I can’t remember where I learned this, but it’s been extremely helpful to me and others in addiction recovery. A lot of it probably came from the ideas that Joe and Charlie cover in their step 4 mp3’s (there are 7-8 mp3’s there, I linked just to the first one), which I highly recommend. They discuss resentment and how we tend to use resentment to cover our own defects by focusing on others’ defects.
Continue reading “The Lies That Are Hidden In My Anger and Resentment”Tag: Anger
Sobriety
Sobriety is where recovery starts. Once I’ve put my addiction down, then I can start recovering. I like the sobriety definition from Sexaholics Anonymous:
Continue reading “Sobriety”“In defining sobriety, we do not speak for those outside Sexaholics Anonymous. We can only speak for ourselves. Thus, for the married sexaholic, sexual sobriety means having no form of sex with self or with persons other than the spouse. In SA’s sobriety definition, the term “spouse” refers to one’s partner in a marriage between a man and a woman. For the unmarried sexaholic, sexual sobriety means freedom from sex of any kind. And for all of us, single and married alike, sexual sobriety also includes progressive victory over lust.”
Sexaholics Anonymous, 191-192
Self-Respect and Love
For this topic, I offer an analogy that played out in my heart that had a profound effect on me.
Before I got into recovery, I met Christ at the door of my house. I told Him that He didn’t need to come in – I made the mess, I would clean it up, and someday my house would be clean enough for Him to come in without judging me and thinking I was stupid, slothful, and filthy. I sent Him away empty-handed.
Lust and Self-Awareness
I found that the sexual part of these addictions starts with lustful thoughts that I was completely unaware I was entertaining – hours, days, weeks, or even months before any physical manifestations of addiction. As I started going to the meetings and working the steps to start working on myself from the inside out, I then started becoming more aware of how much I was lusting after people each day. As I become more and more conscious of it (I never knew how much I was looking and lusting before I came into the program), I try to let go of it at the earliest stage possible – when it’s easier to let go of it. It’s kind of like the easiness of pulling out a new weed compared with the difficulty of pulling out a weed that has been growing all summer long. My capacity to turn away from the temptation to lust is directly proportional to the strength of the faith and self-awareness that I build in these 12-step meetings.
More Freedom Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.