Disturbance

I'm not going to tell you my record for number of years that I've avoided going to the dentist, but I'll let you know that it's somewhere between "a few" and "several." Many of us desperately want to avoid discomfort and pain, even at the expense of healthy habits, healthy relationships, and healthy teeth.

We're like pools of water trying to maintain a calm surface...and life loves throwing rocks at us. Whenever someone we like ignores us, or when we accidentally offend a friend, or when the door handle comes off in our hand, we become disturbed. We have a number of solutions to the ripples that inevitably rock our world--like my approach to dentistry, we avoid things. Sometimes we try to counteract the unpleasantness by lashing out (road rage) or numbing (the entire "Thank Goodness It's Friday" mentality, which is basically code for "now I can try again to numb my problems out of existence").

Life throws rocks into our otherwise peaceful existence.

I've been thinking a lot over the last few months about something my sponsor told me about disturbance:

We become disturbed to the degree that we're broken. 

In other words, if I'm upset about something, it's not the thing I'm upset about that's the problem. The problem is that I have some deficiency or personality flaw. Let me give you an example:

One day I publicly embarrassed a student. She and her friend were on the gym team, and I asked, "does the fact that you're in class and she's not mean that you didn't make the cut and she did?" A dumb thing to say, although I didn't mean it maliciously. She was apparently feeling pretty sensitive about it, and ever after that day she and her friend hated me. I even took them into my office and apologized, explaining my side of it. At the end of the semester I got a surly email from one of them, complaining about her grade. I (believed that I) honestly wanted to help her understand, so I sent an email explaining some piece of wisdom. Then she abandoned all thoughts of not-offending-the-grade-giver, and she let me have it. After I read her email I was SO upset. I felt misunderstood, stereotyped, and unfairly attacked. All her faults and weaknesses made me choke on her words--"She was such a half-hearted, flakey, overconfident, entitled student--what a hypocrite that she would attack me without seeing her own shortcomings!" I struggled for days with a desire to write her back, pointing out all these mean things I was thinking about her. I even wanted to justify it as helping her be a better person ("somebody needs to give her a wake-up call"). I'm glad I let it lie.

I can see now that, yes, all those mean things I thought about her were more or less true. However, I was at fault. I was angry because I felt guilty, prideful, insecure, and hypocritical. It was a bad semester--I was knee deep in a secret addiction to pornography, daily lying (mostly through omission) to my wife. I didn't dedicate enough time to my students because I was drowning in other work, acting out, and numbing my guilt. To some degree I knew she was right--I was a broken and hypocritical person. Even though that's so clear to me now, all I could see were her problems (more on this intentional blindness in a future post--I call it the reality distortion field).

Here's where things get tricky. It's easy to look into the distant past and see mistakes like this, but disturbance is around us all the time. I've found myself getting angry, then remembering this idea that I'm at fault if I'm disturbed. I want to yell--"my kid just drew all over himself with a marker! How am I to blame!?" or "That woman, a member of the church, was super immodest! I didn't want her to dress like that, yet I'm super triggered! How am I to blame!?" This indignation is a bad sign. Doesn't it just feel like I'm trying to force the water to be calm?

Instead of focusing on the "originators" of the disturbance, I need to look at myself: "I just yelled at a three-year old for doing something completely predictable and completely non-permanent; what have I done recently that's causing me to feel like lashing out?" or "I--the messed-up addict--am railing against a woman who in all likelihood doesn't understand and is trying to cope with her own problems; what do I need to do to regain my equilibrium, then strengthen my recovery (which has apparently gotten off track)?"

Here's where I edited out a paragraph that was meant for someone else--someone who is disturbed by something I want to defend, and I wanted to force this person to look at their disturbance as a sign that they should be more concerned with their own personality flaws than with this thing. However, I realize that my reason for putting this paragraph in was to lash out and lecture, not deal with my own disturbance. I write this paragraph to acknowledge that I'm a flawed, disturbed individual who needs to be more concerned with my own personality flaws than with this person. 

The solution isn't to try to move my pond out of the way of the rocks. It's not to yell at the rock thrower. It's not to find a way to create ripples that cancel out ones that are already there. There are times when I can figure out how to deal productively with my problems on my own or with the help of others. With addiction, though, there are so many ripples and counter-ripples there's only one real solution. It's to come to Him who commanded the waters--"peace, be still"--and they were calmed.

Job understood this, and he proved how un-broken he is. All his physical possessions were destroyed, his ten children were killed, and he was rejected by his friends and wife. If that's not disturbance, I don't know what is. Still, he said, "Till I die I won't remove my integrity from me" (Job 27:5) and  "I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God" (Job 19:25-26).

That's the kind of pond I want.

Failure is an Event, Not a Person

If recovery is a path with rough, steep sections and smooth, relatively easy parts, I'm pretty sure I'm in a rough, steep part right now. Partly it's because of other pressures (7 days until a move, upcoming teaching, upcoming schooling, family's illness, kid's dental work, car trouble, 4 kids and their propensity for bickering/unhelpfulness/unrequested murals), but partly I'm not sure why. Both me and my wife have been feeling a bit down about our...fill in the blank. Marriage,  parenting, recovery, habits, etc. Basically, I've felt like I'm a failure at this recovery thing. And after my last post, even the sobriety thing is in question. :)

Still, earlier this week I had a tender mercy experience where I got a glimpse of my own recovery.  I went to an ARP meeting for the first time in five months. I've been going regularly to SA meetings during that time, but since I'm moving next week I wanted to go and 1) let everyone there know I didn't just fall off the wagon, and 2) put in a plug for SA, which has been super helpful to my sobriety/recovery. Since I hadn't been in so long, it brought back very clear memories of what I felt like the last time, regardless of all the intervening meetings.

