God granted me some serenity

I have been struggling lately with feeling irritable, controlling, and just not very serene. That has shown up in my life in a desire to want to "save other people," including a couple of sponsees who are going through some rough times. Now, intellectually I know very well that I can't save anyone's ass but my own, and I have to depend upon Higher Power to do that. So, I've known all along that Higher Power was trying to teach me something and I was just waiting for the lesson to be revealed -- driving a few people bonkers in the meantime, not the least of which was myself.

As I was walking this morning, I prayed the Prayer of St. Francis -- asking to be used as an instrument of my Higher Power -- and the Serenity Prayer -- as I was going over the Serenity Prayer in my head ... I had an epiphany -- I cannot change my sponsees, their behavior, the outcome of their behaviors, their thoughts, committment to recovery -- NOTHING. The worrying I do is fruitless. Higher Power has a plan and I can accept it and embrace it. If Higher Power chooses and finds it fitting I will be used as an instrument of peace and understanding in these women's lives. I just have to show up and work with them through the steps, and get out of Higher Power's way. That's all.

So, as I began to give thanks for that revelation and other blessings in my life, I began to recognize the presence of gratitude in my life is a form of a power greater than myself. Living in gratitude, expressing fervent and sincere gratitude -- these things lift me up, elevate my mood, give me a new outlook on life, empower me, cause me to walk tall (or as tall as I can at 5'1) and with a smile on my face. That is a great power with which I have to face the day!

An answer to my letter

I was lying in bed yesterday afternoon next to my husband who is sick with the flu, thankfully present and feeling the comfort of being next to him. My SLAA text was next to the bed and I opened it up to start reading. No surprise, it opened to the chapter on withdrawal, which I have been reading like a fiend lately. And, in answer to my letter to my HP yesterday morning, my eyes fell onto these words:

And now you are there, and withdrawal is upon you. What are some of the dangers involved in going through it? What is the experience likely to bring you? How can you survive the inevitable temptations to slide back into old patterns?

The dangers can be described as being of two types. The first type involves the dangers inherent in the inner process itself. The second involves dangers stemming from outside yourself which can make it seem impossible for you to go through withdrawal, and can influence you to abort it.

Perhaps the greatest inner danger comes from finding yourself face-to-face with the unknown. It is one thing to make a decision to withdraw when the painful stimulus of a recent addictive episode is still fresh. It is quite another thing to be open to withdrawal, not as a reaction to a specific addictive situation, but as a response to a recognizable life-pattern of addiction. Yet this larger perspective on the withdrawal experience is crucial if it is to be endured. What we have found is that once we have recognized certain bottom-line behavior which we know is addictive for us, and refrain from acting out in these "bottom- line" ways on a daily basis, we then discover numerous habits and traits of behavior and personality that have been addiction-related.

The chapter goes on to talk about how in withdrawal we discovered many behaviors that surrounded and promoted our addictions, but had been covered by the intensity of acting out. It also talks about the ways we dealt with this new life -- doing the simple things like paying the bills and taking a shower, going to work. Then it says:

The purpose of all this was not to clutter our day with activity. Most of us needed rest and solitude just as much as we needed other tasks, personal contacts and responsibilities. We were, within ourselves, expending as much energy as most people do who hold full-time jobs and maintain active family lives. In fact, most of us were "working" far harder than we ever had before. After all, we were working at standing still, at freeing ourselves from the tentacled clasp of a frightful addiction which had driven us to such a pitch of self-destroying activity. Simply not doing it took tremendous effort. We were suspending, for the moment, our very real fears concerning the outcome of all this by attending to those tasks immediately at hand. We were living in the immediate present, and discovering that we could indeed make it through an hour, or a morning (mourning!), or a day. And we were discovering that there was a joy to be had in successfully negotiating our way through each twenty-four hour period.

We found that the most healing antidote to the gnawing pain of our struggles and doubts was to turn over any questions concerning the outcome of our withdrawal to God, or to whatever Power we felt was helping us to abstain from our old patterns.

