Shame and Self Worth

While meeting with my therapist today she asked me to journal about some of the things we talked about in our session. I had just typed this in my personal journal, but felt prompted to share publicly.

I told her about the huge shame I had while attending The Togetherness Project conference two weekends ago. We were in Midway, UT, which is a much higher altitude than where I live, and I struggled physically. I was short of breath and sweaty with the slightest bit of activity. It caused me to feel so much shame. I felt like I was a burden on my friends. I didn't want them to have to wait for me or be embarrassed by me. I am sure that none of them felt that way, but I felt that way. They have never behaved in a manner that led me to think anything but that I am loved, it is all my own shame talking.

I feel like a failure when I think about how much I struggle physically. I fight my own food addiction every minute of every day. I am not active because it's embarrassing and painful how out of shape I am. This in turn makes it harder to become more active. It's a cycle that I struggle to break.

My shame about this is debilitating sometimes. I will retreat from others at times, or I will overcompensate at others. With those closest to me, my family, I will react in anger. Really these are all reactions to my own shame. This shame feels so suffocating it's as if I am covered in tar, only it's elastic tar. It clings to me and if I am only able to pull part of it away, if I am not able to completely break free, it rebounds back and envelopes me again. Shame is a physical as well as emotional barrier for me.

As we talked, I also told her about my recovery triad. I feel like my recovery is a triad, and a piece of it is missing so I am stuck in the other parts as well. To me recovery is a triangle or triad of the emotional, spiritual, and physical aspects of life. I feel like I have worked hard on the emotional and spiritual aspects but that I have neglected the physical aspects. Because of this neglect I have been losing ground in the other areas of recovery. It's the missing piece to truly being able to recover. For me it's also the most challenging.

My therapist had me notice how I was feeling and acting when I was talking about my shame, and how I was feeling and acting when talking about my triad. It was visibly different. When talking about my shame I spoke in a monotone and was more slumped down, it felt dark, oppressing, and hopeless. When I talked about my triad my voice was more animated, I used gestures to explain what I was talking about, I felt lighter and more hopeful. When I talk about my triad the physical component seems doable, rather than hopeless.

As we were talking about my relationships and my sense of emotional and physical abandonment, I was talking about my nephew. I have a great amount of love and protectiveness regarding him because of some challenges he has. When I was speaking about him she pointed out how empathic and compassionate I was regarding him. She also noted that I am that way with most people. I am. I have a heart that was made to love and accept others. It is one of my gifts. Why then, can I not turn that empathy and compassion towards myself? Why can I not be my own best cheerleader. The answer is both complex and simple. I do not feel worthy. That's what it all boils down to, I lack a sense of self worth.

I have learned over these last couple of years to find things about myself that I love. I am getting much better and recognizing my strengths. I also have had great moments of seeing myself as God sees me, as a woman of unchanging worth. My worth does not change in his eyes no matter what, and sometimes I believe this. Underneath it all though, I really struggle to see my worth and remember that it cannot be diminished. I am of value just because I am. That has yet to penetrate my inner core. Because of this lack of self worth, I am out of touch with my own body. I use it as a shell and often even as a hiding place, because I don't connect to it. It's as if it is a separate piece of me. This compartmentalization is because of the shame I feel about it.

I have made some commitments to aid in my physical recovery to myself, my therapist, and a couple of my friends. These commitments are small, and to most would seem simple and silly. To me they are BIG, they are scary, and they are powerful. I have made them knowing that I probably won't be 100% great at them all of the time. That's okay. There's where compassion comes in. I don't get to excuse myself from my commitments, but I get to have compassion with myself if I am putting in the effort and doing the best I can.

My physical recovery is going to be an uphill battle. It's going to require diligence and perseverance. It isn't however, hopeless. It is possible. I can do it if I surrender my shame and fear to my Heavenly Father. If I remember to see my worth through His eyes. I could write a novel about self worth, but until I truly take it in and make it part of me, it's only words. I am working to believe what I know is true, I have undiminished worth just because I am me.

More hopeful,

T.

Daring Greatly...A Textbook for Life

Sometimes I feel like I'm back in school. I have homework and reading. I have notebooks, art projects, highlighters, pencils and discussions. There have been times in my recovery that this has all felt like too much for me. Too much time and energy spent on recovery. Too much knowledge and new patterns that I'm trying to fit in my head, heart and life. There have been times when I have had to take a break. I'm just coming off one of those "breaks" and getting my recovery back on track.

I have thought and prayed long and hard about whether a break is necessary or even good for me in recovery. I have come to the conclusion that it depends. It depends on what I'm taking  break from. Some of my recovery behaviors have to be innate and included everyday, otherwise I slip back into old patterns and behaviors. I can however take a break from reading, eating, breathing, and sleeping nothing but recovery.

