Post by geoff on May 15, 2006 22:46:05 GMT -5
Well, I was going to post to celebrate 500 days of recovery and sobriety this past Saturday, but I got wrapped up doing other things, and procrastinated. <sigh> But here we go finally.
I've recently put together a few bits of info and it finally dawned on me why I think I've had some measure of success, and I'd like to share that.
Make no mistake I have no psychological training - I'm just making this up as I go along, but it allows me to understand my reactions to various things. If anything I say runs counter to how you understand yourself or your loved one(s), all I can say is I don't claim this to be perfectly general... (nor generally perfect!)
I've never liked the paradigm of the "inner child". It just seems too 1970's kitch-pop-psychological for me. Nevertheless, I think it does serve a purpose now. I've come to the conclusion that the "inner-child" is pretty danged close to identical to what I've called my "inner-addict". I think for us addicts, our "inner child" stops developing around the equivalent of age 3 or 4, and I'll get to why that age is important in a second. For whatever reason all of us addicts (in any addiction I think) have made conscious or unconscious decisions to turn our backs on the stressors in life, and succumb to the pleasures of the flesh - or at least numbing the flesh. Possibly the first times we used our drugs of choice, we enjoyed the sensation and weren't technically hiding from the stress of life... yet. But soon the inner-toddler-aged-child/addict realized that if calls out for the the "drug" rush or numbing again and it doesn't let up until we satisfy it, then it doesn't have to deal with the painful things in life.
Welcome to the beginnings of addiction... consider yourself the "parent" of a spoiled inner-child.
Have you ever been in a store where a toddler is screaming and crying and throwing fierce tantrum because they can't get what they want? Sure you have. I'll bet you even thought to yourself "I'll never be that kind of parent, I'd tell that little brat 'NO' and that would be the end of it." Tell that to your spoiled brat of an inner-addict that you've created over time. How many times did you tell your inner-addict "no" only to give in later when it started wearing you down with its whining, and moaning and bellyaching?
I've seen it mentioned on some other web site that really deals with alchoholism more than SA, that the addict portion of the brain is the simplistic low-level lizard-brain area that feels pleasure and pain, knows hunger, knows the fight or flight response etc. But it can't understand logic. And that's an important distinction. I think this lizard-brain is what I'm calling the inner-toddler-child-addict-whatever. Its extremely important to really get the bit about it not understanding logic. That hypothetical toddler I mentioned above.... it doesn't understand logic either. You parents out there have probably tried to reason with your young children to get them to do something, or stop crying, or let go of a toy, or whatever... did it work? Oh, they may have watched your lips move, and made the "OK" noises like they understood and agreed, but 5 seconds later, they're right back at it like the words went in one ear and out the other. So it is with the inner-addict.
I know there are addicts here who have talked about not being sure if they really want to quit, or not feeling like they've hit bottom, or not internalizing that they have to stop. Those folks - IMHO - are trying to get the inner-toddler/addict to listen to reason, and expecting them to agree. We're expecting the inner-child/inner-addict to understand morality - that porn is bad - when all it understands is pleasure/pain. We're all pretty much grown, we're all able to make logical decisions, so why doesn't it stick? Its because we're expecting the child to listen to logic. They don't. They can't. All we can do as real-life parents is pick the child up, and walk away from the situation. Make no mistake they're likely to throw a fit - especially if you're changing from giving in to the child's demands, to standing up to them. But if you want to be a good parent, or if you want to be a recovering addict, you've got to walk away. Doing anything else is NOT AN OPTION. That was my mantra in the earlier part of my recovery. Yes I wanted to cave in something fierce, but I knew (without really understanding all this stuff) that if I wanted to be in recovery, then there was no other choice but to let my inner toddler scream his lungs out and pray that he finally gets tired. I didn't understand why then, but now I understand that logically knowing the motivation of the inner-addict can make it alot easier to tolerate the screaming. That's basically how I got past the withdrawal phase I guess.
The other phase of recovery as I understand it today, is rebuilding and relearning. I'm afraid I don't have time to write this up tonite, so I'll just do that tomorrow.