Through all of this we became, one day at a time, available to ourselves. By the simple act of "standing still," we inaugurated a relationship with ourselves based on growing self-honesty, trust, and intimacy. Now we knew that our goal in withdrawal was to lay the foundation for personal wholeness. How this would translate into personal relationships or careers, we did not know. But what we did know was that the externals would eventually develop around this inner foundation of wholeness, and come to reflect our inner state. We were able to embrace this feeling of our growing capacity for wholeness, and leave specific outcomes to God. This shift in our attitude eased the sense of existential crisis.

As I have mentioned in recent writings -- in my early days of recovery, throughout my countless relapses, I have read these words in the Withdrawal Chapter again and again. But now, at this phase of my recovery, they sing to me like a song and I can hear them. I can hear them, because I am not drunk, because I am not absent. I am right here ... open to the process of true withdrawal from this disease, willing to endure every uncomfortable feeling and thought that arises, willing to sit in the quietness of this vast hole and trust.

Thanks for being here to listen as I have walked through every stage of this process one day at a time for four years to get to this point today. It’s by no means the end, only finally, a beginning.

It was easy in the beginning to wonder why it was important to read literature and go to meetings and make phone calls. These days the answer seems so simple. These are the ways that my HP speaks to me.

Breathing deeply inward

There has been a monumental shift inside me. I am sorting it all out, trying to sit with it, soak it in and not escape it. Prayers have been answered, things have clicked. I can feel it. I can't describe it, nor am I trying to "overreact" to it. No one is ever "cured," in my opinion of the disease of addiction. However, as it has manifested itself in me, Sex and Love Addiction seems to have surrendered to the will of my Higher Power. For the first time in years, I feel as if that ever present threat and ever present fear have been lifted. Yes, occassionally, I'll see remnants of it, but nothing a little "This too shall pass" or a "God, this one is yours," prayer doesn't help.

But that's not even the most monumental part. I feel. I feel pain, sadness, loneliness, nervousness, excitement, frustration, hope and more.

AND

I know that pride and ego cometh before the fall, so again I am very cautious to recognize this all as a gigantic, perfect gift from God, and to recognize that the solution still rests in living life ONE DAY AT A TIME. I am thankful for these days of reprieve, for this glimpse into the world of sanity and feeling, for the sobbing tears that have flowed, for the understanding that has settled in, for the desire to absorb my recovery literature and talk with other addicts and to do service ... all to hold on to these moments.

Not long ago, maybe a couple of weeks ago, I kept coming across readings that alluded to the fact that too often we are not thankful enough for our sobriety. They struck me and resonated with me. Had I focused on my slips, on my temptations, on the little thoughts that slipped inside my head a couple of times a day? Or had I focused on the miracle that today was a sober day, thank you, God? In a recent telemeeting someone shared about how his therapist had picked up a blank sheet of paper and put one little black dot in the middle. He asked the patient, "What do you see?" The guy said, "A little black dot." The therapist said ... "What about everything around that dot, all this white space?" Clearly the message was, there is more to life than the things we focus on and I do have a choose on where I choose to put my focus. And today I choose to focus my attention on gratitude for my Higher Power, and everyone who has been a part of my recovery -- both in and out of progam -- who serve as angels who have brought me to this place of sobriety.

Living one day at a time, in gratitude.

Really? This was part of a plan?

I had the opportunity this morning to read the chapter on withdrawal as part of the work I am doing with a sponsee this morning, and it felt like it was something I had never read before. Sure, a couple of the phrases were familiar -- but it seems like today I was reading it for the first time with an open and sane mind.

It was very helpful for me to read that withdrawal comes to different people in different ways. I have struggled and exposed myself to a lot of self-hatred because it seems that it took me so long to "get it" in this program. Other people set their bottom lines and stuck to them, while I set them and broke them again and again. Even though I "kept coming back" to the program ... I also kept going back to my addiction. At times I thought "What's the use?"

