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Post by BlackSpiral on Mar 26, 2005 1:32:39 GMT -5
Part 6 - what recovery has given me so far When I first entered sobriety, that was all I wanted to achieve - and it was really all I expected to get. I didn't realise how deeply the addiction had affected my life, or how many things were going to change. All I cared about, at the time, was the things that were obvious to me. It was damaging my relationship. It was causing me great emotional pain. And it was taking time that could easily be better spent. The big motive, at first, was to save my relationship, and avoid the emotional pain.
It didn't take long for that to evolve. Not long into recovery, I began to realise that the addiction was damaging to my self respect; and beyond the simple fact that the addiction threatened the survival of my relationship, the secrets and lies that the addiction had spawned reached further, damaging the intimacy and closeness within the relationship itself. My energy was sapped, too, and somewhere along the line, my dependency on the porn had left my confidence lying in a ditch. And as time went by, these things began to heal and recover.
Today, I'm able to look back and appreciate them, and understand what my recovery has really brought me so far. Here are some of the the things I have found, rediscovered or been given as a result of the path I walked.
My time. One of the first things I realised, and one of the first things I clung to as an addict, was the fact that by recovering I would reclaim my time, to spend on things I chose. As I saw it, I'd have the time to work on my writing, or on my painting, or my music, or whatever else I wanted to pursue. That was the first, early origin of my desire to pursue my hopes and dreams as part of my recovery.
My hopes and dreams! I had the time, true. But as I found out, overcoming my fear of failure was another big step I had to take before I could really pursue my hopes and dreams. I did it, though, and although I sometimes still feel myself wavering - questioning if I may be up to the task, or if it will work out - I've learned to buckle down and push back against it. When I do, I find things tend to fall together really nicely, and my dreams all start to come back together again.
Other dreams, too... One thing I mentioned to someone else, recently, was the fact that my dreams had once been lost to me. I'd intended, once upon a time, to keep a kind of dream journal - it was something my other writing friends did, as a source of inspiration and ideas for the future. But it didn't work for me - because I didn't dream. Dreams, I think, are one of the mind's natural ways of dealing with emotional issues that it faces - and with the porn burying all mine so deeply and so thoroughly, perhaps there simply wasn't anything left to drive the dreams. For many years, I simply didn't dream.
During the first few weeks of my recovery, though, I started to dream again - vivid, unsettling dreams mostly, featuring porn (which was, when you think about it, the source of many of my emotional issues at that time.) The bad, porny-dreams passed, though, and then other dreams started coming - brighter ones, happier ones, more vivid ones. Some did turn into ideas for writing; many were simply things that I remembered and then, later, forgot. But I had them again, and once upon a time, they had been lost.
My marriage. Probably the greatest gift my recovery has given me is my marriage to my wife. The relationship that once seemed lost to me was recovered, and I was able to start to really be the kind of person that I felt she deserved, and really connect with her emotionally; I had always felt connected to her, but until I went through recovery, I never realised just how many small walls and barriers there had been between us as a result of the addiction. Which leads neatly on, into...
Intimacy. There's simply no way to really describe what it feels like to be completely intimate with your partner. When there are no secrets between you, no lies to be kept hidden, no skeletons in closets waiting to be uncovered, it's like there is a total emotional freedom that exists. You know that your partner accepts you, utterly - not just as the person you have allowed her to see, but as the whole of you, the entire of you, the bad and the good. There's no fear of saying the wrong thing, no fear of being caught out. There's no need to lie to cover up anything, nor any guilt about something you did and are concealing. There's no need to do anything, other than simply be who you are, say what you say, think what you think, and share it all with your partner. You can go through life, being yourself, and have your partner be with you for every step, inside and out. Once, when my wife told me I was wonderful, I felt every ounce of the weight of my guilt for the things that she didn't know about me. Today, when she says the same thing, all I feel is lucky to have her. She's wonderful, and sharing this intimacy with her is incredible.
Self-respect. As an addict, I couldn't respect myself much. I knew I was intelligent enough; I knew I had good sides, generous sides. I knew all about the positive things. But I couldn't see them, through the cloud of pain and negativity. I knew all about the darkness underneath all that, all the grime and dirt that I didn't let show. All the things I did that I didn't want anyone to know about. And because I knew about them all, my own view of myself was quite different. Today, I can see all the good things, and appreciate them for what they are. My own view of myself, today, is far brighter.
