I compensated by creating a false self, one that sought affirmation through people pleasing and fixing other's problems. Underneath the false self, lay an insecure identity riddled with thought processes that always compared itself to others. Insecure with who I was, I abandoned myself to seek the approval of others by morphing into what they wanted. Psychologically, this takes a huge toll as I was easily blown about by the uncertainties of life. I sought to control others around me in an attempt to feel secure. In most circumstances, unless I was playing the role of rescuer, I never felt I measured up.

It was when I quit gambling that I began to "feel' my feelings again, however uncomfortable. I decided to take control of my life and no one else's. I challenged my self with this: If life is a play (existentially speaking) than who do I want to be, the lead or the supporting role? I also realized this immutable truth: We born and die with ourselves, then why shouldn't we live with ourselves?

Gambling covered up my sense of inadequacy. Uncovering my gambling gave rise to the phoenix.