The chapter on withdrawal says that some people come to withdrawal by exposing their addict behaviors to their friends and family (or being exposed), while others quit cold turkey. Still others -- including myself -- come to withdrawal -- in a gradual process. As the book describes it ... " Some of us approached withdrawal gradually, chipping away at obvious problem areas. Even marginal success in doing so increased our awareness of other aspects of the addictive pattern that we really hadn't known were there. This process of increasing awareness led inevitably to a final surrender of the whole addictive pattern, and thus we were launched into withdrawal, and sexual emotional sobriety ...

"... by the time we let the concept of withdrawal into our thinking, the addiction was not reliably delivering the oblivion or pleasure we sought so ardently. More and more energy had to be poured into the emotional and sexual activities just to break even, let alone "go to the moon." It was as though an inner voice was saying, as we embarked on each new sexual or romantic episode, "Wherever I'm 'going' with this new face, or body, or mind, I've already 'been there' a thousand times before!"

What? I could never have accepted this in early recovery -- that even though I wasn't completely sober right away ... I was still working toward recovery. Instead, I just kept beating myself up, searching for more ways to cause myself pain so that I could soothe that pain by acting out ... and the cycle goes.

But, the SLAA text says, "Of course, to speak of "ways" of entering withdrawal from active sex and love addiction is a bit misleading, because we are not really the conscious architects of how we get there."

Oh? You mean I was powerless over how this whole thing progressed? I'm aghast!

Again, it's not as if I haven't read these words dozens of times -- every time I would relapse and go back into my disease (a path I would never advocate if I WERE the architect of this plan) I read them again, praying for the pain and hurt and obession to just PLEASE go away. But I think I was so "drunk" during those times that I couldn't find that stillness I needed to really hear what was being said. My life is progressing exactly as it needs to.

I think the words that stood out most to me in the reading were these: "You have been hiding or postponing this pain for a long time now, yet you have never been able to lastingly outrun it. You need to go through withdrawal in order to become a whole person. You need to meet yourself."


Well, I'll be darned, if that isn't exactly what I've been trying to do ... become a whole person ... to relate to myself from a state of wholeness.


Thanks be to God for all these spiritual awakenings I've been having lately.

Burden of extremes

I had a bit of an Aha! moment, as Oprah calls them, yesterday during an Al-Anon meeting. I had just come from a session at which my therapist told me for the first time, "Self-esteem is a choice." I was still deciding if I believed that, when someone read this reading from "Hope for Today."

"Before (getting into recovery), I always compared myself to others, particularly my family members, and vowed to be better than them. I sought the elation of winning and wanted to be praised. My constant comparing and competing gradually edged most people out of my life. Ultimately I was not even good enough for myself, an attitude that led me to harsh self-abuse.
As I attended meetings, I gradually learned about the concepts of balance and perspective. I listened as other members shared about their mistakes and character defects. Their reactions to them -- self-acceptance, making amends, and patience -- showed me there are different ways to behave in the world. ...
In studying the steps with my sponsor, especially the 4th and 5th steps, I realized that beneath my extreme competitiveness lurks the true nature of the problem -- pride and fear along with a sense of inadequacy. I'm afraid of not being liked, of making mistakes in front of others, of being vulnerable. In short, I'm afraid of being human.
Today I know that in trying to be "better than," I am actually diminishing my opportunities for fun and spontaneity. I'm isolating myself from those very people I wish to invite closer to my heart. I'm putting myself in competition with my Higher Power. In battling God's will for me, I risk losing the thing I really want to win -- personal recovery."

Wowza, wowza, wowza! So many times I have shared my feelings of being "less than" in almost every situation in life. Yesterday I realized that one of the reasons I feel that way is because I have had the idea that if I am not "better than" someone else, I must be less than. I have constantly been "battling" not only all these people around me, but also my Higher Power to be "right" and to be "good" and "best." And having fallen short of those unattainable goals, I have participated in all forms of self-hatred and abuse, operating with no sense of equality and acceptance -- either of myself or others.