Confidence, Belief, Vision - and Patience. These three tie together strongly, and are very much part of the same thing. As a child, I had been confident - but as an adult, that confidence had been shattered. Through recovery, I rediscovered the confidence and self-belief to be willing to pursue my dreams, and to move beyond the simple, shallow beliefs that I had held, which had crippled my own potential. I learned, again, that I had the capacity to grow, to improve, to develop and hone my own skills and abilities; and that creativity could be just one of those, too. I learned to look to a vision of what I wanted to achieve, and have the confidence and belief to be willing to pursue it. It's not just writing; but anything else. Today, I don't doubt that I can achieve whatever I set my mind to - it's simply a matter of working out how. And I can accept, today, that it may take time - I no longer need the rewards here, in the present, in the moment. I'm prepared to work, and to wait.
Peace. The final one, and a great one. Inside, I am calm today. The guilt I had is addressed, either resolved or let go. The shame I had is forgotten. The fear I had is faded. The disgust I felt for myself is long gone. My emotions no longer rage out of control; my actions no longer seem driven by wild compulsions or desperate need. I feel at peace, I feel in control, I feel comfortable, I feel happy. I am free from the storm, and it's wonderful.
And beyond...? Well, I'm not recovered. Not yet. I still have my issues, I still have scars, I still have problems. Far fewer, and far weaker, but they are still there - and I still work through them from time to time, adjusting the way I think, considering the way I act, and questioning the validity of beliefs that may be holding me back. I have made a lot of progress - but there's progress yet to be made. Chances are, I'll learn and discover more of the rewards of recovery as I keep walking. Recovery isn't just about sexual addiction anymore - it's about life, and about living. Today, I am more alive than I remember being in the last 10 years of my life. And tomorrow, I'll take another small step towards making my life just a little bit brighter.
I don't fear failure anymore. And I don't resent the fact that I am still walking the path to recovery. It's just like one of the things recovery gave me - I have confidence in the fact that I can become the man I want to be. I believe I will make it. I have the vision to see that it is possible, and to look for the path I have to follow. And I have the patience, to accept that I still have to walk before I will get there.
But I'll get there eventually - because I'm going to keep on walking the path until I do.
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Post by BlackSpiral on Mar 29, 2005 21:16:57 GMT -5
Off topic?As I sat thinking, I figured - well - there are a lot of other areas that I didn't give a lot of time to here, some new, and some old. They're all tied into my recovery, so I figured I'd mention some of them from time to time as I progress with other things. Writing's moving apace at the moment, but without anything specific to mention, I thought I'd come back to a couple of other things - one old, in a way, and one rather newer. My relationship!I know, a pretty broad subject, right? But one thing I didn't mention in any real depth in my journal so far was the importance I placed on preserving, strengthening and repairing my relationship as part of my recovery. It was never just about recovery from porn; I realised, early on, that I could become sober and still lose my relationship if I didn't do it right. So instead, both myself and my partner chose to focus on two things; on the one hand, addressing the issues that I had with porn and its associated gack, and on the other hand, addressing our relationship and how to maintain it and keep it healthy. On our side, we had a couple of great advantages. We're both stubborn, firstly, so neither my wife nor myself were prepared to accept the oft-offered advice that she should leave me, seeing as how I was a horrible porn addict. Secondly, my wife's an excellent researcher, and found it easy to find the kind of information we were looking for. Amongst this, we discovered a few things that would help us out along the way - one was this discussion forum, curiously enough, and another was the concept of the Love Bank. The Love BankAn idea conceived by Dr. Harley (whoever he is), The Love Bank is simply the concept of how it is that we come to care for certain people in certain ways, and how it is that we end up falling in love with one person, as opposed to another. Although in places I feel it misses the mark a little - the doctor mentions that he doesn't judge the merit of the emotional needs he lists, for example, and also doesn't even mention how sexual need can be either unhealthy, or driven by the now better-recognised concept of porn addiction - the whole concept at large is fairly simple, and easy to both understand and appreciate. It helped us to see how we first came to be in love; and also, how we should go about maintaining it. It was fairly easy to see what our emotional needs were, and how we can meet those for each other. Often, we meet those needs without thinking about it, but by looking into this we felt we were able to avoid some of the easy potential pitfalls faced by couples in relationships - especially couples in relationships that are going through any kind of stressful situation, such as we were. It was hard, at times, but we were able to consider this whenever we found ourselves going through troubled times as a couple. There's other information on his site, too, some of which is extremely helpful, and a lot of which is certainly