I'm not advocating that this works for everyone, but it works for me. There are times that I have to let what I have learned settle in and become incorporated in my life. I have to figure out what my "new norm" looks like. What works for me and what doesn't. Then I can start to learn and grow more. That's not right, or not how I see it. I am always learning and growing, it's just sometimes I voraciously want more knowledge and sometimes I have to let the new knowledge I have gained help me to grow. I'm not sure that even makes sense, but it's how I see things in my own life.

This last break was a little too long and I let too many of my everyday recovery behaviors slip. I fell back into some of my own habits of enabling and letting my anger control me. No where near the degree as before, but not where I want to be either. I am glad to be back on track and getting those behaviors back in my daily life.

This month for my book club we are reading a book I suggested and have wanted to read for a good while, Daring Greatly by Brene Brown.  Since I am leading the discussion, I need to make sure I get it read. I sat down today and started it. I'm in love! I mean I already loved what I have seen and read from Brene Brown, but I am even more in love. If you have never heard her speak or read anything by her, I have linked to her Tedx talk in this post. Watch it! You'll be glad you did.

The things I am learning are life changing. Well ok, life affirming. I am learning the importance of and the way to be vulnerable and fight shame. These two things are vital to recovery.  They are skill that if everyone had, we would have so much more open communication and so much less criticism and blame.

This post is in no way sponsored by or affiliated with Brene Brown or Daring Greatly. I just wanted to share something that was helping me be a better me.

A little more vulnerably,

T.

Owning Our Stories

I am sure many of you have heard of Brene Brown and her research on vulnerability, if not look her up, she is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! She researches about shame and vulnerability. Her work on being ourselves and loving ourselves is very powerful. She just gets what it is to be an emotionally healthy human being.

"Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do." -Brene Brown from The Gifts of Imperfection

I have been working on owning my own story for quite sometime now. Learning how to share parts of myself and be vulnerable. I'm getting much better at that. The loving myself through the process is where I'm really struggling. I really do love the person I am inside. I feel beautiful inside most of the time. It's my outside that I struggle to not loathe, let alone love. That is a painful realization for me and one that I do not share easily. I have started seeing my LifeStar group leader for individual counseling recently and just told her how I felt. It was so incredibly hard to admit it out loud. I'm not sure I have ever actually admitted it to myself until just the last couple of weeks. It is painful to know that my outsides don't match my insides. I've really evaluated why I loathe my body because I have been trying to reconcile the hatred I have for it for the new found love I have of my spirit and gifts. It's very hard to reconcile the two because they cannot be reconciled. What I came to the conclusion of is that yes, I do hate the way I look, but if that's all it was I think I could find a way to love myself in spite of it. I hate the fact that I feel like I have betrayed my health and body and that in turn now it is betraying me. I hate that I can't do the things I want to do because of my weight and health issues. I hate that I can't keep up with my family and friends. I hate that I can't ride roller coasters because I can't fit in the safety belts (yes, I know this for a fact because twice in the last year and a half I have tried and felt utter shame and humiliation at not being able to ride because I wouldn't fit). Even writing this is causing me so much shame and anxiety.

I have fought long and hard to believe that B.'s pornography addiction was not because of me. I used to always think, if only I was skinnier, if only I was more beautiful. I could've if only'd myself forever and it would only have caused me more shame. I do not believe that because I am obese and unhealthy that B. turns to porn. That is not something I will own anymore. His addiction is all about his mismanagement of his emotions and not how I look, act, behave, will or won't do. I still have to occasionally remind myself of these facts, but I now wholeheartedly believe them, before they were just empty words I was supposed to believe.

I want to lay out a disclaimer here though, I want to lose weight, badly. I can understand my husband's feelings of hopelessness surrounding his addiction. I feel hopeless a lot of the time about ever improving my body. The second part of the disclaimer is that I don't want to lose weight to get to be a certain weight or size. I have no intention of looking like today's underweight, big chested specimen that seems to be what is desirable. I want to lose weight to be healthy. I want to lose weight to be able to enjoy a long and active life. I want to be able to enjoy spending time actively and not feel like it is a monumental effort. I don't have unrealistic expectations or a certain end weight or size in mind. I just want to not loathe my body.

This is not at all where I planned this post to go, but apparently it's where I needed it to go. I hope by being vulnerable I can open some eyes and hearts. I hope those eyes and hearts include mine.

Owning my story,

T.

Shame and Comparison

These last few weeks have been rough recovery wise…lots of growing pains. I am so grateful for the growth though, that I am willing to take the pain too.

I STILL have issues with comparison and shame over my story. I still have an overwhelming amount of shame because my husband's acting out behaviors were "just" porn and masturbation. I have felt that I hadn't "earned my seat" so to speak, at the Betrayal Trauma table. This isn't because of the way I was treated or anything that was said to me by the rest of the amazing women at the table, it is all just my own perception. I have felt like B.'s acting out could be so much worse, why should I feel so much betrayal? But here's the thing, I don't HAVE to prove that I have trauma to ANYONE, it's just there. Nobody, including myself, gets to tell me that my trauma isn't justified. My husband is a porn addict, he has been emotionally unavailable to me for the greater part of our twenty years of marriage. Plain and simple. Trauma is trauma and it happens despite our own best efforts to tell ourselves otherwise. What I DO get a say over is how I am going to deal with that trauma and it's effects on me.

