I’m a member from the UK and I’m a sexaholic. I acted out with pornography, masturbation, prostitution, adultery, promiscuity, sexualizing men, women, children, animals and objects, voyeurism and exhibitionism, romantic fantasy, sexual intrigue, and emotional affairs. And by the grace of God and the program of Sexaholics Anonymous, I haven’t had to do any of that stuff for over 27 years and for that I am incredibly grateful.
I actually came into recovery on Dec 10, 1990. I was 12-stepped by someone in another “S” fellowship. Her name was Virginia and she mentioned the phrase sexual addiction which is something I’d never heard before and it sent me into a complete spin just hearing those two words. There was something about them that hit me with a sledgehammer. I literally couldn’t stand up straight. I couldn’t walk in a straight line.
She said a lot of things to me in the next week or so, and most of it I didn’t understand, but later on I came to see that it was all true. It was just in a different language. It was the language of recovery, which I didn’t understand at that time. I was an expert in the language of lust but not in the language of recovery, I was a complete beginner.
And one of the things she said to me I’ll never forget. It was “You’ve been out of your body for a long time.” I didn’t know what she meant by that, but as I progressed in recovery, I did come to understand. That I was literally not inhabiting the feeling part of my body. I was somewhere in my head. I was out of my body. I was in my head and all I could feel below my neck was numb, or lust. That was about it. Maybe rage sometimes—rage, numbness, and lust. There was not anything like the kind of spectrum of feelings, the rainbow of feelings, which I can experience today. Why was that?
My earliest memory of the age of two was being hit because I’d hurt myself and I was crying. My earliest sexual memories were at the age of five. I’ve got a number of other memories from my childhood which indicate that I was suffering from post-traumatic stress about several things that had happened. I had a lot of feelings, a lot of stuff going on inside me which wasn’t directly connected to anything that was happening right now but with stuff that happened back in my childhood.
And so once I had come into recovery and put the lust and the alcohol and the food down, I had to start the difficult process of healing the feelings. Sometimes this is called the second-stage recovery. And that’s really what I’m going to be sharing with you.
But before I launch deeper into that, I just need to say for those of you who are new, our program consists of four things: we have to join the fellowship, get a sponsor, work all 12 Steps, and do service. And when we do that it clears away the blockage so that God’s grace can reach us and keep us sober, because I am completely powerless over lust, and always will be. I’m going to die a lust addict. The only question is whether I’m going to die drunk or sober. I need a power greater than myself because I cannot fight lust. It is absolutely impossible for me to fight something as powerful as lust so that’s why I need to have a power greater than me to deal with that.
I spent most of my childhood dodging my feelings in various different ways. I developed techniques for not feeling stuff. Feinting, dissociating, vacating the current reality. Just going somewhere in my head. Going off into fantasy, or thinking about something, I was a big thinker and if I did a lot of heavy thinking it would take me out of my feelings and change the way I felt. I would act out my feelings, particularly with sex and food. For instance, any anger I had I would turn that into a sexual feeling which would lead to excitement and arousal and then acting out.
Another favorite was just going numb. Particularly helpful to numb out my feelings would be food, sex, and later on alcohol as well. These were all good ways of not feeling whatever it was that I might otherwise have been feeling. Rage was a particular favorite of mine. I was bullied in my home, I was beaten a lot, and when I discovered rage, my father and mother knew that I was going to kill them if they touched me. I had tapped a source of power which I could then use in a very offensive way to protect myself. People would stay away from me at school because it was like the rage was pouring out of me. I was a very very angry person.
I went to a treatment center in America and got some useful information there including one thing I’ve had to use many times since, that rage is an issue of high-level fear and high-level shame.
So the last time my father threatened to beat me, I was afraid, I was in high-level fear and at the same time in high-level shame—as it is a very shameful thing for a 14 year old to be beaten. The combination of those two came together nicely and I went into rage and at that moment the beating stopped. Rage is a really useful thing to have on the battlefield, but it’s not terribly useful in ordinary society.
So when I came into recovery and started to uncover my history of childhood sexual abuse, this rage suddenly came up—huge gushers of rage. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t comfortable. I didn’t know what to do with it. I had no emotional intelligence. I spent six weeks in a Treatment Center’s trauma resolution unit. I remember the first group therapy session. I sat down in a circle with the group members and started to shake. Before I knew what, I was down on the floor and they were all piled on top of me and I was actually reliving an experience from my childhood, which I’d had no idea had happened. It’s very likely that as a young child I was shaken by an adult, probably more than once, and that was what was happening at that moment. I was reliving a memory. I remember the group therapist saying to me that I went into a trauma bubble and that there were probably lots more of those down there which was interesting information. It began to explain to me why I would have these strange reactions to things.
For instance: in recovery, if I was ever kissed on the lips by an elderly woman, which occasionally happened with some of my aunts, I would get the shakes. I mean really bad shakes. Another one was if a fire engine went past with its siren going and the blue light I would be in tears.
These are kind of strange reactions to something that had nothing to do with the present moment, but with something that happened to me back then. So I was in a bit of a mess because I hadn’t learned what my feelings were, I hadn’t learned to recognize them and I hadn’t learned how to handle them appropriately. I was in recovery with a little sobriety, I had put the masturbation and pornography down, and things like that. I was beginning to regain some sort of sense, but all these memories were coming to the surface and I was a bit of an emotional wreck.