This is powerful stuff for me and I am thankful to God that I was able to be at that meeting and that my heart was ready to hear this message. Truth be told, I didn't catch all of the reading in the meeting ... but I caught enough that I knew I needed to go back and read it again, and enough to write in my notebook -- "All this time I've been feeling less than, while trying to be "better than" others. I have no sense of equality." I look forward to having a different perspective and moving forward as I pray for this burden of extremes to be lifted.

Promises kept

Day after day, the Promises of this program are being revealed to me and I am so grateful. I would say, “About damn time,” but I know it has taken all these days and will take all the days of my life for the miracle of recovery to show its full glory in my life. My impatience with “When am I going to get well!” passed some time ago and I learned to live one day at a time, realizing that I am on a journey, not running a race.

Today’s reminder of my disease was a rough one, but worth every anxious moment. It came when I opened up my e-mail and found a note from E. -- the very first person I acted out with in my marriage. If you want to read more about him -- you can click here or here. There were many more extramarital affairs and anonymous sex partners that followed E., but he holds particularly painful memories of how desperate and dark my life became just before the disease of sexual addiction knocked me into recovery and my journey upward from the bottom of hell began.

My immediate reaction to seeing the e-mail was terror and physical illness. My head was spinning and I was uncertain of what to do this surprise “innocuous” note, when I looked at the clock and saw that it was time for me to leave for a noon meeting. Once I got on the train to go to the meeting, I said the Serenity Prayer and then a prayer thanking God for reminding me of just how excruciatingly painful my addiction can be and for giving me the opportunity to go to a recovery meeting.

At the meeting, we read about the slogans, “One Day at a Time,” “Easy Does It,” “This Too Shall Pass,” and others that were very helpful to me. I came back to the office, deleted the e-mail and all those feelings of anxiety and sickness and worry are now gone.

It’s not one of the recovery slogans, but Dr. King’s words … “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I’m free at last.” come to mind. I will never be “cured” from this disease, but it feels monumental to no longer be a slave to it. I can remember just four years ago that despite his abusive nature and the horrible way I would feel after seeing or even talking to the man who wrote me this morning, I would still get in my car and drive myself kicking and screaming to see him again. Today, thanks to my recovery program and my Higher Power, I had control of my life (Promise #1), felt dignity and respect for myself (Promise #2) and expressed thanks for what has been given to me, what has been taken away and what has been left behind (Promise #12).

Things are different

A woman shared today at a meeting how different her life was today than it was a year ago. Mine too, I thought! In fact, my life feels a lot different than it did just a couple of months ago. I think the antidepressants are helping, as is having a job and getting out of the house more.

But my attitude is also different and one of the things I attribute that to is I have recently started helping two other women in SLAA work their recovery programs. I was hesitant to do it at first. Given the fact that I always feel I am not good enough and also worried that I would be a hypocrite -- giving them all sorts of advice when I wasn't sticking to my own bottom lines -- I almost passed the opportunity up. But, I prayed about it, and decided to say yes. It really is making a difference in my life. In addition to wanting to continue my recovery, I also don't want to act out because I want to continue to help these two women.

Still, I think there's something even deeper going on ... I'm beginning to truly see what it means to turn my will and my life over to my Higher Power. My husband told me on Tuesday that he's going out of town for a few days in a couple of weeks. That happens to be the same time that one of my former acting out partners will be IN town and staying at a hotel just a five-minute drive away. You can imagine that my addict went into "party" mode at the thought of having three days to do nothing but run wild. But instead of picking up the phone first thing the next morning and calling that acting out partner, I asked God, "Please just help me not tell him today." And every day since then I've done the same thing. I haven't told him yet.

Tonight two of my girlfriends were supposed to come over for a get together. The weather was bad and we had to cancel, creating the perfect opportunity to reschedule for one of the night's my husband will be out of town. Then a service opportunity opened up for me in one of my fellowship programs for another night. So, God is taking care of me, I can see it and I'm acknowledging it.