both insightful and true. I feel that a lot of people could benefit from reading through it, and appreciating what he has to say. ExclusivityAnother concept was the one of exclusivity : I can't remember if this came from his work or from another site, but it boils down, quite simply, to making your partner the only person of the opposite sex, barring family members, that you allow yourself to be close to. To me, this ties in with the emotional needs, especially if you're going through a difficult time; there are very obvious issues in allowing someone else to become close to you, and running the risk that they may start to meet the emotional needs you have, rather than working through the issues with your current partner. This concept is one I adhered to, and to a certain degree, I think it reveals a symptom of the attitude that many people have to relationships today. Rather than taking the effort to work through their issues with a partner, people will find someone else who meets the need they feel they have. And when they start to feel a need is not met in that relationship, once more, they choose to move on to another person. So, in my life, I don't allow myself to form close bonds with other women, and my wife does likewise with other men. That doesn't mean that I won't spend time with women, won't talk to women, or any such. It just means that, for me, my personal intimacy is reserved for my wife. I won't spend time one-on-one with any other woman, and I keep any of my intimate feelings, and most or all of my personal life, locked away from them. I do the same here on the board, even, and don't enter into any kind of dialogue with female members, SO or SA, because I simply consider it to be respectful to my wife, and a part of honouring the relationship we have. People may disagree with that attitude. And they're welcome to. But I feel that it really strengthens the bonds that I have with my wife, and that she has with me. There are other things that we did, but I think that those were key for us. And that covers the older thing. Next up, then, is something I've been considering more recently, after a conversation with my wife. CompartmentalisationI don't have much to say on this right now, but I did at least want to give it a passing reference. As an addict, one thing that I know I did very well, and very frequently, was break my life down into distinct segments - compartments, so to speak. In one section, I had the part of me that liked to hang out with my guy friends, drink a little, have a laugh, crack awful jokes and play pool. Separate entirely from that, I had my relationship with my partner. Separate again, I had my addiction to and use of p*graphy. And there were others, too. In my mind, they were completely distinct. None of them affected the others in any way - what I did as a porn addict and user didn't cross over into my friendships and socialising, and neither affected my relationship. I kept them all clearly separate from each other, and didn't consider that the impact of any of them could pass beyond the limits that were essentially established for it. That meant, I was able to accept certain patterns of behaviour, not because they were necessarily acceptable to my life as a whole, but because I had broken my life down into clear sections. And in some sections, where I was acting, the action had no perceivable consequences - because the people who would have suffered or been hurt by it didn't exist in that section. The whole thing was an illusion to me, I realise now. I didn't really have separate sections or separate lives, but I perceived things that way. And my one life was affected, drastically, by all my choices. When I tried to bring the whole thing together through my recovery, to begin acting in a way that I could respect, I began to realise just how much damage I had done to myself. Today, I realise I still struggle with this sometimes; every now and then, it feels as though some of my actions may be overlooked, or forgotten, because they can be kept out of the other "compartments" in my life. It's not a conscious or deliberate thought pattern, but I became aware of it happening recently. However, after all the work I did to bring my life together, what has changed is that I no longer compartmentalise my actions or the consequences to them. My life is a whole, and simply can't be split down like this anymore. It was that compartmentalisation that allowed me to act out with porn for so long without really feeling or accepting the truth of any consequences. And I suppose, in many ways, that's also why some men believe it's acceptable to have close female friends beyond their partner - they don't fit in the same "compartment" as their partner, so they don't see that they can affect one another. Just a little food for thought - my own, as much as anyone else.
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Post by BlackSpiral on Apr 1, 2005 0:30:38 GMT -5
Backwards thinking, and appreciation? As recovery goes on for me, I keep noticing little changes in my life. Here and there, I'll find myself in a situation, or in a place, where I would once have found myself thinking badly, or feeling uncomfortable. And this time, I find myself thinking healthily, feeling comfortable, doing well. It comes as a pleasant surprise, usually, to realise those things.
But backwards thinking is an issue for me in that situation, though only sometimes. On occasion, when I realise where I might once have been, I'll think something like "Hey, I'm not uncomfortable here. Why would I have been uncomfortable before?"...and then my brain, willing slave that it is, will supply me with all the reasons I would have had to be uncomfortable. It's the bad question pattern.