The first time I went to an ARP meeting five-ish months ago, I was slightly nervous, not really sure about what to say, but really impressed with the spirit in the meeting. Sometimes in meetings the last several months I've shared because I feel like I should and that it would be good for me. I end up rambling about random things, then ending awkwardly. Pretty much every meeting I end up feeling that everyone else's share is so much more enlightening and amazing than mine...which I guess is a good thing (I recently heard the advice "stick with the winners.").

It's not only in meetings; throughout the week I'll be trying so hard...then I'll fall flat on my face. I'll come home from a super spiritual, empowering meeting then find myself yelling at my kids. I'll intentionally choose to reach out and call someone in my group, then later find myself making a google image search of an innocuous word, hoping for some kind of immodesty.

Side note: isn't it sad that even with "SafeSearch" on, stuff still comes up? How porn-infused is our culture when almost any word turns up porn? Also, I've since told my sponsor that if I do any Google image search like this I'll consider it a lapse in my sobriety.

Honestly, even the day I went to the meeting I wasn't having that stellar of a day. I'm pretty determined that I'm not going to replace one addiction for another, which has left me grasping for video games, movies, ANY entertainment to escape from my unwillingness to cope with life.

However, I was pleasantly surprised at the meeting that when I shared I felt confident and helpful. I'm pretty sure I rambled, but it seemed like it was from one good thing to another. In any case, it was a clear, powerful feeling, and I feel it was a blessing to have a brief snapshot of the progress of my recovery.

It helps me realize that I may fail a lot, but that doesn't mean I'm a failure. Failure is a thing that happens, not a part of my identity. And not only that, but I HAVE made progress, despite not being able to see it every day.

What is Sobriety?

One of the new terms I've started using since becoming familiar with 12-step programs is "sober"/"sobriety," as in "I've been sexually sober for five and a half months." In my mind it's always been a pretty clear definition; if an alcoholic drinks alcohol they've broken sobriety. If a sex addict has sex (aka orgasm) with self or someone other than spouse, they've broken sobriety. "Sobriety," along with the similar "acting out," seems like a pretty useful measurement when talking about recovery.

However, it isn't as clear-cut as I originally thought. Did you catch the mismatched examples in that last paragraph? One drink of alcohol=sex? I don't think so. It would be more accurate to say one drink of alcohol=one lust hit...but that seems a little unrealistic, right? With immodesty everywhere (especially in hot weather) and lustfulness so widely accepted, surely there must be more to losing sobriety than ogling women in a supermarket?

I recently came across a short SA essay (see what I did there?) entitled, "What is Sex with Self?" It was from someone named Harvey A, who apparently had been sober for 26 years, as of 2010. I'm going to quote from a few paragraphs of it:

"Those people who wonder why they repeatedly relapse might consider that they have never really gotten sober. Yes, they stopped masturbating to orgasm, BUT nothing else changed. Some continued stimulating themselves but not to orgasm. Others continued watching internet pornography and others live in sexual fantasy while letting themselves become aroused. If this isn't 'sex with self,' then what do we call it?...

"What is the solution? Do we itemize each form of sex with ones self? Do we define specifically for each other? Do we merely continue to ignore this problem as a fellowship and just say it is part of progressive victory over lust? No. I do not believe these are the solutions. I believe the solution is in the statement, 'to thine own self be true'....We [discuss with our sponsor, saying] something like this, 'I do such and such behavior to sexually stimulate myself. This is a form of sex with self. If I do this behavior again, I will call it a loss of my sobriety.'"

Progressive victory over lust means we will make mistakes. However, I'm starting to feel that it's easy to stall out and plateau in those victories. It would be nice to just have a checklist of things that are forbidden, but I find myself constantly trying to push whatever boundaries I set for myself. If I really had an attitude of wanting to be true to myself, I would be more sensitive to my own thought processes and desires. Being true to myself is a boundary that resists my desire to push boundaries.

Let me share another way of looking at sobriety that goes along the same lines as what Harvey A. wrote. Here's an excerpt from a personal story in the SA White Book (page 23):

With no more resorting to 'drugs' to avoid the reality of my own emotions, I began to see and feel them. Raw nerve endings of resentment, negativism, anxiety, and fear became exposed. Above all, I think I was afraid of finding out what I was really like on the inside. It wasn't pretty. I discovered that uninsulated by lust, sex, pills, alcohol, or entertainment, I was a very marginal person and would have to begin growing where I had left off at the age of eight. And so the pain began. That's when I saw the truth of another paradox: We have to suffer to get well.

I really have felt those "raw nerve endings" recently. They desperately make me want to numb them with something--video games, ice cream, escapist entertainment, and lusting. It's hard to face my own weaknesses. I wish I could just go on with life. But there aren't any shortcuts in sobriety, and when I find myself trying to avoid the pain, covering it with some kind of medication, that's when I need to question whether I'm actually sober and in recovery. Not only is sobriety not comfortable, but it's painful.

So the next time I'm feeling the lust hunger, I need to work on my reaction. Rather than think about how I can find some loophole and still get lust hits while still maintaining "sobriety," I need to be more in tune with who I am and accept that painful feeling. Will there come a day when I can have sobriety without any pain? I hope so, but for now I need to remember that the pain from not hiding  means I'm sober.



P.S. Last week I wrote about my ultimatum--write in my journal and control my video game use, or face a long-term ban. The first few days of the week things went pretty well--I had solo video game time and used it to increase my productivity. However, I'm sad to say that after those first few days things didn't go very well. I've decided to ban video games for the next four months. I'm going to have to be more specific, but maybe I'll do that in an update to my boundaries. Now that I think of it, I think I'll have to update them anyways when I move in a week and a half (!).