Old Feelings, New Behaviors and Happy Anniversary

I am approaching my four year anniversary of recovery from co-dependency, co-addiction, and compulsive behaviors. I cannot believe how differently my life looks and feels today. I have such gratitude waking up with contentment and serenity. I have traveled a lot of miles along The Healing Lane, seeking and pushing forward, resting at times, and slowing the pace when needed.

It was July 14, 2012 – it’s amazing how certain dates are etched in our memories – when my transformation began. It is the day that my tolerance for my husband’s addictions and my co-dependent behaviors with it were confronted. Seventeen years earlier in July, however, is when I learned about his addiction when he disclosed to me why he had been so miserable and angry. It is one of the most painful moments I have experienced. It is this anniversary that has me thinking about and dealing with some feelings that I have avoided for quite a while.

There is an intensity to my feelings as I’m taken back to that summer evening in 1995. It is when I learned that my husband was addicted to pornography and that he had several compulsive sexual behaviors that made up his sexual life. Alongside this, however, was the awareness and painful realization that he was unable to have intimate sexual relations with me. It was a double-sided knife that bore into my core as I tried to understand that he had a whole sexual life apart from me while not participating in a sexual life with me. It was a lot to take in. Like bent over in gripping pain a lot. It wasn’t until I started recovery that I had terms for this. He is a sex addict that acts out by compulsively seeking sexual pleasure outside the relationship as well as acting in by compulsively avoiding sexual and emotional intimacy. The latter description is about sexual avoidance or sexual anorexia, both terms I have come to use about the disease that has affected me so greatly.

My therapy and recovery are about dealing with my behaviors and my disease. These have included many lessons on learning how to remain present when issues from my past, uncomfortable feelings, triggering episodes, and traumatic events surface. Letting go of my unhealthy coping behaviors such as compulsive eating, smoking, shopping, sex, or numbing (tv and computer), working, obsessive thinking, (the list goes on) has taken a lot of fortitude, honesty, and effort. I’m reminded when uncomfortable feelings or situations occur that simply staying sober is an accomplishment because I had become so accustomed to medicating away those feelings. Fortunately, I have been a good student and I have learned healthy behaviors and to stay present for myself.

This is why I think that when this memory of my husband’s disclosure surfaced recently, I could use the tools and experiences to help navigate through them without needing to use those outdated coping behaviors. In this case, it was that I was feeling again how alone I was having just heard his confession and with absolutely no understanding of these compulsive sexual behaviors. I felt completely and utterly rejected by my husband and yet there was an expectation to forgive him and to be supportive of his dealing with this issue. What I didn’t know is that this was a traumatic experience for me. My life completely changed in that moment. I was no longer in the dark; it was the passing of what remained of my innocence. The world of addiction and its devastating effects had now overtaken me and my life. Overwhelmed with feelings, thoughts, and expectations, I did what was natural to me: I rose to the challenge by becoming super-supportive and stuffing what I couldn’t process. I can see that how I reacted to the pressures, feelings, and circumstances reveals my issues.

I don’t actually remember much from the days that followed. As they re-surface, I am choosing to be understanding, compassionate, and loving to myself. I can accept that at that time that I acted in what I thought was in the best interest for my family. I did forgive him; I did support him; I did, in fact, do everything I knew to do to help him, be understanding, come to his aid, take the high road, travel the low road when it was needed, and to be the wife that stood by her addicted husband. I became a classic case of a co-dependent of a sex-addict. I really thought I was helping him and doing the right thing. And I really thought it would work.

My choice to stay in the marriage and to fight for our family, especially noting the impact to our young son, was honorable. Meanwhile I didn’t understand what was happening to me by not receiving the help that I needed. My husband’s issues were the focus and my job was to forgive and to find help for him. For eight years this is what I did. I sought out every program and possibility for help that I knew. Eventually I gave up. I was exhausted, had lost hope, and was filled with shame. I thought that I had failed by not being enough. Or too much. Whatever it was, it was partly my fault or maybe even mostly my fault. I was supposed to be able to save him. My guilt, shame, pain, anger, loneliness, and fear were more than I could handle and so another of my issues – medicating feelings instead of expressing them – took hold in increasingly harmful ways.

I know differently now. His shame is not mine to carry; I have my own around abandoning myself and for the compulsive behaviors I have engaged in to medicate away my pain. I can honor myself by allowing stuffed feelings to surface and be expressed. I can forgive myself for not putting myself as a priority, for falling into the depression that nearly swallowed me up, and for becoming morbidly obese.

