 how we heal from the long-term internalized effects of trauma and abandonment. So, if, for example, if in my childhood, God forbid, if I was incestuous, if I was repeatedly beaten, if I was painfully abandoned, I was placed in this really unbearable situation, that the very persons on whom I depended to survive were the very people who were destroying me. And therefore, in order to survive it, I had to somehow disconnect from the truth of what was that, because I couldn't bear it. And so it's because I disconnected from the truth that I live. And that might have been true when you were a child, but the trouble is they get stuck in it. So, because I disconnect from the truth of my life, I live. If when I was being incestuous or beaten, I was passive, because if I would have spoke up, it would have been worse. I can say to myself, because I was passive, I lived. But then the person says, no, because I am passive, I live. Because I'm afraid to step forward on my own behalf. I offer external compliance so as not to be attacked or abandoned. And this survival strategy formed in trauma. I'm addicted, I'm addictedly bonded to it. Because even though I can tell, I find it embarrassing, I find it difficult. When I try to break it, I have strong physiological reactions. And it preempts my ability to step forward. Can I be vulnerable and safe at the same time? Or because I got angry, I live. No, because I am angry. A lot of people in prison are stuck in that one because they acted out. Because I use food in a certain way or I use sexuality in a certain way. Or when I got older, I compensated for my inadequacies by achieving things. Like image over identity, I live. No, because I choose image over identity. And I can't stop. The bankruptcy is, I can see it's not working. So one reaches out for help. At a certain level, one reaches out for help, concretizing a person who's there for us. In whose presence we can openly be this way. Who sees through it and sees in us something of value we can't yet see. Little by little, we can see it. But when we turn to faith as a resource, this is the essence of our faith. Is the essence of our faith. Is that in our faith, we could say, and for us as Christians and Jesus. We can say that the deepest question of my life, really, is not what my father thought of me. Or my mother thought of me. Or what my husband or wife thinks of me. Or what my pastor, my boss thinks of me. Really, the deepest issue isn't what I think of me. But can I join God in knowing who God knows me to be? Can I join God in seeing who God sees me to be when God sees me? This is salvation. And in order to do this, in order to do this, I have to let go of my own present way of seeing things. And I discover I can't. We're afraid to lose the control that we think that we have over the life that we think that we're living. And we're addicted to what binds us. So out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord. This is the cry for salvation. Can I walk on water? Is this possible that I could place my life over into your hands? And so then the mystery of the cross, then, there's this mystery of this being liberated from this deep addiction to the illusion of an ultimately isolated self that have to make it on its own. To realize them in the presence of the love that loves us and takes us to itself. And through that inner process of discipleship, whatever we want to call it, we can come to apothea to this true sobriety, this deep sobriety, the peace of God that surpasses understanding. And so this would be one way, then, of understanding the spiritual dimensions of the process of being freed from addiction, from self-destructive internalized patterns to open us up to this relationship.