This is a month of milestones. Milestones of recovery and milestones of guilt. How do I recognize them both?
purity
Journal Through Recovery Entry 38: So I Practice?
Counseling is beneficial to me. Ok, that is kind of an obvious statement. Shocking, right?? Actually, to me it isn’t so obvious. (Sorry, counselor!) I am seeing counseling now for what it is meant to be, a component of my recovery. A very important one.
Each time in my 12 step meeting, we read a definition of our addiction called “Our Problem.” At the end it states what we must do to overcome our problem. “We must attend and support recovery meetings, share with and listen to others, continue to work the 12 Steps, gratefully serve the fellowship, and reach out to others who still struggle.” There is one addition for me…counseling. I can give you an example. A very important one for me.
My counselor recently asked me to do an exercise. He asked me to start listening to my wife. I told him I do that. A lot. Evidently that wasn’t enough. So he gave me an exercise to try with her. He told me to ask her about her day. And then just shut up and listen. For 15 minutes. Without saying a word. Just see how that feels and listen to her. Ok, I can do that. That’s easy because I do that all the time. I don’t interrupt, I always listen to her about what is going on with her.
So I got home. We fixed dinner, took care of the kids, took a walk around the lake with dog, cleaned up around the house, and then finally settled in for the night. All was quiet. I asked about her day. And I shut up and listened. Only, I discovered something. I wasn’t good at it. I had to mentally stop myself from interrupting every couple of minutes. I was really surprised by how much I would have normally interjected, given her advice, told her how to handle a situation. I also discovered something else that was the most important. I heard so much more. Wow, did I miss a lot usually. She shared things that I normally would have missed. All because I listened.
This seemed like an interesting exercise, another way to connect with my spouse. Just a good practice to put in place to deepen intimacy with my wife. To put her needs above mine. Until something interesting happened to connect the dots for me. I told you, I need extra parts in my recovery because many times I miss important truths. This was one of those times.
I was having breakfast with a brother in recovery. He talked about submitting. He was mentioning how in Step 3 we turn our lives and our will over to the care of God. How submitting his will to his wife was practice for submitting to God. That made it click for me. Listening was the same way. Actually marriage is the same way.
I have missed so much in my marriage. Such important truths and learnings. Marriage by design is practice. It allows us to practice intimacy, listening, submission, communication, love…all those relational components. It is practice for us to develop a deeper intimacy with God. And I missed it. The entire time.
The opposite of addiction is human connection
One of the biggest themes for me in my recovery, and in fact my life, is human connection. All the work I do on recovery and all the things I think about and have to deal with, all come down to it. It is the inescapable truth that lays the foundations for everything else. To many this is obvious, but to an addict like me, stepping back and remembering some fundamental truths about how we should live our lives and what is important can be difficult, so I don’t take anything for granted, no matter how obvious it may seem in hindsight.
What I am talking about is perfectly articulated in the following quote, from Johann Hari’s must-read for any addict: “Chasing The Scream“:
The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, it’s connection.
There are hundreds of quotes of equal lucidity in the book, but this stood out to me.
Without going into too much detail, the book solidifies my existing understanding of the reason for addiction; that it is not simply because someone overdid it with an addictive substance/activity for too long, but that the addiction is a way to deal with pain, loneliness or other fundamental psychological state. In other words, addiction is not simply the result of a chemical or physical dependency, but an antidote for a more fundamental psychological lacking in an individual’s life.
To give one example, a test was carried out by scientist Bruce Alexander (detailed in his book The Globalization of Addiction), interviewed in the book, where he gave rats access to morphine (which acts like heroin for rats). Some rats were put is isolation, and became addicted. Other rats were put in a lush environment with other rats, food, toys etc, and they didn’t become addicted, despite the same access to the heroin. The scientist was able to show that if the addicted rats were placed into the lush environment, despite continued access to the drug, they lost their addiction.
This is amazing. It corroborates the theory that the chemical cause of addiction is only one part of the full story – that the causes of addiction exceed the boundaries of a simple physical or chemical dependency on the drug, and instead relate to some far deeper psychological need for fulfilment in the addict’s life.
