I'm not in the best way. (Here is where I edited out three paragraphs of dwelling on my difficulties. In short, we moved and I lost contact with recovery support and bishop. Since we've been here I haven't reconstructed my recovery network or contacted the bishop. On top of that, I've reached my max with schooling, teaching, and home fixit issues like leaks/water damage and my son almost melting our microwave...yeah, smoke stench. In all that word vomit, I came up with a comparison of recovery work to a bank account, and that's what I'd rather have this post be about.)
If recovery is a bank account--recovery acts coming in minus addiction acts going out--I've been slowly headed towards bankruptcy since we moved. For example, after moving I didn't go to recovery meetings for three weeks (in my defense, my wife specifically asked me not to go so I could stay home and help her). Near the end of that time my wife and I had the most serious fight of our marriage. For about three days a cloud of angry silence brooded over the house, and I thought a lot of angry thoughts. I think I've mentioned somewhere about how that resolved, but that's a sign to me that not all is well in my recovery. Also, yesterday was a bad day for my recovery. (Time for honesty...you, blog, will stand in for my sponsor and bishop, won't you? Thanks.) I broke some of my personal rules, some of which were worse than others--rather than working the whole time on school work, I read news articles about Apple's new tech, watched some YouTube videos about video games, and clicked on an image search when it wasn't really essential. Actually...let's keep it really real. It was completely unnecessary to click on, I "accidentally" saw a thumbnail picture with nudity in it, and I should lose my 8 month sobriety date for it.
Back to that after I pursue this idea of the bank account. So the basic idea would be that recovery happens when we have a positive number in our account, and addiction happens when there's a negative number. I like this idea better than just "acting out = not in recovery" and "everything else = recovery." But let me get specific with a table, cuz I'm into that kinda thing:
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Deposits to Recovery Account
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Withdrawals from Account
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Actively avoiding lust hits. Progressive victory over lust.
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The reluctant, unavoided, or actively pursued lust hit.
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Reaching out to fellow addicts in a moment of weakness.
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Unmanaged anger or resentment for real or imagined wrongs.
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| Participating in recovery meetings. |
Spending time or money on selfish wants instead of needs.
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Studying addiction recovery materials and work on 12 steps.
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Allowing mental fantasies to run wild, whether sexual or
not.
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Actively engaging in scripture study and prayer.
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Using sex with spouse as a release for sexual desires.
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Thinking about and serving family members and others.
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Justifying inappropriate actions instead of owning them.
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Daily checkins with spouse or sponsor.
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Acting out sexually.
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If I look at it this way, I'm averaging about 2 1/2 out of 7 on the deposits side and 4 out of 7 on the withdrawals side. Yeah. Sinking ship.
So what do I do from here? The first step is this blog post, admitting to myself and others that I'm not "in recovery," including giving up my sobriety date. Secondly, I need to reach out to my wife and start our daily checkins again. Also, I need to strengthen my recovery network: I need to talk with the bishop, exchange phone numbers with other guys in my ARP group, and contact my brother more often. I'm still trying to wrap my head around why I have such a hard time keeping up my scripture study and personal prayer, but I think that needs to be a part of this recovery self-intervention as well. I've been disturbed/upset by things I've read on the WOPA side of the LDS Addiction Recovery Website, so I need to stop checking some of those sites.
Ok. I feel much less disturbed. If I'm being honest with myself, I haven't had consistent progressive victory over lust during the last 8 months anyways. So giving up my recovery date, even though I didn't technically act out, will give me a chance to make the date mean what I want it to mean. And once I start making more recovery "deposits" I'm sure I'll be feeling even better. I encourage anyone reading this to make a personalized list of things that are deposits or withdrawals for you and see how you're doing. I'm planning on encouraging my wife do it. Just putting things in these terms was a pretty big wakeup call.
This is a really good thing to recognize. I know how much it sucks to give up a recovery date. I've had to do it before, even though I didn't technically act out, at least not in my usual ways, I eventually realized that some of my other actions were subconscious ways of acting out and I needed to reevaluate things and my recovery. I've been struggling with a lot of my daily stuff as well, scripture reading and prayer. I think a small portion of it, at least with the prayer, is because I don't feel worthy Heavenly Father's time or help with anything, even though I know that's not true. It's hard, but all of this you're doing will be really good. I wish you all the luck and look forward to hearing any updates and hearing about your progress, I know you can do it.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how I've come to learn more about myself than I ever have before. It sounds like you've made similar discoveries about yourself--I think its encouraging that we can pull ourselves up and learn about ourselves and our relationship with others and our Heavenly Father. Thank you for your support!
DeleteThis is so helpful! My hubby's a recovering porn addict. He's currently under the online therapy program called GreatnessAhead and I feel like he still needs my support, knowledge and utmost understanding for him to eventually eliminate porn from his system. Resources like this are of great help. Thanks.
ReplyDelete