A weight lifted

About four years ago, maybe three, I wrote a letter to my stepfather asking him to tell me why he had sexually abused me for 10 years of my life. I told him that I was suffering through depression and absolute hell because of what I went through. He wrote back and said that he was very sick during that period of time, to please let him die in peace (not tell family -- i.e. please continue the lie), God had forgiven him he hoped that I could too. Not long after that, I made the decision to cut contact with him in order to "take care of myself." During these period of years, I have seen him at a few family occassions and talked to him now and then, but overall the contact has been minimal. Still, I have lived with this underlying guilt and frustration that cutting contact with him made me feel even further abnormal than I already was, and that I was a bad daughter and I was causing friction in the family. (All of these were feelings I had, by the way, about my abuse. That I had to lie about it in order not to cause discord and separation in my family, that I was always the "bad" daughter who held a secret that could hurt my family so badly.) I have always felt "less than" to the point that I think sometimes I should have worn (and sometimes still should put it on) a t-shirt with a big < on it. Now having a father (he raised me from 9 months) who was alive, but dying, who I didn't talk to and had not resolved past issues with just compounded my feelings about myself in the family and in the world around me.

Fast forward to Tuesday night when the leader of the Al-Anon meeting I attend read from Courage to Change, March 15 -- a passage which says forgiveness is not something to be used for power or as a weapon, forgiveness is something that allows me to see that I am on equal footing with all children of God. "We all do good and noble things at times; on other occassions we may offend. I have no right to judge punish or absolve anyone. When I behave self-righteously, I'm the one who suffers -- I separate myself from my fellow human beings, focus on others, and keep busy with hateful and negative thoughts. By taking this attitude, I tell myself that I am a victim, and I remain a victim. The most forgiving thing I can do is to remember that my job is not to judge others, but to think and behave in a way that makes me feel good." In the thought for today it goes on to say, "I don't know the motives or circumstances that cause another's behavior, I do know that when I hold on to resentments and blame, I occupy my spirit with bitterness. I will find a more nurturing way to fill myself up."

This reading hit me so completely, lifting the burden of forgiveness off my shoulders. Forgiveness really only means acceptance of my stepfather as a human being, a child of God, who was also a sex addict (with the mental disease of pedophilia), whose behavior, motives I don't know. And it's not mine to know. He has a Higher Power who is ultimately the one who offers true forgiveness. I don't have to carry around that burden any longer. Leave it to God. Wow, what a relief. In working my fourth step, I have learned that as long as I hold on to the resentment -- blaming him for my disease and overall dysfunction -- I separate myself from my own Higher Power and for my own accountability. Certainly there are those who would say... "You have every right to blame him." Yes, I have every right, but blaming him for my life today, only keeps me stuck in the past, and I want so desparately to move forward.

Does that mean that I renew the relationship with my stepfather? I don't know. But I feel some release in my heart, hopefully enough to let go of him, give him to his Higher Power, and focus all that energy that has consumed me in my resentments and worry and hurt and anger, on the soul that still has a chance to live, free of ties to the disease of yet another addict.

A great answer

Last night as I was sitting in my SLAA meeting of one doing some reading, the thought came to me: First, in order to turn my life over to my HP, I have to build trust through building a relationship. How do I build a relationship? The EXACT same way I built a relationship with the people I acted out with, especially those I "fell in love" with. To build a relationship with my HP, I talk to him all the time, I write to him all the time, I think about him all the time, I make every decision with him in mind. My HP has to be at the forefront of my mind. I'm not suggesting that we become addicted to our HP, rather I am saying that we (or at least I) have shown ourselves capable of doing the things necessary to build a relationship, and to turn our lives over to "something." Up until I entered recovery, and even during relapses, I sure knew how to turn my life over to someone else. I think I might be able to figure out how to turn my life over to my HP.

Recovery is a spiritual program. Filling that God-shaped hole with something other than addictive obsessions is crucial for my recovery to work.