It stops me, to a certain extent, from appreciating where I am, and what I have achieved.
The thing isn't dreadful. It's not an epidemic, it's no kind of plague, and the whole cycle never lasts long - Robbins helped me there significantly, as I've become fairly adept at throwing out detrimental thought patterns and putting better ones in their place. It's more of a niggle and a frustration than anything else, and I imagine that much of it comes down to the fact that these realisations are relatively recent.
Today, I've been sober for almost a year and a half; and on the one hand, I look at that, and think about it as a really long time. In that time, I've changed my beliefs, I've changed my attitudes and ideas, I've changed my behaviour. I've rediscovered my confidence, my dreams, and my energy and love of life. I've married the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, and moved thousands of miles to live with her. I've grown, I've reformed, I've developed and I've deepened. 18 months is a long time.
But on the other hand...it's not that long at all. I'm still in the process of making the changes, and I'm still in the phase of realising what I have achieved. I'm almost 18 months from active addiction; but I'm only an hour or two from having realised another step forward that I have made, through my recovery. I imagine I still have many other steps to make - and have yet to realise other steps I have already made.
18 months is a long time; but in terms of crafting something that takes longer, it's merely one part of the journey.
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Post by BlackSpiral on Apr 1, 2005 0:40:36 GMT -5
The Need to Try One thing that has struck me hard through my recovery is the need to keep trying, in anything that you truly wish to accomplish. As an addict, I had a tendency to believe that failure in some way equated to inability; an exaggeration that caused me a lot of damage in a lot of areas, and led to me building up quite a library of negative delusions.
Outside of that, I've learned to examine my failures, or more accurately, the weaknesses and problems with my attempts, and use them to teach myself how to be stronger next time. The important parts are twofold; both to be willing to stand again, and when standing, to be willing to look back, learn from the defeat, and change ourselves - or our approach - to prevent it from being duplicated.
Either one, without the other, is all but worthless.
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Post by gerry on Apr 3, 2005 0:59:12 GMT -5
Here in Mexico we do the same but the date is December 28, Day of the innocents... funny! gerry
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Post by BlackSpiral on Apr 5, 2005 17:00:59 GMT -5
Confidence, Revisited I thought I'd note in my journal, today, about the effect that improved confidence has had on my ability to deal with the problems that life throws out. The change to my confidence, for me, comes in part from what I learned through the Robbins book, and in part from my success in recovery.
What is different, mostly, is my perception of problems. Where once they seemed threatening, today, they seem more like obstacles to be overcome; like the hurdles on a track, more than a brick wall. Recently, my wife and I have had our situation change suddenly; and once, it would have panicked me. There are a lot of problems apparent in the sudden change, and if I focused on them, I could see myself easily feeling hopeless. I'm certain that I would have turned to something to help me cope - if not porn, then certainly computer games or, as the most likely suspect of all, food.
Today, I'm not like that. Within minutes of the change occurring, I had one solution in mind, and the situation no longer seemed problematic; within a few hours, I had four, and one of those was actually better than the situation that had just gone wrong for us.
One of recovery's greatest gifts is simply this - the ability to cope with life, regardless of whether it is riding high, or sinking low. By being able to cope, you gain two things - firstly, you gain the ability to simply deal with life's problems fast, and clean. And secondly, as a result of that, you greatly reduce the level of emotional stress that falls onto you as a result of those problems.
As an addict, I would avoid or evade; but the problems would remain, and consistently pile stress onto me, even in small amounts. And the longer the problem existed, the more stress it would cause. Today, I don't feel threatened anymore, and so I simply deal with the problem; as a result, it no longer exists for long enough to cause me that stress.
My addiction was a way to cope with life. Learning to cope is, therefore, one of the keys to escaping addiction; not just in the form of sex and porn addiction, but in the shape of all other addictions too.
And one final thing... Though I know some would perhaps be upset by my saying it, I do become frustrated and depressed by the posts that turn up on the main forum, saying "Let's be clean for Month X!", or "Let's stay clean for X days!", and so on...
I guess I'm a cynic, but whenever I see them turn up, I always wonder how long it will be till the first person slips - and how long it will take for the thread's founder to slip themselves. Part of me always hopes I'll be wrong, and that it'll all work out - but more often than not, someone slips within a few days of starting. Quite often, several.
