On Self-Care

Matt C.

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Self-care may be the single most important part of my recovery program and the single hardest action for me to take. The trauma that has led me to use sex and love as a way of coping is rooted in difficulty of being with myself in a good way.  I am challenged to be alone with myself and have developed so many ways to distract, dissociate and disengage from healthy self-connection.

 

Recently I was planning a one-week vacation away from Chicago. Listening to me talk about it my therapist interrupted: “Disconnecting from people for a week is triggering you!  Stay connected! Whether you’re here (in Chicago) or there (on vacation)… You’re already gone into this fantasy world!”

 

Addiction to fantasy, pre-occupation, obsession or infatuation with others, powerlessness over shame---these are my symptoms of disconnection from self.  Self-care for me results in self-connection. 

 

Why is it so hard to stay connected to self?  As I progress in recovery, I can tolerate my feelings—and the feelings of others—for longer, though I continue to have almost an allergic reaction to feelings. And this leads to a reflexive need for dissociation.  I think of words the writer Pia Mellody shared in a lecture once on codependence:  “Codependence is a disorder of maturity based in childhood trauma.”  I recall what it was like for me growing up—learning to be safe in my family by pleasing and attending to others…and learning to take care of myself by withdrawing into fantasy or soothing myself with masturbation.  

 

It has been said that we work the Twelve Steps on whatever is challenging for us in our lives at the moment.  For me then, to perform self-care is to practice steps 1-3. In step 1, for instance, I realize I’m powerless over laying on the couch playing backgammon on my phone. It’s making life unmanageable: I’m running late, I’m feeling frustrated, my wrist or thumb hurts.

 

There is a helpful line, from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous (p.87) that helps me move from Step 1 to Step 2: “As we go through the day we pause when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action.”  If I can allow myself to pause, however difficult that might be, I then consider what my HP’s will might be for me. Because I’ve been in this scenario literally thousands of times I know my HP’s will: “Put the phone down and close your eyes; take a deep breath.” “Get up and move.” “Take a walk.” “Call someone.” On Sundays I often call my friend D.R. to practice self-care so I don’t—during that unstructured day of rest—fall into addiction or wasting time with avoidant obsessive-compulsive behavior.

 

Step three is the hardest part of self-care.  This is the crucial moment: can I take the action? Can I do, “the next right thing”?  I generally don’t want to do the things that are self-caring— exercise, go to bed, eat a moderate amount, call someone, put my phone down and meditate for a moment—because they cause the allergic reaction I get when with myself.  And yet I am learning to turn over my will and do them anyway.

 

I have found that my ability to do the next right thing, my ability to turn over my will—obsessive-compulsive and powerful though it may be—is very much a product of momentum. The more I do it, the more habituated it becomes. 

 

My most recent success is at night-time—historically a very triggering time for me. As a child I was abandoned at night and never learned to put myself to bed in a good way. As a result, as an adult sex and love addict I often act out at night. Yet I have recently begun leaving my cell phone in the kitchen at night, going into my bedroom around 10pm, lighting a stick of incense and laying on my bed, letting my brain “think itself out,” and then going to sleep around 10:30pm. As I’ve been able to string together a few days and weeks of this night-time self-care ritual I’ve begun to feel a degree of serenity and confidence that comes from good self-care and “Good Orderly Direction.”

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To know Thyself, is To Love Thyself

Shannon D.

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When I came into the program four years ago, the person I wanted to get to know the most was whatever potential lover showed up in my space, who was willing to spend any amount of time with me, or not, but gave me some inclination they wanted to engage with me – whether that was healthy or not. I was a slave to others; they were so valiant and shining compared to myself. I was dull and unpolished, floundering around from place to place, fluidly, not solid in myself. I wanted to know all about you, everything and anything, more than I knew about myself or had ever wished to ask myself. 

 

Creating my “outer circle behaviors” with my sponsor, which are the positive self-affirming activities I do instead of my bottom line addictive behaviors, and then engaging with them regularly, put me in touch with myself and started to really give me a sense of what I enjoyed. These activities facilitated self-soothing when I would normally reach for the addiction. I dance a lot, and found a dance community in Chicago I became very involved in. I literally dance my emotions out of my body; that is my recovery. I don’t have a living room, I have a dance space. I became obsessed with yoga. Shopping became a healthy outlet as I had never liked it or had fun with it. I found my own style – for me, before it felt vulnerable to put pieces of clothing together and show my personality, do other people like it? I started loving putting things together and not caring. 