Today is not the day

Today I made it to an afternoon online meeting for SLAA and had the unique occassion to reach out to a woman who was going through a rough time. Our childhoods were similar as were some of the deep rooted beliefs about our damaged selves. I had never talked to this woman from half a world away before. She told me she struggled with the notion that she would never be able to have a love relationship because she was "damaged." She could at least accept that maybe she was wrong and that miracles do happen. I know myself that there are plenty of things I thought would never happen in my life that have and that I really can't predict the future. But I was able to share with her something that is ringing in my ears tonight. I reminded her that ours is a program of living one day at a time, being in the present. I encouraged her (this is a bit of a paraphrase) that instead of spending her day thinking "I'm never going to find a man," to say to herself, "Today is not the day for me to share my life with someone else. Today is my day to work on connecting to the part of me that was lost."

I firmly believe that the one reason that the 12 step programs work is because in helping others we are able to help ourselves. I believe that God gives us the opportunity to help someone else so that we can say the words we needed to hear. I had no real reason to go to that online meeting this afternoon. I wasn't Jonesing for a fix, in fact I probably went because I had some step work to do for a meeting with my sponsor tomorrow and I haven't finished it. Procrastination in any form is better than no procrastination at all. But my point is ... there are no coincidences. I needed to hear those somewhat unspoken words that came with me saying to this woman "Today is not the day ..." What I heard back for me ... focus on today, today is not the day when everything is going to happen, but today is the day when something is going to happen, be here.

One of the best gifts God has given me recently is my new dog. She's a great companion. I've had to learn to pay attention to her, to read her body language, to figure out what her barks and howls mean. And she keeps me in better shape -- I walk with her two to four times a day and when I sit at the computer for too long she comes and starts nudging my elbow and whining and howling a bit to let me know she needs something.

Today is not the day for everything to be right in the world. It's not the day for me to get a new job. It's not the day for me to do get everything done that I need to do. But it is the day for me to cook a nice supper for my husband, for me to not get angry because he's already an hour later than I had hoped, for me to take care of my dog, and for me to help someone else, so that I could help myself.

Today is also a day for me to feel some changes stirring inside me. I'm not going to project what they are, because I can't predict the future. But I will say that where there was no hope just a few weeks back, I am beginning to feel that there is hope that I will get my life back, that I am getting my life back, that I am living my life in its present form ... one day at a time.

To all my blogger buddies out there ... I am still having computer issues and haven't had the chance to read like I would like to lately. Also, the new antidepressant I'm taking has me both focusing better and not focusing as well ... Don't ask me what that means, but it does mean that I'm not getting to the blogs I like to read and the lives and recovery partners I like to keep up with. But I'll be back to visit. I hope you are all well.

After Christmas check in

I've been welcoming a new dog into my family and my computer is on the blink ... so I haven't had much chance to write. But I wanted to check in and say ...I know why I keep coming back to recovery, why I keep working to learn about myself and learn how to deal with my feelings. It is because every now and then, I can see the light of day, I can feel hope and I know that it is only because I keep coming back.

The most recent example of hope I've found is in realizing that even though I've been at this for a long time, my journey toward recovery has only just began. One of the first things I learned in recovery was that I had to replace my old addictive behaviors with new behaviors that helped me fill the God-shaped hole that I had been filling with useless and demeaning extramarital relationships. Though I took this lesson into my head, it has been one of the hardest things to actually put to practice.

When I would give up one addiction, I always wanted to go to another -- no sex? OK love, no "love"? OK food, or codependency or any number of things. But .. it seems this lesson is getting closer to reality as my relationship grows closer with my husband, enjoying being present with him and in some ways getting to know him better. And now I am finding joy in getting to know our new dog and playing with her and opening my heart to her as well. I can tell already, she is going to be a great joy in my life and also fill my life with plenty of work as well! And if any "strange" man tries to cross her path ... they are going to face one ferocious bark!