It's not that the goal is a bad one, really, but it's the focus. Too much focus on being sober for so many days, and not nearly enough on HOW to be sober for that length of time. Recovery and sobriety are journeys. If you were to go hiking for a week, you'd plan - you'd pack food, water, clothes and camping gear - and if you were smart, you might pack medical supplies, communication equipment, flares, and so on. But in recovery, it's like people fail, then decide "Hey, I'll make it this time!" and hurl themselves back at the problem, without even thinking about it, or really considering how they need to CHANGE their approach to better deal with things.
It reminds me of the fly, constantly bashing itself into the windowpane, when it's only a couple of feet from an opening where it could fly right through.
I suppose, perhaps, they're not ready to see it; perhaps they're not ready to do the work it takes to really start to make changes in their life. But somehow, that just doesn't make it any less depressing.
Oh well...
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Post by a day at a time on Apr 10, 2005 16:48:24 GMT -5
BlackSpiral, Your Journal is definitely “The Source”.
Day 006
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Post by sisyphus on Apr 10, 2005 16:53:38 GMT -5
Confidence, RevisitedOne of recovery's greatest gifts is simply this - the ability to cope with life, regardless of whether it is riding high, or sinking low. By being able to cope, you gain two things - firstly, you gain the ability to simply deal with life's problems fast, and clean. And secondly, as a result of that, you greatly reduce the level of emotional stress that falls onto you as a result of those problems. So I think maybe I need to tatoo this on my arm, so that I can read it over and over again.
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Post by BlackSpiral on Apr 11, 2005 19:23:08 GMT -5
18 months Would have missed this completely, except for the fact that Paradox posted his 11 months on the board. As of today, I'm 18 months sober - and happy to boot.
In one sense, it seems strange. When I started, I was in such a low place, and I didn't think I could make it. So...I guess I was wrong about that.
To quote the gent himself - if I can do it, anyone can.
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Post by Freya on Apr 11, 2005 20:41:55 GMT -5
This thread is absolutely brilliant BlackSpiral, I admire your ability to put it all into words like you do.. VERY insightful, very useful information. Thankyou for sharing!
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Post by BlackSpiral on Apr 11, 2005 21:01:00 GMT -5
Settling, and losing sight of the moment... One thing that's been crossing my mind, lately, is that I have a tendency (though only sometimes!) to try and rationalise why it's okay to not try and achieve things. I can settle down into an easy, comfortable kind of existence, where I don't pursue my dreams, don't try to make them into a reality. And I was trying to work out why that happens - what the chain of thought is that causes it to happen, and equally, what chain of thought it is that leads me to pursue my dreams with such enthusiasm, since both seem equally natural states to me.
After thinking about it, I've come to the conclusion that in part, I simply forget how much I love to pursue those dreams. The pursuit in itself is a joy; it's not just succeeding, it's not just the final achievement. The attempt, the pursuit, is sometimes as intriguing and involving as the success. Success is the goal - it's what I want to achieve, it's what I'm aiming for. But if I focus too hard on it, I find that I can break myself down, so that the attempt itself becomes cloudy, dull, almost pointless, and the end seems distant and lost in mist. All it seems like, then, is a long, drawn-out wait until the day it all finally falls together.
I think I have a tendency to lose sight of the moment, really, and get so caught up in the future that I forget to live in the here and now. And somewhat ironically, the more I do that, the less able I seem to be to be able to work towards that future. The future is the goal, of course - but right here and now is where I'm living and acting. And I have to focus on living that, and using that, if I'm to bring that future closer to me. Otherwise, I'll be stargazing - lying there, watching it, dreaming about it, but always staying distant from it. Perhaps, even, drifting a little further away each day, as I relinquish my grip on those dreams.
I can spend my time in futile ways sometimes, when that creative energy seems lost to me. I can spend my time browsing my email, browsing the board, or if I do focus on my writing, I can lose myself in focusing on parts already completed, already solid, already done. I can easily waste my time, in a way that doesn't achieve anything, and leaves me feeling nothing more than a slight sense of wasted opportunity. That doesn't include time I spend doing other things - things I do with my wife, watching films, going for walks, going out to eat, doing household chores, those are things I take real pleasure in, and those always feel satisfying and worthwhile. But sometimes, I just waste my time - it feels, slightly, like my mind settles down, accepts that this is how things are and how things will be, and then chooses to remain there. It settles, for something second-best, and doesn't even decide to spend its free time pursuing things that really make it feel better - because those things take more energy. They simply aren't as easy.
