1. 99% of the posts on this forum and the questions that people send me by e-mail are not really triggering.

2. The 1% that is, I find that trying my hardest to help them usually solves the problem!   Like Dov always says, getting "out of yourself" is the best anti-trigger.
I think that's also what Dov meant when he wrote:






It's not easy being an anav, you know. It's a balancing act between getting my proper due for being one, yet without people really knowing I want it.

And the mystery part, yes, that's my favorite.

Thanks Guard.
Your doing a pretty good job at the balancing act. We had no idea you really wanted credit for being an anav. It was a complete secret.
k

kutan shel hachabura wrote on 21 Oct 2009 14:46:


Kutan, what are you talking about? Guard wants credit for what? shtissim!
Luz oop already.















;D

I refer to my comments previously on this thread and elsewhere.  Anyone who has seen these knows I am not a big fan of the Harries and part of me wonders why I'm now bumping up to the top of the list!! ??? ???

I've been working away at my recovery and my wife and I have been using another site called Recovery Nation.  I have found it incredibly insightful and helpful to understanding myself.  I was reading something on it recently which I thought really explains to me why this thread bothers me so much that I keep on harping on about it.

The following is drawn from there and is a description of how a Sex Addict's brain works.  I've found it helpful in understanding myself.  I hope it can give you some insight too.  The following has been heavily edited by me.  If you want the original check out the website.

The Sexualized Mind

An individual with a sexual addiction will subconsciously sexualize their environment. Every person, every relationship, every situation, every object will be filtered through their sexual mind as a part of their natural perceptual process. Controlling this filter is all but impossible--akin to defining the color of the sky to a blind person. You can tell them that it is blue, but if all they have ever experienced it as is black, the reference will be meaningless. In the sexualized mind, you can tell them how it 'should be'...that it isn't normal to constantly think of sex...but if all they have ever experienced is this reality, it will be difficult redefine that reality to them.

Upon the discovery of the extent of their sexualization, many individuals in recovery become quite frustrated--experiencing feelings of helplessness and despair in not being able to control these patterns. Once the extent of the sexual pattern has been self-identified, the individual becomes aware of how annoying, disrespectful and damaging these patterns have been. And yet, even with this awareness, they find themselves unable to control it.
Another sexualized approach is the morally righteous one--where everything remains sexualized and it leads to a condemnation of all people, activities, actions that involve anything but morally acceptable sexual behavior. Sex within the relationship is practically non-existent...as a moral conflict has developed between his secret life and his married life.

The Objectified Mind

The objectified mind is the mind that disassociates the person from the action. When they view porn for instance, they are not viewing a real person, but merely a stimulus that can be used for their own personal gratification.
Objectification and sexual addiction go hand in hand--which is why one of the goals for those in recovery from sexual addiction is to reconnect to the human aspects of everyone they come in contact with--be that contact in fantasy or reality.

The Need for Immediate Gratification

Immediate gratification is a universal trait in the emotional management skills of those with addictions. It can best be understood in the context of the decision-making process. On one side, there is a decision that can be made that will forego immediate emotional gain for long-term emotional fulfillment. On the other, a separate decision can be made that will disregard the long-term consequences of that decision and will take into consideration only what will provide immediate emotional fulfillment. It is this principle of immediate gratification that motivates the majority of decisions that a compulsive person chooses to engage in.

The All or Nothing Perception

The pattern of all or nothing thinking is yet another found commonly in addiction. It occurs when an person perceives situations in their extreme. The all or nothing principle can be seen in just about any life situation and its root is based in perception. It can be found in people it can be found in situations.
When the all or nothing principle guides your perceptions, you tend to view your personal qualities and the situations that involve you in terms of everything being in black-and-white. All good or all bad. You are overweight--no one can find you attractive. You have a dream to play professional sports, but you don't make it--your life is a failure. You promise to save money, yet you continue to live from paycheck to paycheck with overdue bills piling up--you can't manage your finances. The truth to each of these is not nearly as extreme as they are being perceived. Take the issue of being overweight. The reality is that there are many, many more characteristics that people find attractive beyond a person's weight--and many of those qualities are actually more important to others than weight. But when one's self-perception is so extreme in believing that their weight is the overwhelming factor in how others perceive them, they lose perspective of their overall attractiveness. In the case of the person with overdue bills, the reality is not that they are incapable of managing their finances, it is that they lack the basic skills and experience to succeed in those areas. They have not taken the time and effort to develop those skills (immediate gratification rearing its ugly head once more).

