Free Craving by Omar Manejwala

quadrant is so essential to dealing with cravings. Remarkably, the very information that you are afraid of sharing because it might push people away is itself the cement that binds friendships and creates the opportunity for true intimacy and connectedness. This is the healthy way that wounds become scars.
    You have another set of truths about you that you are not aware of. Everyone has these. Nobody can see everything about themselves, and without the perspective of others (even if they aren’t always right—and they aren’t), we would certainly be blind. So the things that others know about you that you cannot or do not see in yourself belong in the third quadrant, the “blind” quadrant. These truths are in your blind spot. Finally, there are aspects of yourself that neither you nor those around you have figured out, and these go in quadrant 4, which is called “unknown.”
    Ever since those two psychologists developed this way of looking at what is known and unknown about ourselves, this technique has been used in nearly every addiction treatment setting. The reasons are simple. First, since we all suffer from cognitive bias (as explained in chapter 3 ), the Johari window offers a useful way of seeing that there is much about us that we don’t see but that others do. Because this is true, we may be able to start getting glimpses of the side that we are currently blind to by simply asking others for their insight/perspective and genuinely listening. You can’t trust everything someone else says about you, but if several people whom you trust make observations about you that are consistent, they are worth paying attention to, especially if you disagree with them. In addiction treatment settings, you will often hear this adage:
If one person says you’re a duck, you can safely dismiss him. If another says it, you might want to pay attention. If a third person says you are a duck, better start quacking.
    Actually, ducklings don’t begin quacking until several weeks after birth. They have to grow up a bit first. Exploring and facing what others know about you, and what you may not know about yourself, is an important part of growing up emotionally, and, as I’ve noted before, the fundamental problems of life are never really solved—they are outgrown.
    Of course, your friends and the people you trust will also have a limited ability to offer you their perspective if you are keeping secret or hidden important facts about yourself. Your reasons for keeping secrets might be very good ones, or they could simply be driven by anxiety and fear. Either way, if you can’t tell the people you really trust about these parts of yourself, they won’t be able to help you. Perhaps more important, that degree of secrecy can be a source and a symptom of shame that, as I noted earlier, is toxic and partly responsible for driving cravings. I want to emphasize again that this is not a recommendation to tell everyone your darkest secrets. But if there isn’t one nonjudgmental, trustworthy person in your life whom you can count on and open up to, maybe it’s time to try and form such a relationship. In Twelve Step programs it can be a sponsor, in religions it can be a pastor or other spiritual leader, and for many it’s their counselor—or even their hairdresser. Regardless of who it is, you need to have someone in your life you can trust; someone who will tell you the truth as they see it, even if it hurts your feelings; someone who won’t shame or judge you, won’t criticize or blame you, but will simply offer you their frank, honest appraisal of your situation. When you find such a person (or persons) and feel confident that you can trust them, you’ve got to tell them the truth about yourself. This truth includes your secrets, the dark spots, the stuff you are perhaps most ashamed of, maybe even the stuff you swore you’d never tell another human being. Religions have emphasized the value of confession, and psychologists,