Today we finish up this series by my husband Michael. It's our hope that these posts will help your husband to move into new levels of freedom, integrity and "relational-ness".
Pain and shame
I can remember the exact moment, in recovery, when I realized that I was not afraid of feeling bad emotionally anymore. I could bear feelings that previously felt unbearable. It is impossible to eliminate pain and shame from our lives, especially in early recovery. But we can grow our capacity to remain our best self in the presence of negative feelings. When we can stay integrated mentally and emotionally, we have the opportunity to move towards connection and healing That will the amount of pain and shame in ourselves and our community over time.
Grounding
When you start to feel flooded with pain or shame, the first step is to ground yourself. Learning how to ground yourself effectively is key to being able to use some of the other tools below as well as being the first step to get back into “relational mode.”
Here are a few simple grounding practices:
· Focus on breathing deeply
· Feel your feet and their connection to the ground
· Run the index finger of one hand around the outline of each finger on the other hand
· Focus on five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can tase
· Learn how to do the “shalom my body” exercise (this is a little more involved, but is excellent).
The more you practice these, the more automatic they will become. That is important when you feel overwhelmed, and it is difficult to think clearly.
Appreciation and gratitude
Another way to calm yourself and return to relational mode is to practice appreciation and gratitude. These can have a profound impact on your peace and wellbeing.
Appreciation is the sense of choosing something around you that you can appreciate, such as the beauty of leaves on a tree feel of a fresh breeze. This helps to calm your nervous system.
From appreciation, it is natural to move into gratitude, where you feel thankful to someone. When we move into gratitude, it activates our relational circuits.
I highly recommend the following video where Kitty Wilder explains this in detail and provides an exercise that can help you to rewire your brain towards a default state of appreciation and gratitude. In early recovery, appreciation and gratitude can be really difficult. Kitty explains a strategy for handling that in this video.
Mindfulness
The idea of mindfulness has been popularized recently. There’s good reason for that. So much of our distress comes from ruminating on our pain, shame or fears. There is a time for processing our negative feelings. But, much of the time, we are better served by being in the present moment practicing appreciation and gratitude.
Grief
In many cultures, we are taught that real men do not cry. Hollywood movies are full of action heroes that stay cool in every situation. But being hard makes us brittle. We become like glass, which is incredibly hard, but which shatters easily. Conversely, Jesus was described by the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 42:3) as “A bruised reed he will not break.” And, the verse “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) is famous for being the shortest verse in the Bible.
Though most men in addiction avoid grief, it is the true antidote for shame. However, it important to understand that there are two forms of grief. They are described well in 2 Corinthians 7:10. “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” I believe that the most common form of “worldly sorrow” is when we sink into a victim state. I believe that Godly sorrow is when we see through God’s eyes with grief for both our own sin and the sins of those that hurt us.
Richard Rohr speaks on men and grief. He says “How do you know when the grieving process has done its work? It’s when you no longer feel the need to blame anyone.”
Anger
It is said that anger is a secondary emotion. That means that there is something going on underneath the anger. I have learned to find the grief that sits under my anger. There is an anger variant to the “shalom my body exercise” that I have found helps me to find tears.
Note that I don’t always handle feelings of anger well in the moment, but I welcome Lisa challenging me when she sees me flip into an angry form of enemy mode.
A note about anger for partners
I (Michael) am aware that most of the readership of this blog are betrayed partners. While it is important for all of us to recognize when we have slipped into “enemy mode,” it is also important to understand that there is a place for righteous anger in the early recovery process. I needed Lisa’s anger. It showed me how big my problem was and how much change was needed. If your husband can make it safe enough for you to show the grief under the anger, then that can help him learn how to share your grief. But that is rarely safe or possible in the beginning.
Note from Lisa: I suspect Jesus was able to love His enemies (something he asked His disciples to aim for) and be righteously angry. I'd love to hear others' thoughts on whether we can experience anger without going into an enemy mode state. I think it might be possible and I'm practicing getting there (but don't think I've yet arrived).
Immanuel journalling
In our distress, we often struggle to feel the presence of God. Dr Jim Wilder has developed a powerful exercise that I still find helpful. It involves imagining God’s voice speaking to us and moving through the steps of:
· Seeing us
· Hearing us
· Empathizing with us
· Being happy to be with us
· Being able and willing to help us
This is described in detail Jim’s book Joyful Journey: Listening to Immanuel. You can download a short worksheet that takes you through the basic steps here.
Fear and anxiety
Feelings of fear or anxiety so easily send us spiralling into enemy mode. I think of the story of Jesus sleeping in the boat during the storm when the disciples were afraid for their lives. Jesus calmed that storm. He can help us to calm the storm inside of us too.
The first step with fear is grounding, as described above. When I catch myself in fear or anxiety, I usually start with a “body scan.” I let my awareness travel over my body looking for where I can feel the physical tension. I then use one of the grounding techniques I described above. For fear, I find the “shalom my body” exercise to be the most effective.
Name the fear
In his book “The Anxiety Opportunity,” Curtis Chang suggests that we give each of our fears a name. Often, there are only a handful of fears that recur over and over. Most of the strong fears are likely to be somewhat irrational and often established when we were very young. By giving them a name, we externalize the fear. We think of it as something separate from ourselves. When we can do that, we gain a sense of authority over the fear and we can examine its roots.
Recognize the lie
Behind most of our fears will be some sort of lie. For example, I have a fear that I have named “fear that my needs won’t be met.” I sometimes experience this when it seems like my needs are being forgotten by those around me. When this hits, I suddenly feel like a little boy (maybe 6 years old?). When I recognize it and name it, I can then counter with the truth that, my needs are regularly met and I have the power to ask for what I need. I can then follow up with thankfulness and gratitude to get my relational circuits back online.
Summing up
We started off this article talking about two traps in recovery from sexual addiction. Either continuing to objectify women in more socially acceptable forms, or turning women into the enemy in an effort to eliminate objectification completely. We defined the terms noticing, looking and seeing to describe how we can make a choice when triggered. The goal is to see everyone, including women (or whoever we formerly sexually objectified), as God sees them. We then looked at those concepts in the light of emerging brain science.
Readers may have been caught off guard by this shift to talking about enemy and relational mode. In order to truly “see” people the way God does, we need to be in relational mode. There is no other way. So, it makes sense to focus on what robs our ability to be in relational mode.
When we are in darkness, it is fruitless to try to shovel the darkness out. Instead, we need to bring in the light. Similarly, when our goal is to eliminate sexual sin, it is not beneficial to keep our focus on the sexual sin. We can achieve our goal much more effectively by focusing on the healthy connection we want to replace it with.
I have tried to equip you to recognize what emotional patterns and traps are sabotaging your ability to stay connected. And, to point you to some solutions that you can practice to increase your ability to connect with God, yourself and those around you.
It is my prayer that something here will help you. I wish I had learned these things much earlier in life. I share them with you in hopes that they will help you to move towards the joy and connection that are your inheritance in God!