What I seek today it to be present for myself as I allow those really intense feelings to surface. I cry. I breathe and follow the paths of sensation in my body. I speak kindly and lovingly to myself. I repeat affirmations of my value and worthiness. I reach out to friends. I reach for God. I turn inward and access peace, serenity, and joy. I continue working the Twelve Steps. I am alone and yet, I am never alone.

This anniversary is a celebration. It is a reminder of what has changed in four years – in 21 years! – and the marvelous journey of The Healing Lane. 

My View from the Shadows

There is a consistent theme to my recovery meditations and feedback this week: assess your progress.  On several occasions I have been asked to think on my life a year ago and then reflect on where I am today. That is Higher Power speaking to me without question. It is time to get current. I recognize that I have not posted on this blog for three months and I must admit I have some guilt over that. It doesn't feel good. This blog is an important tool for my recovery and not using it has not been to my benefit. That in itself isn't very Healing Lane behavior.

The last three months have presented challenges so very different that the previous fifteen when I have been able to describe the pace and feel of clipping along in The Lane. The growth pains, the awareness, the breakthroughs, the new perspectives, and so forth have all been a very real and tangible part of my recovery. I have been able to reflect with honesty and vulnerability my experiences.  Through the ups and downs, I managed to find myself back to that current within the Healing Lane. And then came November.

I wouldn't say today that I left the Lane. However, it feels completely different. I have been looking for the obvious signs of recovery; the obvious feelings of recovering. My biggest struggle was indeed not feeling that I was making progress. There has been a lack of tangible evidence, or so I thought. I likened it to a weight-loss plateau. I have felt a wall, a ceiling, being stagnant.  Meanwhile, some unhealthy behaviors returned. This part isn't’t easy for me, but my commitment to be honest requires that I put this out there. I returned to smoking; I began eating some foods that I normally don’t eat; and I found myself numbing in different ways such as computer games and shopping. However, in my disclosure I will acknowledge that I also finished my weaning of the anti-depressant I’d been taking for 9 ½ years. I began attending additional meetings to help me address my love addiction. I had some on-going neck and back issues (noted correlation) and a cold that lasted for a month. There were holidays and travels and perhaps worth noting, my divorce was finalized.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could easily package up our thoughts, feelings, issues and just plot out our recovery plan? It doesn't work that way. Life just doesn't work that way. And really…when it is all said and done, I don’t think I would want to be so prepared anyway. The unknown is certainly frightening. “What next?!” But it has some appealing aspects, too. If I knew everything that needed to happen, when it should happen, and how to handle it…well, first I’d have some sort of insider deal with God and secondly, I likely wouldn't need all this recovery anyway. Heck, I’d have insight that I currently don’t have and I could use it for all sorts of good. No, the appealing aspect of the unknown is that God has all kinds of ways to teach me how to handle things, and to show me His love for me by handling the things I don’t need to handle. Serenity prayer comes to mind.

Yes, it is pretty much summed up in that prayer. Learning what are the things I am to change, what things are not mine, and the wisdom to know the difference. The important lesson for me is that I am not in charge! I am (still) powerless to the things that belong to God and when I try to behave otherwise my life starts to become unmanageable. The resistance to all that has been going on with me is that I wanted to be in charge. I wanted to feel like I was making progress. I wanted to see improvement and what I eventually began to understand, is that I was trying to earn my own worthiness by doing my recovery “well”. No wonder I wasn't feeling so serene.

During this time I have been wrestling with a lot of old, defeating tapes playing while still holding onto the awareness I've obtained this far and utilizing the tools of recovery available to me. The sense of failure has been a big one. Shame spirals do not promote healing, and I have had to consistently confess that I have allowed negative thoughts to bounce around in my head. The hope I share is that I recognize that I was wrestling – I did not give up, not forfeit, not throw in the towel. I remained in the battle. That recognition and affirmation of my efforts is a very significant change. I can’t wrap it up and present it as nicely or clearly as some of my other lessons and breakthroughs. But it is a biggie. It is the change I have sought.

So it comes back to the basics. Acceptance. Let go and let God. Gratitude. Progress not perfection. I am so thankful for today and for taking the time to reflect on the view from the Lane. It has felt obscured, but sometimes it is shadowy and not quite so scenic. Yet, I recognize, it is still part of the journey and down the Lane I go.