The reason I'm writing this out, is the same reason I write out many things, both in this, and in my recovery. It's not so that people can read it, understand it, or learn from it - though those may well be side benefits. It's so that I can learn from it. I write out what crosses my mind, the thoughts I have, and in the process of passing from my mind into structured language, the thoughts take shape, the ideas crystallise, and I start to better understand exactly what is going on inside of me, inside my mind. The ideas, which drift around somewhat loosely, are given a kind of shape - and once I can see the shape, I can learn from it, and understand how to either take advantage of it, or deal with it, whichever is appropriate for what it is.
I believe, deeply, in the power of language, and in the beauty that it is capable of producing. Languages have spent hundreds or thousands of years, developing into a form that allows us to express what we think and feel, with great precision; to allow us to put our thoughts and ideas down in such a way that both we and others can look at them, and appreciate them for what they are.
Today, I am writing, to help me understand myself. And at the end of this, I understand myself just a little better than I did when I began.
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Post by BlackSpiral on Apr 13, 2005 16:05:58 GMT -5
Perverts, Sex-Addicts and Unfortunate Victims of Addictive InfluenceWell, there's been a lot of discussion - following the assignation of the title 'perv' to the addicts on the forum - on whether or not giving yourself these labels is a good thing. I posted briefly about it in the thread itself, but I wanted to go into more of my thoughts here in my journal. The first thing to note is - it's not comfortable to label yourself with a label that you don't like. If you don't find the label Pervert comfortable, then you won't want to label yourself with it - it impacts your self respect and your self image. But that doesn't mean it's not true. On the board, although I know it's not going to be a popular view, we have to admit that our actions have all been perverse - that's why we're here. So we are either perverts now, or we have been perverts in the past. By simple dictionary definition, this isn't something that's up for discussion - it's plain and simple fact, so long as you consider that porn use is perverse. And I do. However, that doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing to label yourself that way. The second thing to note about labels is that they CAN and DO shape the way you look at things, act, think and believe. And that can change from person to person. One person, who sees that they are a pervert, will be compelled to CHANGE that - they don't like the label, so they will fight to be RID of it. On that thread, nasa commented on this same fact; one of his driving forces is to change these labels. Another person, though, may believe that the label shapes their potential - if they are a pervert, then it is natural that they should act in a perverted way. The second mindset is very limited, believing in the rigid nature of personality and being, but it isn't uncommon. A person who views themselves as a pervert and an addict may actually come to terms with those facts, and accept them as parts of their personality, rather than be driven to change them. That, obviously, is a major weakness. The weakness, however, doesn't come from the label. It comes from the acceptance of the label as a permanent condition. If we are a Pervert, then we are bound to be perverted. If we are a Glutton, then we are bound to be gluttonous. If we are a Lazy Git, then we are bound to sit on the couch, watching MTV and letting our mind rot. Strength comes from labels, only once you accept that you have the power to CHANGE how you are labelled by virtue of your actions. This is a key. The fact that you labelled a pervert IS NOT the reason why you act in a perverted way. That's the wrong way round. The fact that you act in a perverted way is the reason you are labelled a pervert! Change the actions, and change the label. If you stop acting in a perverted manner, you are no longer a pervert. If you stop eating gluttonously, you are no longer a glutton. If you get your arse up off the couch and do the dishes, you are considerably less of a lazy git. Labels are not who we are. They do not define our potential, or our character. They define the way in which we have decided to live today, and nothing more. If I act perversely today, then today, I am a pervert. If you go off and look at porn today, then today, you are a pervert. If you DO not, though - then today, you ARE not. Sometimes, it's tempting to use softer labels - to define ourselves as "struggling with addiction", as having a "bad habit", or having a "high sex drive". But those labels, to my mind, are often evasions - they are ways to soothe ourselves, to make us feel better about the way we are. And the trouble with feeling better about the way you are right now, is it gives you less impetus to want to change it. Think about it. If you define yourself as "a man with a high sex drive, seeking an outlet for sexual energy, concealing your actions for the sake of your partner's self esteem", does it give you as much desire to change as labelling yourself a "lying, perverted lech"? I know, it sounds harsh. But really, it's only harsh if you accept that your label today defines who you will be tomorrow - and it doesn't have to. Because labels exist, not just to define us