Mercedes Coffman

And so it doesn't allow for flexibility to be all that we are.

Sometimes I don't want to listen.

Sometimes I want to be heard.

And so I just think that we need to give people more of that space to be all of who they are instead of just relying on them to remain the same person that we may or may not have benefited from.

I love that.

I do want to read that wherever we could find it.

But I agree.

I mean, even when I worked in a recovery center, a treatment center, it would go as far as the extremes of parents bringing their addicted child to treatment.

And they've been used to this child relapsing for years.

And they've always been the identified patient.

Now this...

adult is in treatment, recovering, goes back home, doesn't drink anymore, and they don't like that person who's sober.

They're used to him when he was drunk.

And so what do they do at the first party they have?

They hand him a drink.

And they're the people who make him relapse because they're used to the old person, kind of like you said, they give you the old costume back because it's easier for you to be who you once were to us because our identity is built on that identity.

And so I just think that we're not flexible enough in our minds, in our identities, in our feelings, in order to really kind of sustain things that will give us the safety and the space to be who we truly are.

Because they're the most addicting.

And the reason why is not because they're so great.

It's because the wrong people oftentimes are the emotionally unavailable people, the people who do not have the capacity to sustain something substantial with you.