I Am Powerless Over My Character Weaknesses

Alright! I'm going to just dive right in where I was commenting on the Step Into Action step five:

“I was horrified to hear myself recite behaviors and attitudes of a very different person from the one I had hoped to become.”

The memory of my addiction behavior is shame inducing and hard to come to terms with, for sure. But when I think of all the chances I’ve missed to lift others and improve myself, the years of isolation and self-destructive behavior, all the hobbies, skills, relationships I didn’t build on…that’s when I really feel shame and self-loathing. Still, I can’t change my past—it’s set in stone. Thinking of the serenity prayer, I need to accept the things I can’t change (like my “might have been” self) and change the things I can (like my “might be” self).

Step Six

“Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” (emphasis added)

Firstly, I like the ARP version of this better, since it doesn’t make me sound so defective…which I guess technically isn’t incorrect, but still.

One of my many character weaknesses is all-or-nothing thinking. If I can’t be perfect in something then I might as well not do it. “I missed one day of my goal to read the scriptures every day, I might as well give up.” This step is the “all” part of that—I have to be “entirely” ready for “all” of my weaknesses to be removed. Maybe I’m wrong about the all or nothing thinking…maybe it’s just a lack of determination and diligence, looking for an excuse to give up and judge myself. That’s not what this step is. Recovery means I forgive myself for not being perfect and commit to healthy choices regardless of the ebb and flow of my emotions. Rather than perfect surrender, this step is asking for consistent commitment to keep trying to surrender.

“We were looking for rescue, not recovery.”

When I think of rescue, the image pops into my head of being stuck on a housetop in a flood and needing a helicopter crew to save me. It presupposes that I’m powerless over the water, with no hope of living except someone else helping me. I was ready to say this image is incorrect, but I think there's something to it…I'm powerless over my addiction, just like I would be over a raging river. I need the help of the Lord, who is the only one who can help me (like a helicopter crew would be). I tried making the analogy working by saying I need to be willing to hook myself up to the harness rather than expecting others to or cutting corners and just trying to hold on (until I lose my grip when the winds start buffeting me again). That still implies rescue, though, which I don't think is quite right. Still, it's interesting how I started wanting to refute this image but found a fair amount that was accurate.

“We had to change if we were to live a useful, meaningful life…If we could have changed on our own, we would have done it long ago.”

My experience has taught me that I don’t have to change—nobody is making me do it. God won’t. My wife or family can’t. My church can’t. However, if I don’t change I’m going to be stuck in a self-centered, downward-spiraling existence where I hurt those around me while trying desperately and futilely to fill the hole in my soul. I recognized this (to a certain degree) from the beginning of my addiction. I honestly tried to throw away the porn and force myself to not return to it. But it takes more than I’m able to generate on my own to overcome this addiction and become the kind of person who has a useful and meaningful life.

“We found that we were powerless over our character defects in the same way that we were powerless over lust.”

Yes, very much this! I’ve discovered recently that I’m a terrible parent, with or without my addiction. With my addiction I didn’t have as frequent angry outbursts, but I was distant and selfish with my time. Now I go from the extremes of patient and involved to angry monster (we use the term “momster” when my wife is angry at the kids. I wish there were an equivalent for me). I’ve tried changing, willing myself to calm down and be reasonable when the kids kick the ball in the house and shatter their light fixture (true story). I’ve realized I need to treat my anger issue just like I do my addiction—surrender and reach out in prayer, calls to recovery buddies, journal, my wife (unless she’s the momster, which, in fairness, she never was before the trauma I put her through), etc.

Rather than a conclusion, here's a picture. 

Yes, that's a tree growing through the engine block of that car. It's pretty powerless...just like me! :)

Taking Up Residence in Reality

As you may have noticed, I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from posting. In the interest of honesty, let me address what happened. I was making good progress working in and writing about the Step into Action books, but when I tried actually doing the step work I needed to, I ran into problems. That’s not code for admitting a relapse. In fact, I’ve done pretty well at keeping up my recovery (my current sobriety date is from right around my last post—November 28^th). Instead, I struggled getting my step four completely done and shared with my sponsor: having no idea what to write about, taking my time to be complete, losing motivation, focusing on my family and marriage, my sponsor being busy, and me being busy. Eventually I did, though—I wrote a thorough step four that addressed my character weaknesses as well as my most recent acting-out behavior. Now that I’ve shared all that with my sponsor, I’m working on continuing where I left off in my step work. Let’s hope when I get to step eight and nine I don’t drop off again. J

Step into Action Step Five:

 “We began to practice being the same person on the outside as we were on the inside.”