today - but also to define who we can become. At the beginning of my recovery, I knew who I was, and I didn't like it. I didn't want to consider myself a pervert - but I became aware of the fact that I was one. I was a porn addict. I was a lech. I was driven by lust and selfish desire. I was a liar, a deceiver and an oath-breaker. Those labels defined the person I was - at that point. I decided, though, that I didn't want to be him anymore. So I put down, also, the kind of person I wanted to be. I wanted to be worthy of respect, trustworthy. I wanted to be the kind of person I would be proud to know. I wanted to have good reason to be proud of myself, and have no reason to be ashamed. I wanted to have no cause to lie about who I was, where I had been, or what I was doing. I wanted to be honest, strong, determined. I wanted to be honourable and chivalrous. Those were the labels for my future. I set about becoming that person, then - and I did so by striving, every day, to live up to that standard. That is where the strength comes from labels; in the belief that you can change yours, by the way you choose to act. Softer labels may make you feel better about yourself, but harsher ones - if you accept your power to change them - may help give you the drive to change yourself. Every day, I knew I had been low. And every day, I fought to be noble - to live up to the high standards that I had set for myself. There was a strength in knowing and accepting just how low I had fallen; in recognising the pain of having fallen so far short of my own expectations of myself, of being so much less than I had dreamed I would be. Because in that knowledge, I had revived the dreams of who I could become, and I had started hunting that man down, pulling him closer and closer to me. I get closer, every single day; today, I am mostly him. P.S. - a couple of threads...I thought, since they relate closely to this and other things I've mentioned here, I'd link back to a couple of threads on the board that have been discussing language, and the power of language. Vocabulary for Success : lightwave.proboards48.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1113633606Tony Robbins (Rules Realignment) : lightwave.proboards48.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1113032020
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Post by gerry on Apr 17, 2005 0:27:47 GMT -5
It must be intersting to talk to you in person, if you talk as you write... I talk to much, all the time, but I don't write that much, not even in my lenguage. I prefer to talk, my wife and me talk and talk all the time, we never get tired of that. Keep posting... Gerry
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Post by BlackSpiral on Apr 25, 2005 0:59:43 GMT -5
Morals and values... Well, what a pain. After reading a post by westcovinajoe, I've tried to explain this four or five times, but it just hasn't worked out for me. So I'm going to post a brief summary of how my morals progressed, and why. Hopefully, it'll make some kind of sense. I'll prefix each entry, roughly, with what my belief was.
1. Porn is morally acceptable. Well, that's where I started. I thought it was just a personal thing, no big deal, no problem. It was just something I did in my spare time, it didn't hurt anyone, and I enjoyed it. No problem.
2. Porn is morally acceptable, but not in relationships. Through the various dealings of one of my friends, I somehow became aware of the fact that women mostly don't really like their partners to use porn - no matter what the porn magazines might say. Well, that made a kind of sense to me. So I adopted the belief that it was fine while I was single, but should be unacceptable once I was in a relationship.
3. Porn is morally acceptable, because it's private. A bit of a step backward, this one, and it coincided roughly with my discovery of the internet. Unlike just throwing out the magazines, the internet made quitting a big issue; and so, out of weakness I think, I adopted the view that it was acceptable, because I wasn't really cheating, and I was doing it in private. It was just a way to feel good, like playing games, or watching a funny film.
4. Porn is NOT morally acceptable in a relationship. Hooray! We're back here again. Somehow, in the back of my mind, this clicked - even before I discovered how much my partner really didn't like me using it. After the fact, I realised just how much hurt it could cause, and that made it immoral - anything that hurts someone you care about has to be considered immoral. But I still held the view that it was acceptably moral, if you were single, as it wouldn't hurt anyone then.
5. The porn industry is destructive and immoral, and I was funding it. That was a kicker. I discovered more about the way porn is produced, and the way the industry is run, and I found nothing at all to my liking. Just like drugs, one major moral issue often overlooked isn't the morality of using it, but the morality of funding an industry that is fundamentally immoral, exploitative and damaging. Lives are ruined, wilfully, as porn producers target a captive market that has been bound up - very deliberately - with an addictive product. Funding the industry couldn't really be considered moral, and so although I could accept the surface moral neutrality of porn use for a single person, it was no longer something I could view as morally independent from the harm it did long before it ever got to its consumer - or the harm it did after that point, to relationships, families, and individuals.