For most life experiences, there is no need to put forth the effort to fully develop the necessary skills to excel in these areas because they just aren't important enough to you. That's understood. With 50,000 potential areas to develop in your life, to master fifty of them would be quite an accomplishment. And so, the issue we are exploring here is not that a person does not possess the skills to succeed, it is when that person identifies their never having developed them as a failure. "I can't sing. I can't draw. I can't do crossword puzzles. I can't...(enter skill here)." Not having learned to do something is not the same as being unable to do it. Where this concept really comes into play is in recovery.

The recovering addict perceives that because they have struggled with immoral behavior, they are an immoral person. Or that because they have struggled with infidelity, they are incapable of commitment. Or because they have tried recovery and failed, that they are not capable of recovery. Such self-defeating thoughts make it very difficult to succeed in any long-term change because they keep them from fully committing themselves to that change. When they believe they might fail, they prepare themselves for that failure. In extreme cases, they might even have developed a "learned helplessness" approach to life and have simply resigned themselves to the fact that their life is not going to get any better, no matter what they do. So why try?

Dear Help Wanted,
What you shared defines and clarifies much of the Problem. It's nice to clarify that stuff to folks struggling with recovery itself, wondering why their half-measures are not working. But are you suggesting that recovery is based on self-knowledge? The reason I ask is that my own experience has been that self-knowledge is a double-edged sword. It can draw me deeper into the Problem, deeper into my fantasy that I have the power to "make" myself better, and deeper into mental isolation from others.
For me, the gift of self-knowledge typically comes after recovery and often quite unexpectedly, not before it. If I held onto my self-directed and very self-absorbed need to "figure it all out", I believe I'd still be all about me and my own satisfaction all over again.
So I'm not suggesting that defining the Problem is unnecessary, just that my very life depends on my not confusing the problem (or understanding it) with the Solution. After I admit my problem, the work is ready to begin. The Solution for me, is always Surrender, followed by a Gift from my Higher Power. Recovery requires me to discover and discard the problem, learning new ideas and trying new behaviors, rather than improving on old ones. Chuck C.'s well-work motto is for me: "You can't think yourself into right living. You've got to live yourself into right thinking."

For me, the gift of self-knowledge typically comes after recovery and often quite unexpectedly, not before it. If I held onto my self-directed and very self-absorbed need to "figure it all out", I believe I'd still be all about me and my own satisfaction all over again.


RABBOISAI (AND REBBETZINOISAI ) !!

THIS IS PURE GAONUUS!!

GO TO THERAPY  GO TO SHRINKKS BABBAS VOODO DOCTORS DO TESHUVAH EAT PICKLES DANCE ON YOUR HEAD!!

HELLO THIS IS THE YESOD!!!  AND YOU GOT IT HERE FOR FREE ( NOT TO MENTION YOU DON'T HAVE TO EAT PICKLES OR STAND ON YOUR HEAD)

Yes, it is gaonus, as you say, R' B.

followed by a Gift from my Higher Power

Do you mean my personal God (great!) or do you mean my version of what God is (not good)

Sorry for quibbling, but there are some who complain to me that the 12 steps sound too christian or multisectarian...

k

KUTAN ?? HUH??

I know.

I tell myself often:

Kutan? Huh?

And then laugh at it and go on with life.