It is consistent with my own experience of recovery – both my therapist and the guidance of the 12 steps of Sex Addicts Anonymous cover how simply abstaining from acting out is not enough to recovery – the addict has to address the reasons for their addiction, by taking a long hard look at their family, childhood, friendships etc, to understand what they are using addiction to compensate for.
For some, this might be childhood trauma, abuse, neglect etc. I.e. things that are easy to spot. For others (like me), it is harder to spot. I didn’t, on the face of it, have a hard childhood, but when I look harder I can find instances of loneliness and disconnection. As I grew up and went through school, gap year and university, I see an increasing trend in how I slowly interacted with people less and increasingly used cannabis and porn to spend more time alone. Even when I was being social, I would pride myself on being the resident cynic, never quite engaging with people and always being slightly on the edge of social groups.
I’m still working out why this trend happened. I found more comfort in computers and porn during puberty than I did with friendships, and when I discovered cannabis it accelerated the isolation. Interestingly, during my gap year when I discovered weed, I used it socially and it actually increased my sociability (despite my still-growing my porn addiction), but once I went to university I really withdrew. There may be something to do with the fact that university was prescribed for me whereas my gap year was my choice, and I have issues with authority, so this is an area I’m spending more time thinking about.
Anyway, back to the point: human connection. To fully recover, I need to rebuild my connection with the world and with other people. I have lost touch with most of my friends, whose friendship groups have endured throughout school and university without me. I have prided myself in spending time alone rather than going out. That all has to change. I can’t magically rescue lost friendships or instantly create new ones, but I know now that if I live my life in a new way, according to my values and with empathy, sympathy and compassion, hopefully in time I will form better bonds with people than I have allowed myself to in the past.
So for me, blocking my access to porn and remaining sober is probably the smallest factor in my recovery, as without the self-assessment and implementing living a better life as a better person, the sobriety will be temporary, or the addiction will probably replaced by something else.
To finish with another quote from the book:
“Addiction” he said, “is a disease of loneliness.”
Apologizing
Let’s Talk About Talking
Proverbs 16:24 – ““Kind words are like honey — sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.””
“People who want to improve a relationship often talk about talking. That is, they bring up what happened, what went wrong in their experience, and come up with solutions. Here are some examples:
- Remember when I said I needed space and listening, not solutions and homework assignments? It happened again; let’s fix this.
- I don’t want to sound childish, but I’ve been trying to be more open about the job problem, and it still feels as if you want just good news from me about work. I really need you to hang in there with me.
- It feels as if you’re impatient with me when I go to a deeper level now, as if I ought to have my act together. That’s hard for me; are you really feeling that way?
- When I brought up the problems I have with my dad, you lost eye contact and started talking about something else. This is really important for me; are you okay with all this? Is there a way I can do this differently, or do you not want me to talk about this with you?
If you want a better relationship, be a team player with the other person. In responding, you must have no hint of judgment or a critical spirit. You are forging a way to connect, and never forget that the “we” comes first. You want to recruit the person to vulnerable language, to help solve the glitch and move on.
Acknowledge that maybe you aren’t being clear or that this is new for both of you. Vulnerability works both ways. If the other person feels a lot of performance pressure to “get it right,” she won’t be able to speak from her heart. And you are after a heart-to-heart attachment; that’s the whole idea.
I have coached many husbands on how to be empathic. Lots of them don’t naturally know the right things to say, so I give them some examples that I hope trigger and resonate with what they really feel toward their wives. Statements like these are good examples:
- That must have been hard.
- Tell me more.
- How did that make you feel?
- That’s tough; anything I can do to help?
These are simple things to say that convey understanding and support. Guys being guys, they often say, “Great idea,” and write them down so they can remember them. The problem comes when they run through the list and recite them!
Most wives catch on in about three seconds, and then there is a talk about the talk about the talk. So let the person know, “You don’t have to do this right; I certainly don’t myself. I just need to know you feel something positive toward me when I am feeling negative.” And that covers many errors.
This devotional is drawn from Beyond Boundaries, by Dr. John Townsend.
