The broken part is not the problem

That's what creates the pain. The confusion is that we think that the broken self or the trauma or the unresolved grief or the addictive behavior is the cause of the pain or is the pain. But that's actually not the case. It's mostly only painful because we've decided to split that piece off from everything else.

That's what creates the pain. And then the behavior is just our attempt to deal with it or work with it or control it in some way. But the behavior is not really painful if you don't split from the whole. It's only painful because it's an attempt to cover up the splitting, the pain that's from the splitting.

And then we don't realize we've split. So then we assume that the behavior is directly related to the pain as if it's causing the pain. But actually, the behavior is caused by the pain. So we split from the whole, then have the pain, then behave, then the addictive behavior.

And then the way our mind sees it is backwards. So our mind goes, oh, look at, I did this bad behavior, and look how much I'm suffering. It must be because I keep doing these addictive behaviors, as opposed to, no, it's probably not like that.