 

Today, things look a lot different for me. The primary person I think of on a minute to minute basis is me, glorious me! In all my splendor! That’s not to say I don’t think of other people or help other people, but I think of people in relation to myself, like this flowing back and forth river, in how I relate to people. I’ve heard intimacy described as playing catch with a ball. How do I connect to someone? Do I wait for them to throw the ball back or hasten to create the playing myself (that is so me)? What is my comfortability with this person so I know what and when to share? What boundaries do I have with this person that demarcates the “playing field” of which we interact? What am I available to? What do I invest my time in, what do I choose to engage in that nourishes me, rather than detracts from me? These are the questions I discussed with my sponsor as I began living my life as a recovering sex and love addict. 

 

During my hardest time in recovery which many of you observed me in, I had “acted out” pain present in myself that I just couldn’t access, and I ended up distancing from the program because I felt embarrassed that I had been doing so well and been active and visible in the program, and now I couldn’t function. Acting out is when we engage in addictive behaviors with ourselves or others. I detach from myself and my Higher Power when I plug into addictive behaviors – the SLAA text talks about how in withdrawal we meet ourselves. Even the slightest behavior disconnects me from myself and others. I learned that for me “acting out” could also be taking things out on myself, like shame. I acted out inner pain on myself in 2018 with literally nobody else involved. It was an excruciating time. 

 

But I overcame. And I kept turning to my Higher Power, and saying the 3rd step prayer to take action towards God’s will while I felt betrayed that this was somehow in his plan. Because I learned in program to take action and let go of the results. Dance really puts me in touch with myself, my Higher Power and the beauty that is taking care of myself. I practice moving and letting go – like with stepwork, or taking a risk with someone like in dating. I am responsible for myself, rather than shuffling myself off to an addictive partner like in the past. I can choose to throw my emotions at those who will listen when I don’t take responsibility for my feelings, and I have done that. Now I ask for consent to talk about emotional topics. For me, a lot of times in recovery I actually need to NOT connect with people and just connect with myself. It gives me the option to then relate from a place of wholeness. SLAA has taught me to care for myself in a new and deeper way.

 

Today, I commit to “staying” with myself, to listening to myself and hearing myself as only I can best do. Today journaling is a tool for that. And it is difficult when things come up inside of me that are uncomfortable - fear, shame, past trauma, anger. I am dedicated to facing these things today, with the support of other SLAA members, and as I dedicate myself, I also dedicate myself to face all the joyous wonderful rich feelings that come up inside of me that I have to breathe through. When I’m squelching and running from some, I squelch and run from them all. What a fragile state it is to lean into and honor my delicate sensibilities, work the steps, and still keep an arm outstretched to connect with other beings in a healthy way. It is a balance I strive for daily and requires me to have boundaries within and without which I still practice. Oh how I sweetly relish what is my sex and love addiction recovery - the depth to which I go within myself allows me a depth of connectivity to this world that feels magnificently better than all the best acting out I ever did. 

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One Year Sober

Anonymous

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Today is my one-year sobriety anniversary from my love addiction. It feels amazing! Exactly a year ago, I was withdrawing from a painful heartbreak, crying, calling my sponsor, and realizing I had just relapsed for several months and was hiding it from my sponsor the entire time. I felt so much shame and guilt.

 

Recovery has become such a big part of my life. I am listening to a meeting right now as I write this. One of the blessings that I especially love is that a career that had been exploited mainly for material security no longer appeals to me - and that I am drawn to something that is more aligned with who I am. This has absolutely been true for me. My dream is to live as an artist and to help others (and myself) heal through it all. I am excited to be on the path for fulfilling that dream. I am running an Etsy store, and I am doing other freelance work with others. I don't have a regular corporate job right now, but I'm definitely working everyday - just with so much more excitement and joy than ever before. It doesn't feel like work.

 

I am so blessed to have been able to step away from my previous career in the legal industry and follow my heart everyday, even though it still feels intimidating and I have no idea what's going to unfold and how. But I trust my higher power is leading me to the right path because I've already seen so many miracles. So. Many. Miracles. My higher power already knows exactly which ones I'm referring to. So thank you for making this possible. I'm so grateful today. Here's to collecting more medallions!

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