A personal story about a home repair dispute that became an unexpected lesson in boundaries, codependency, and not abandoning myself when my needs met resistance. I reflect on the drama triangle, over-explaining, and how learning to pause and stay grounded led to a better outcome.
I want to write about a recent situation that looked like a simple home repair issue, but turned into a very clear lesson for me about boundaries, codependency, and what happens inside me when my needs meet resistance.
This wasn’t about someone being right or wrong. It was about how quickly I lose my internal footing when conflict shows up, and how practicing healthier boundaries changed that experience.
Continue reading “Learning Healthy Boundaries Without Abandoning Myself”Now there’s a good question! In the Alcoholics Anonymous book, there are entire chapters dedicated to this question. Some will say, “you don’t need God to recover from alcohol addiction”. Others say “without a doubt, you do need God to recover”. But most say, “you don’t necessarily need ‘God’ to recover but you do need ‘a power greater than oneself’ or a ‘higher power’ in order to truly recover”.
I wholeheartedly agree that one needs a “higher power” in order to truly recover. For me this “higher power” is God. For others I know, their “higher power” is their collective 12-Step support group.
So, the main question I have for you is this: Is your current relationship with your “higher power” strong enough to help you recover from your addiction to pornography, lust, and sex?
I am a Christian, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to be precise. Yet even with my upbringing and belief that God is my Father and Christ is my Savior, this belief alone was not enough to “cure” me of my pornography addiction. I was a church-going, returned missionary who could not piece together 24 hours of true sobriety! Why?
Because I was not tapping into true connection with my higher power.
Two thoughts on this. First, connection with others I often find helps with my connection with my higher power. Coming out of isolation and connection with others is crucial to connecting with God. Attending 12 Step Meetings is a great way to connect in an honest genuine way with others. Breaking out of addiction is also a course in breaking out of isolation – isolation from others and ones’ higher power.
Second, specifically relating to communication with my higher power, I used to pray selfish prayers or pitiful “help me” prayers, if I prayed at all. I sometimes felt love from God, but my relationship with Him was focused on my desires and my will. I rarely opened up in a sincere way about my feelings, emotions, problems, sorrows, and true fears. I had no concept of surrendering my will or my life over to the care of my higher power. Now in recovery, I have learned to surrender to Him. I gratefully have a two-way connection with a God who is real and who wants the best for me, and who can truly heal me. I now trust Him, and I seek His wisdom and power instead of my own. So back to the original question: do I need God to recover? Yes, I do. Do you need God to recover? Yes, you do, but the God of your understanding will suffice. I promise if you pursue a journey into the 12 Steps for recovery from your sexual addiction that you will find a power higher and greater than yourself. Click here to find a list of 12 Step program options. Maybe I’ll see you there at one of them someday!
I once had the opportunity to be Foreman for a federal court case. It was about drug creation and distribution. There were several defendants including a fairly young couple with three small children and a man who was well into his sixties. It was made abundantly clear to use by the defense that if we found these people guilty then we’d be condemning children to grow up without parents and a man to die in prison. We had to find them guilty though due to the evidence. It was horrific. What had started out as something exciting and interesting as reality television had become a tragedy.
I went home that night and as I prayed I felt inspired to pray for forgetfulness and then to be more specific and pray for the Spirit of Forgetfulness to take away the painful memoires of faces, names, and the situation. After about three days of doing this, I noticed it began to work. To this day, I can not remember the names of the people and barely remember the faces of the parents but not the children.
This leads me to suggest this is something to consider when we repent of some of the awful things we did under our addictions. The inappropriate relationships, the actions, the words we used, and so forth can bubble up in our memories at bad times. I have prayed for the Spirit of Forgetfulness and it is slowly, slowly working. I don’t remember the names of the people I should forget. Sometimes, like picking at a scab, my brain will nitpick at it until a name does pop up or a situation but then I just turn back to prayer and pray to forget.
Somethings we need to remember to keep from doing them again but I think there are many things we shouldn’t remember so we be better about surrendering those things that could trigger our addictions. Ignorance is bliss is an often used phrase but I’d change that to forgetfulness is peace in this instance. While this kind of prayer is one way to let go of something bad, we should also remember to make sure it is surrendered as well so it does not linger within us.
Below is an outline of the basics of my recovery program. Most of it I’ve learned from books or other people in recovery, but I’ve lived it and made it mine now. Each link will take you to a list of blog posts that have something to do with that topic so you can dig into any of the topics you want to.
When I am working with someone new to recovery as their sponsor, I tell them to get the basics (listed below under “The Basics” in place first, then start working the 12 steps, and then everything else will fall into place.
My addiction to pornography, lust, and masturbation started when I was about 12 years old. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I didn’t think I was hurting anyone, so I continued to use these things to escape from depression and loneliness (though I didn’t know it at the time) and to cover up the things I didn’t like feeling. Around age 16, I started drinking alcohol with my friends as well.