:D

I'd never make it otherwise.

k

Personally, I understand the words, "G-d of our understanding" to mean "the G-d that we have a relationship with". Nothing at all to do with how we happen to understand Him.
For, if recovery was mainly tolui in our understanding, we might as well just forget it! The words should really have been "the G-d of our mis-understanding"! Cuz we really don't understand Him very well...maybe not at all! ("leis machshovo t'fisah bei klal")
And anyway, knowing His will: the Torah (sort of like knowing who He is) was enough to straighten us out, we'd never have gotten so screwed up in the first place. Our problem was and is not stupidity. Everyone has that!  ;D

Oh no, not again... I thought we went through this a million times on this forum in the past already... Just ask Boruch, who started out on this forum saying the same thing and who, today, leads the 12-Step phone conference...

Also, your hurting poor Dov. He hates when this comes up again and again... (If you ever want to scare Dov, like for a Purim prank, just whisper the words, "Does Torah fit in with the 12-Steps?" and he'll go running!)

dov wrote on 29 Oct 2009 16:51:


Dear Dov,

I really want to understand what you are saying since it strikes me that we might be on the same page although perhaps different paragraphs.

My understanding is that there are stages in this process.  Now I don't know about the 12 steps.  I am in fact a novice.  But I do have some basic understanding of people (clearly restricted to others and not myself).  One has to realise he has got a problem (my name is HW and I'm a PA).  One has to stop the errant behaviour.  One has to let go of the old behaviour and embrace the new.  But to really let go, to really "get better" surely there has to be some healing?  

A doctor can spend years treating the symptoms of an illness, reducing fever, easing pain, and on the surface that person would look better.  Heck, the patient would even feel better.  No body would know and no doubt after a couple of years he'll forget he's ill.  But one day, he forgets a dose.  Or the medicine stops working.  What happens to him?  All that illness lying latent, concealed by the medication, resurfaces and BAM, he's back again.

This, to me, is common sense.  If a person has a disease, mental or physical, then they can't be cured until the doctors have diagnosed their illness.  Not unless they get really lucky.  As we know, addiction is a symptom, not a cause.  It is the cause we need to identify.  The issues that lie beneath the surface.

Now I agree, endlessly dwelling on the problem is not going to get you far.  Clearly the first thing to do is stop and put and end to the behaviour.  But where do you go from there?  If you don't try and heal yourself you are just a ticking timebomb.  You to get to the source, the root of the problem.

But surely this is what you said - "Recovery requires me to discover and discard the problem, learning new ideas and trying new behaviors, rather than improving on old ones."   In order to discard old behaviour - you need to know what the errant behaviour is.  You need to recognise in yourself the behaviour which is a problem and rid yourself of it.  How do you do that?  If only we knew.  What I do know is that you need to know what the disease is before there is a possibility for cure.

Help Wanted wrote on 03 Nov 2009 01:19:

I agree with you. But wish to point out that the "if only" is no coincidence. We probably are too blinded to be the assessors, arbiters, and healers of our own issues, problems and progress. That is probably why it hasn't worked thus far. So I ask: what good would it be even if we did recognize our problems?

Am I saying to "throw in the towel", that we are doomed to remain the same? Nope. If you knew me, you'd laugh hard at that one!

No despair is called for, because we have a solution that works for us anyway! It's this:
Don't use your drug. Do whatever you need to do to stay clean. Then, as the pain of living happens, have the help you need to live through it usefully. And that pain will come, for the stuff that drives us crazy in life (about ourselves, others, and their behavior) is what drove/drives us to act out in the first place (as you pointed out so well). But we will certainly not face it sanely while we are drugging with p-rn, masturb-tion, s-x, etc.
Now, I tried this many times over many long, hard, wrotten years, as you probably did, too. After all, we really are good people, yir'ei Shomayim, and do try to stop. But I could not do it successfully until I finally gave up on the luxuries of secrecy and normalcy by joining other sick folks like me who are getting better (in my case, SA) and admitting that I was actually ill.
If we start on this road and stay the course one day at a time, we are forced to work (use) the steps in order to face life and are automatically, shockingly healed - even without knowing what we are doing. It's better that way, cause, as they say, "my own best thinking is exactly what got me here (in this  mess)." Leave me out of my recovery as much as possible, too, thank-you.
Does that help at all?

bochur28 wrote:


Takin' the 'blame game' to a new level!

bardichev wrote:


Oh, how we long for the Days of Yesteryear!