6. Regardless of morals, it makes me into someone I don't like. This is a large step toward the final verdict; not one strictly of morals, but one of values. No matter whether I think porn use is acceptable morally, or not, the end result is simple - it makes me a less moral person, and it makes me act in ways I would consider to be repugnant. That violates my life goal to be someone I can respect, and that's a very important thing. Today, it's something that I realise would hurt me. So even if it was acceptably moral, it'd still be stand-out stupid to boot - much like stabbing yourself in the foot with a pencil every morning. Nothing immoral about that, but that still doesn't make it a good idea.
7. Porn isn't morally acceptable. The result of walking the rest of the path, this is basically where I ended up, and where I am today. It hurts families and individuals by the way it is sold. It hurts and exploits people who've already been hurt, by having them produce it in the first place. It hurts the person viewing it, warping their view of the world, eroding their morals and values and wasting their time and energy. It sells immoral lifestyles as desirable, it sells immoral acts and lies as being normal, or even admirable. In the end, it really has no moral legs to stand on.
Yup.
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Post by BlackSpiral on May 1, 2005 17:23:34 GMT -5
Motive and purpose I was just thinking about this recently, and wanted to post a little about it. Although I can't recall exactly who or where, I do remember that over the last couple of weeks, I've been encouraged to see some of the members on the board trying to focus on what they want to achieve by getting sober, by kicking the addiction. It's a good sign, as it lends a great deal of direction to the whole process; it gives the person trying to quit a motive. Against that, though, I sometimes see people posting about how it's not important; how it doesn't matter, and how they shouldn't focus on that. I know that, for some, it probably seems like that. But for me, purpose and motive are very important.
When I entered recovery, I was in no doubt about the reasons why I wanted to change. Firstly, I wanted to be able to keep the promise I had made to my wife; it doesn't seem like much to those who aren't in it, I suppose, but having struggled to keep it so much was something that didn't sit well with me at all. I also wanted to feel clean again; and no matter what else I may have gotten from my addiction, there was no doubting that it left me feeling somehow sullied. That had been the case since I was very young; even back when I felt it was acceptable, it still seemed to taint things.
Not long after that, though, I began to really take stock of things and understand what I wanted to take back. I had wasted a LOT of time on it; and that time was badly wasted. I got nothing from it; worse yet, I actually did myself damage that I would spend more time having to heal and repair. I could have spent that time well; but I hadn't, and I knew that so long as I remained in the addiction, I wouldn't. It became really obvious to me just how easy it would be to throw my life down a tube with this addiction; I could see myself, forty or fifty years down the line, looking back at my life and having only regrets for the time I should have spent so much better.
I didn't want that. I wanted to take that time back; and not just take it, but also spend it better than I had done. I wanted to spend at least some of the time I got back, doing things that I had always wanted to do with my life. This, I think, was important. I'd already found out the hard way that trying to recover for someone else's sake doesn't always work - when there is tension or stress between you, that motive can wither, or vanish completely. I realised, somewhere inside, that I needed to have motives to quit for my own sake, too - motives that would persist and stay strong, no matter what happened between me and my partner.
Anyway - some may say that it doesn't matter too much, really. That what you get from being sober doesn't affect your getting sober. But I don't agree.
The thing is, no matter what you enter into, you need a motive - a purpose. It's what gives you energy, direction, determination and resolve - the aim is not the act itself, but what the act will achieve. You don't hit a nail with a hammer, for the sake of hitting a nail with a hammer. If you're trying to do something - and this holds true for just about anything - then you need a motive to do it. You need some kind of purpose that drives that attempt. You need to have a reason to succeed. Because without a reason to succeed, the reasons NOT to succeed have no opposition.
If you have no reason to do something, then you don't need a reason to NOT do it. When you say you don't want to do something, or don't want to try something, some people are fond of asking, "Why not?" - but you don't need a why not, if there isn't a why in the first place. It's like needing to explain why you're not going to go and sit, in the middle of a closed car park, with nothing there, when you don't have any reason to do it. Who needs to explain why not, when there's no reason why?
So, why not stay sober? Well, there are any number of answers to that. But if you don't have an answer to the question, "Why stay sober?", it's almost irrelevant - even the most pathetic answer to the question will be enough to tip the scale. If you have no weight on the side of staying sober, then the slightest weight on the side of giving up can be enough to tip it against you.
Finding a motive is important.
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