I graduated high school and left home to go to college 600 miles away. Free at last! I partied with my new-found friends. My sexual addictions were always there in their various forms, but I kept them very private because I was ashamed of what I was doing to myself and others. They progressed to sex with others, strip clubs and more. It seemed there was no limit to where I would allow my addictions to take me. I isolated from friends at church and eventually stopped going to church completely. I was often around large groups of people, but I felt completely alone. I was nearing rock bottom and would consistently use lust and alcohol to numb my pains and escape from the realities of life.
Continue reading “A Lifetime of Addictions”In my earliest days of recovery, I can clearly remember the mornings. My eyes would open and again I would realize it hadn’t been a dream or nightmare but reality. My wife knew everything and so did my children. I didn’t feel like getting up and just rolling over but I couldn’t do that either or my wife would become suspicious I was doing something again.
In those days, I would share in group and talk about feeling not just like crap but “the thing that aspires to be crap.” It was to show how low and worthless I felt. The guilt and shame were heavy loads. I was still in the middle of Step 1 and admitting I needed help. Step 2 was Hope and what hope was there for me? How could this ever get better?
Continue reading “The Thing That Aspires To Be Crap!”I’m writing this to the wives of addicts since that’s the most common situation. The same advice is relevant for a husband if the addict is a woman. And all of this is helpful for any family member or friend of an addict.
First of all, there is great hope for freedom and happiness. There is a way out of addiction and hundreds of thousands of people have followed this path out. One important key is that the addict has to want to recover from his addiction before he can receive help and make real progress. If he doesn’t want to get well, it will be more difficult for him to get well. Sometimes just going to meetings unwillingly at first will help him gain the hope and humility needed to start the path of recovery. Many have started out this way.
Continue reading “For Spouses, Families, and Friends of Addicts”I’ve heard some people who have said, “I’m cured of my addiction to….” When I hear that, I just smile and nod. I congratulate them and keep my opinions to myself. My experience and my opinion though is that addiction to anything (porn, alcohol, drugs, etc.) is a chronic condition. This means it doesn’t go away but only goes into remission.
I am in remission from my addiction to porn, lying, etc. and have to continue to work at staying there. I feel it is very, very dangerous to think you are “healed” of the addiction and go on your merry way. This is a denial of the situation. You can change your habits, you can change your environment, and you can change your heart (with help) but you can’t change that you are and will always be an addict. To refuse to admit this is, in my opinion, akin to lying to yourself in a horrible way. It can lead to denial or justifications about other things and ultimately lead to acting out in a deeper or worse way than you did before.
Continue reading “Addiction – A Chronic Condition”I found over time that I started to have more self-confidence, not just with being able to choose what’s right regarding the addiction, but in standing up for myself. It’s strange but it seems that since I was so riddled with guilt and shame all these years, I felt like I deserved anything that anyone did to me that was mean or abusive. I felt I had earned it. I was beating myself up so much that I welcomed it when others did the same – hey I deserved it, right. It was like it was my punishment for doing so much wrong.
Once I stopped beating myself up so much, I started being offended when others would beat me up and I would stand up for myself. It was scary at first and I had feelings of hypocrisy and unworthiness, but each time I did it, it got easier. Another thing I realized was that there was a wrong way to stand up for myself (which was to be mean back to the person) and a right way (simply stating how I felt when the person did what they did and if needed, distance myself from them without resentment or hatred).
I also found out that this inability to stand up for myself also extended into the realm of having and expressing opinions. Where do I want to eat? Anywhere is fine. What is my favorite X? I am not sure. It’s as though my opinions and desires were invalid. Perhaps because some of my desires had hurt me so badly that I didn’t want to have any desires any more. I’m starting to have opinions and desires and am starting to be able to express them too.
I have found that pride is like codependency in its sneakiness. One good way for me to detect pride in myself is to look at how good of a follower I am. In the context of being a facilitator, for example, I can ask myself if I am following the guidelines (and my leaders) or not. If I am following them, am I following them with all my heart, wanting their ideas to work, and thereby I am being a good follower? If I do my own things that I think are better, then I am seeking praise for doing those things because my idea was better than theirs. This is the same thing Satan did with God’s plan. If Satan is anything like me when I’m doing this, he didn’t want to follow the plan because he could get glory for coming up with a better way of doing things.
I was locked into a deadly pride cycle as a facilitator for several years. I had a few years of physical sobriety and was the facilitator of an LDS 12-step meeting. I knew it all and “helped” and “saved” everyone I spoke to. The pride I had in my length of sobriety and in my facilitating position started to blind me to the lust that I was quietly allowing to creep back into my life. I had to start telling myself and others lies to maintain my status as facilitator and to keep my long sobriety that I was so proud of. That pride and the lust that crept in over those years cost me my family for a few months during separation once I came clean about the lies I had told myself and others. I had to drop the pride – I had to surrender everything. Anything I held onto slowly became a millstone around my neck dragging me down. God and Christ were the only things I could safely hold onto.
In the context of my main addictions, pride can blind me to my weakness, and like the addiction itself, can numb me to the point that I don’t think I need God’s help. The only way I have found to keep from falling to pride is through contact with group members through phone calls or at meetings. I am, through that contact, constantly reminded of the truth about my weaknesses and strengths and am kept on track.
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