Hopefully I wasn't so tired that the above was too nonsensical......
Take care all,
geoff
I've recently put together a few bits of info and it finally dawned on me why I think I've had some measure of success, and I'd like to share that.
Make no mistake I have no psychological training - I'm just making this up as I go along, but it allows me to understand my reactions to various things. If anything I say runs counter to how you understand yourself or your loved one(s), all I can say is I don't claim this to be perfectly general... (nor generally perfect!)
I've never liked the paradigm of the "inner child". It just seems too 1970's kitch-pop-psychological for me. Nevertheless, I think it does serve a purpose now. I've come to the conclusion that the "inner-child" is pretty danged close to identical to what I've called my "inner-addict". I think for us addicts, our "inner child" stops developing around the equivalent of age 3 or 4, and I'll get to why that age is important in a second. For whatever reason all of us addicts (in any addiction I think) have made conscious or unconscious decisions to turn our backs on the stressors in life, and succumb to the pleasures of the flesh - or at least numbing the flesh. Possibly the first times we used our drugs of choice, we enjoyed the sensation and weren't technically hiding from the stress of life... yet. But soon the inner-toddler-aged-child/addict realized that if calls out for the the "drug" rush or numbing again and it doesn't let up until we satisfy it, then it doesn't have to deal with the painful things in life.
Welcome to the beginnings of addiction... consider yourself the "parent" of a spoiled inner-child.
Have you ever been in a store where a toddler is screaming and crying and throwing fierce tantrum because they can't get what they want? Sure you have. I'll bet you even thought to yourself "I'll never be that kind of parent, I'd tell that little brat 'NO' and that would be the end of it." Tell that to your spoiled brat of an inner-addict that you've created over time. How many times did you tell your inner-addict "no" only to give in later when it started wearing you down with its whining, and moaning and bellyaching?
I've seen it mentioned on some other web site that really deals with alchoholism more than SA, that the addict portion of the brain is the simplistic low-level lizard-brain area that feels pleasure and pain, knows hunger, knows the fight or flight response etc. But it can't understand logic. And that's an important distinction. I think this lizard-brain is what I'm calling the inner-toddler-child-addict-whatever. Its extremely important to really get the bit about it not understanding logic. That hypothetical toddler I mentioned above.... it doesn't understand logic either. You parents out there have probably tried to reason with your young children to get them to do something, or stop crying, or let go of a toy, or whatever... did it work? Oh, they may have watched your lips move, and made the "OK" noises like they understood and agreed, but 5 seconds later, they're right back at it like the words went in one ear and out the other. So it is with the inner-addict.
I know there are addicts here who have talked about not being sure if they really want to quit, or not feeling like they've hit bottom, or not internalizing that they have to stop. Those folks - IMHO - are trying to get the inner-toddler/addict to listen to reason, and expecting them to agree. We're expecting the inner-child/inner-addict to understand morality - that porn is bad - when all it understands is pleasure/pain. We're all pretty much grown, we're all able to make logical decisions, so why doesn't it stick? Its because we're expecting the child to listen to logic. They don't. They can't. All we can do as real-life parents is pick the child up, and walk away from the situation. Make no mistake they're likely to throw a fit - especially if you're changing from giving in to the child's demands, to standing up to them. But if you want to be a good parent, or if you want to be a recovering addict, you've got to walk away. Doing anything else is NOT AN OPTION. That was my mantra in the earlier part of my recovery. Yes I wanted to cave in something fierce, but I knew (without really understanding all this stuff) that if I wanted to be in recovery, then there was no other choice but to let my inner toddler scream his lungs out and pray that he finally gets tired. I didn't understand why then, but now I understand that logically knowing the motivation of the inner-addict can make it alot easier to tolerate the screaming. That's basically how I got past the withdrawal phase I guess.
The other phase of recovery as I understand it today, is rebuilding and relearning. I'm afraid I don't have time to write this up tonite, so I'll just do that tomorrow.
Hopefully I wasn't so tired that the above was too nonsensical......
Take care all,
geoff
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_