Well, this was a difficult time for me and particularly the whole business of being sexually abused, when that came to the surface. I remember the woman who had 12-stepped me into recovery said, if anything ever comes up about your childhood that’s upsetting, please call me. I had actually tried to call her on a number of occasions. Not that I was upset because I just wanted to say “Hi” to her, and every time I’d call, her phone would be busy. But this time when the memory of the sex abuse came up, I got through immediately. And I think she saved my life in that moment, because I could feel the shame from the sexual abuse coming over me like a tidal wave and pushing me down and I could feel myself going down and down. There was a deep deep bottomless depression and suicidal thoughts. It was like I could feel that pressure, and she told me to get angry, really angry. And so I did. I got angry and somehow that helped me to break through this particular difficult time.
I had two other huge outpourings of rage before that memory was sort of cleansed, and now I can think about that. I can think about what happened, or what may have happened. I can think of my abuser and I can feel complete forgiveness for them. I can choose to forgive and because I’ve chosen to forgive and I’ve taken the actions of love towards them, the right feelings followed. So I actually feel forgiving and I feel loving.
So in early recovery, the first few years, especially the first year in recovery, I cried most days. I hadn’t really cried at all. I had been an Army officer, and it wasn’t the done thing to cry, so I stuffed it all down and that’s what I’d been doing, stuffing it down, numbing it, stuffing it with food, with sex, or whatever in order to keep it down. And now it’s like I couldn’t do that anymore. Now it’s just coming to the surface. That chaotic phase didn’t last forever, I’m pleased to say, thanks to the process of working the Steps. I once heard it described by an old-timer from Nashville who said it’s like emptying a dustbin.
The process of doing Steps 4-10, the seven key Steps in the middle of our program, is like emptying out the dustbin, cleaning it up, sorting through the rubbish and picking out one or two good bits to put back in. Then you’ve got a clean can for when you’re going to need a clean can. When am I going to need one? When something hits me hard emotionally!
And then it’s literally, is it possible for the can to hold the feelings for long enough to not act them out, to not reach for my drug of choice, to not dissociate, to stay present. This is not an overnight thing; I don’t want any of you to get the idea that I’m cured, that I’m fixed. This is a work in progress and I think it will go on being a work in progress. It’s actually now become an interesting and exciting journey because I’m getting to understand, in a way, how God made me before humans managed to screw a few things up, and then once I took over screwing myself up in a big way with all my addiction, acting out and all my other behaviors.
Before I move on from there I want to just mention the key tool for rage which I found very helpful. It’s not an easy one to use, but it’s like this. As I’ve mentioned, rage is a combination of high level fear and high-level shame and these two things are supporting each other and we go from there into rage. And once there, I don’t think there’s any blue sky. The way to break this is to ask yourself, “What’s the shame?” And when you do that, the whole rage thing collapses. Today I’ve got this clean can, so I can have feelings now.
I also had to learn the difference between a thought and a feeling. You might think that’s pretty obvious? But no, it’s not, because I used to say things like “I feel that it’s a nice day today,” “I feel that you’re being unkind to me,” “I feel abandoned,” “You made me feel sad.” All of these are lies, they are thoughts, not feelings.
I had to learn that my feelings are things that happen in my body, not between my ears. I had to understand that pain is something I feel in my body. Anger, sadness, fear, shame and guilt are things I feel in my body and I had to learn to identify them and to have a fairly short list of feeling words. The other things that I thought I was feeling, like self-pity, loneliness, fear of angry women and lust, are actually going on in between my ears.
I tell my sponsees they are not allowed to say “I feel that,” “I feel like,” “I feel anything” with ‘ed’ at the end. Or “you made me feel,” because I need to sort out, and I need to help them sort out, what’s going on in the head, and what’s going on down below. So, a simple list of feelings and getting used to identifying them, and to ban from our vocabulary certain phrases.
To say “I feel that you’re a nice person” is actually a lie. “I imagine you’re a nice person,” “I think you’re a nice person,” but it’s not a feeling.
I was showing a very simple way to share my feelings I call the confrontation technique, where you name the behavior. When you slap my face, I felt then they were feeling angry. It’s very good to practice this but practice it with somebody who knows about it, and the response is “Thank you.”
When you name a feeling – “I felt a (feeling).” Response. “Thank you.” That’s really helpful, really useful. The Just For Today card talks about just for today. I will not show anyone that my feelings are hurt. They may be hurt, but today, I will not share it. Now that’s something that I’m learning to do. I’ve been through this change of emotional childhood and now I’m growing into a sort of emotional adulthood and this is perfect. The Just For Today card teaches me that I can choose to show people whether I’m hurt or not.
Another aspect of emotional sobriety for me is to understand the difference between a feeling and something like love, which is a choice. So love is a decision. It’s not a feeling once I choose to love somebody, once I choose to give, to take the actions of love towards them. The feelings that I have in the past associated with love fall away.
But if I choose to resent, to be unforgiving, to take the actions of hatred, then the feelings follow as well. And I feel hatred and I feel miserable. So, understanding that some things that I’ve been calling feelings, like love, are actually acts of the will, and therefore, they’re really centered in the heart.
So I have thoughts and defects that are centered in acts of the will and I have these emotions that go on elsewhere in my body. And just being able to differentiate between them is very helpful. Thanks for letting me share.
A member from the UK
