My pride takes all those motivational 'mechuyav shmuessin' and beats me over the head with shame! Shame - not the Torah - tells me that it's either perfection, or I am a rasha. That sounds extreme, but hey - that is what is really going on inside many of us. It is part of the typical addict tendency: all is either black or white.
If you have any shaychus to kiruv, you'd never tell a ba'al teshuvah that there is no room for imperfection in this religion, would you? So why can't we understand our own development in the same way? Why do we bash ourselves? I think it is a combination of being typical perfectionist addicts - and because we grow up in yeshivah hearing well-meaning shmuessen that tell us we need to tow the party line and live up to a standard of greatness, at all costs. Chumrah and halocha are blurred, for a standard must be upheld. And they are right, of course, for there is a place for that in a growing person. Chumrah can become more precious than halocha itself (see B'nei Yisoschar in a few places). But that just doesn't work very well for the addict. He just doesn't shtim. He is busy with the K'tzos, the Reishis Chochma... and with sex videos, and lusting his brains out. He may call his involvement with the latter, "struggling" not "using" or "being occupied with" them. That makes the stirah tolerable. Somehow his big, very overworked brain strikes a deal - a detente - between the two lives he lives. Eventually, though, the game must end when it no longer works.
Recovery was the (unpleasant) time for me to finally stop running and begin choosing between:
1 - absolutely insisting upon being the man I wanted to be (perfectly frum and naturally respected in the popular yeshivish environment, adored by Hashem, my fellows and my wife in every respect, and powerful) - and masturbating (cuz they apparently inexorably go together)
vs.
2 - accepting my limitations and being the man G-d (the real One, Who is smart, realistic, loving, and patient) wants me to be - and sober!
Choosing #2 means I will need to give up the madness of living a double life without any real intellectual resolution to all my years of struggling to understand why I do this mishega'as. Giving up all my research?!!
But I lost, no? That's step 1. So it's time for shlach al Hashem y'hov'cha and let Hashem.
And that huge job requires me to learn how to be honest with people and with my very own G-d. That is where the 'steps' come in. It also means trying to be open to learning His Will for me and asking for His help to do it imperfectly. Cuz I will always do every mitzvah imperfectly. Even the mitzvah of emunah! I am a man, not a sefer. And a man of G-d is always ready to learn and change, and grow, with his Best Friend's help.
The third step helped me accept that G-d was really interested in me, no matter what I have done - even more than he is interested in the Shulchan Aruch. Yup. The Torah - His Will and Way of Life - is for me. He gave it to me to use it and grow close to Him, not to destroy me. And it is a process. And he knows that. The sefer doesn't, and neither do some learned yidden.
Maturity - growing up emotionally and spiritually - is the main fruit of my Program, besides sobriety. Grown up yidden understand that when they wrote in Pirkei Avos, "never see yourself as a Rasha" they were even talking to Tannaim! Even they were not perfect. Even they could be subject to the temptation to fall into black-and-white thinking and look at themselves as resho'im, c"v, just because of a davar meguneh in their character or over a personal failing. Just because we are not very good in our yir'as Shomayim doesn't take away our beauty in Chesed. Just because we are resentful, fearful, prideful, and lazy, does not mean we are not getting better - and possibly on the very best path of avodas Hashem possible for us (Rav Dessler talks about the nekudas hab'chirah - but we often have too much pride to apply it to ourselves, and only apply it to others!). We can be as close to being tzaddikim as we can be right now, even though yennem is doing so much more. We need to appreciate that in ourselves, and know that Hashem is on our side! (Rav Tzvi-Meyer Zilberberg Shlit"a talks about this n'kudah very often, davka in our imperfection.)
But to us, that is usually not nearly good enough. We say we accept our imperfection, but in our hearts - where the truth is - we do not. We do not allow ourselves any greyness, the room to be imperfectly doing His Will, even though we are just humans - and addicts yet! I feel that our gayva is really quite shocking. We believe b'emunah sh'leimah that Hashem expects us to suddenly be getting to shacharis every day, on time, and with proper kavonoh, this week. We do feel that.
It's nutty. And the Torah is not nutty. So what's sanity? We reach for it using the 3rd step decision.