I was about to write that this is what recovery is all about, but then it struck me. This alignment of who we are and who we appear to be isn’t inherently good. I mean, of course honesty and lack of duplicity is good, but it's also possible to give up on recovery and collapse my double lives into the worse of the two. Instead, though, I’m striving to have integrity by admitting the worst in me but embracing the best.

“Living life from a foundation of honesty and transparency was easier and felt better than hiding.”

Note the verb form—“living.” I don’t think this is saying that building a foundation of honesty and transparency is easy, but that once we've done that work it’s easy and more satisfying to maintain. I have seen this, especially as I don’t have to always doubt my recovery and be paranoid of a relapse. I feel like real, long-term recovery is possible. For me, personally. I’ve always believed I need to maintain a healthy level of mistrust of myself, but the way this quote works in my life is that I feel really good knowing that I can trust myself more than I ever have been able to in the past.

There are four good reasons to share our story with another person: perspective, humility, empowerment, and insurance.

That is, I need to share my step four inventory in order to 1) see where I’m still off, 2) feel that I’m not capable of recovering just by myself, 3) gain power over the addiction, and 4) do what those who have found recovery do. I think this list is also true of making daily calls to support friends. The group I’m a part of is really good at encouraging and modeling the daily call. When I call someone or admit my weaknesses to someone who gets it, all four of these benefits come into play.

“[After sharing our story with another,] we no longer needed to swing between grandiosity and despair. We saw that we were actually imperfect and worthwhile members of the human race.”

I love the “imperfect and worthwhile” phrasing—it says to me that I may be deeply flawed, but that doesn’t make me worthless. My flaws don’t define me or my value. That doesn’t mean I can ignore them, but I’m ok. This connects with the recovery paradox of “I can do it only when I accept that I can’t do it.” This quote also reminds me of a Brene Brown idea—we can work through shame when we stand our ground and don’t let it puff us up or shrink us down.

“We began to be more honest about ourselves and to take up residence in reality.”

I love the phrase “take up residence in reality,” implying that I was living in a fantasy world. And I guess I was—a place where I was justified in “taking care of myself” (selfishly acting out), judging others, writhing in self-pity. Where I needed my drug of choice in order to cope with life. Reality, though, is a place where I take responsibility for my problems—self-caused or not—and address my trials head on. This is what recovery is all about.

Member share: “I always strive for completeness, but as the fog clears, I always see more things that should have been included [in my inventory] but weren’t. This narrowing of the path is a wonderful thing to look forward to.”

A recovery buddy (kind of a sponsee) is working towards completing a disclosure document (basically a step four inventory) in the next week or two. He dreads finishing it only to discover he will have missed something and will have to disclose something else to his wife. This quote illustrates a different attitude—actually looking forward to a “narrowing path,” what I would probably call purification. I can see how it is exciting to recuperate my past, jettisoning my baggage and celebrating my strengths and successes. My past mistakes aren't a ghost, haunting me forever, but they are a pile of junk I've been carrying around with me for years...that I need to learn to throw away. If I find more junk under my bed after my first cleaning, all the better. Perfect cleanliness, especially with the mess I’ve had, isn’t a reasonable expectation all at once.

Member share: “I believe that even in the depths of our disease, each of us tried to choose the least destructive options we saw at the time. As we learn better options, we improve. I need to let go of my shame for not knowing what I had never been taught or shown.”

I have mixed feelings about this one. I agree that I tried to minimize my destructiveness and was honestly trying to solve the problem in the best way I could…however, the best way I could involved still clinging to it even as I tried to get rid of it. I don’t think it is, but I’m uncomfortable how close this quote sounds to justification: “I did the best I could—it wasn’t my fault!” But at the same time, I really did try. Yes, people told me to avoid porn and that it was evil, but the shame-based lectures and lack of clarity about what porn is and how to deal with life didn’t help me avoid becoming addicted. I gave my dad honest answers when he asked me about it…but he never followed up or delved deeper. He did more than others did for me. I have to take ultimate responsibility, but at the very least I don’t want to drop the ball for others who are struggling and who don’t know the way to overcome this addiction.

It honestly feels great to have completed an expanded step four. Anything that I wondered about--"should I have shared that?"--is now shared and behind me. And not only that, but I've now put a lot more thought into who I am. I have a better sense of the patterns of character weaknesses that have added to my addiction or been made worse by it. I feel like I'm taking up residence in reality more, though I still have frustrations. For example, today my son--ignoring what my wife and I have told him several times--kicked a ball inside and smashed a light fixture all over the carpet. I freaked out and had to reach out to a recovery buddy, though not until after I tried calming down on my own. I'm learning that not only am I powerless over lust and sex, but I'm powerless over my character weaknesses. I can't change my weaknesses into strengths by myself, no matter how hard I try. But if I surrender my right to impatience and anger and pride, humbly asking God to help me, I can change with His help. And that's reality.