I get to say  how hard I work my recovery. I get to say when I'm going to use my tools and reach out. I get to say how long I spend on my knees talking to my Heavenly Father. I get to say I have Trauma (with a capital "T") and own it. As Brené Brown says, there is so much power in owning our story. I am working on owning mine, Trauma and all.

Here's the other part of that equation, whether or not B. ultimately finds and stays in recovery, is NOT up to me. I have no control over his recovery. I hope he finds recovery. I hope he fights for our family. I pray for those things every day. I cannot, however, control them. He has made progress, significant progress in some areas, but regardless of what progress he has made, I still have to work through the trauma.

I think that's going to be a big dragon for us to slay together, the Trauma dragon. You see, I think B. and me both expect that when he finds recovery I should have found it too. I am realizing that isn't the case, that the addicts recovery and the betrayed's recovery are not usually linear and equal. I know this is going to be a struggle to help him (an myself) understand, but for now I'm leaving that worry where it belongs, in the future. We will, as "they" say, cross that bridge when we come to it.

No comparison,

T.

Recovery

It has been a while since I have posted. I have been spending a lot of time doing recovery work. I have been working on a full disclosure with my therapist. I will soon have it ready to share with my wife. She is at a point where she needs this to make any further progress.

We started attending LifeStar a few weeks ago. I am learning some amazing things. I wish I could have learned them years ago. I would like to share a few of these things here. In later posts I plan to go more into depth about them. As I get further in recovery I would like to make this blog a place where I can share things that will help other addicts in their recovery.

Sex addiction (porn, masturbation, lust, etc.) is not about sex. It is about the inability to manage emotions. We all have pain and challenges we must face in life. An addict has learned that acting out on his addiction will help to numb the pain. The problem is that you can't selectively numb an emotion. When you numb the pain, you numb the joy, love, thankfulness, hope, and all the other emotions that lead to a happy life. This of course leads to more pain, and the cycle starts all over again.

The opposite of addiction is not abstinence, it is connection. From birth until death we all have an inherent need to connect with others. Sometimes connecting can be difficult. Shame makes us feel like we are not worthy to be loved. So we feel isolation. In an attempt to fill this void we turn to our addiction. Acting out seems like a safe way to connect. The porn isn't going to tell me that I am worthless. At least not while I am acting out. I can create a false sense of attachment by viewing porn. Sex is the most intimate way to connect. But when it is all over, the pain of knowing this is a false attachment makes me feel worse. This leads to more shame. Shame will eventually cause me to act out and the cycle continues.

This has completely changed my view of what recovery will look like. I used to think that I had to just learn how to abstain from all these acts. There are some addicts that can do this, however they have not fixed the underlying cause of their pain. They are not in recovery. I know see that my recovery will include creating healthy relationships with both men and women. This is what I have wanted all my life. I don't have any real friends. The few friends I have are more like good acquaintances. I am going to have to work hard to change this. I have already felt more at ease around others the past week. I feel like I am able to open up more. I feel like the wall I have built is beginning to crumble.

B.

Not a Feel Good Post

I'm having a hard time writing tonight because I'm angry. I'm angry at a lot of things, but mostly just mad at my life in general. I want to just put it all out there for now, maybe it will help get some of the anger and frustration I am feeling resolved. If you need an uplifting and hopeful post, this is not the one for you. It's not going to sound hopeful and it may even sound a bit selfish and ranty. Consider yourself warned, today is not a day for sunshine and rainbows but rather for thunder, lightning and wind.

It seems like lately I need my rain gear and umbrella. I know I am choosing to focus on the bad, but I'm hoping that by getting it out there I will be able to let it go. It seems like when it rains it pours. Let's just start with the expenses and homeowner problems we've had lately. We have a three year old refrigerator that we have had to sink $400+ dollars into and it still isn't fixed (thank goodness we kept the old one and have it in the garage to act as a stand in). Then, our vehicle has been stalling as we drive it down the road and with B out of work we can't afford to take it in to the shop to be looked at, so we are down to one vehicle with three drivers all going different directions. Then B sent me a picture today on my phone of where a mouse or something has made a hole all the way from the outside of the garage through the door frame into the garage. Oh and did I mention, that this has caused water damage from all our rain we've gotten lately? Are you serious!?! We live in a three year old home for crying out loud!!! So, now we have to call an exterminator to come find the pest and rid us of it, so we don't have to keep fixing the same hole. As a result, I took tomorrow off of work very last minute to get things in the garage straightened out so we can get it organized and make sure that that is the only damage. On a positive note, did I mention how awesome my co-workers are? They didn't even bat an eye at covering for me tomorrow so I could take care of things. 

Now, I'll just touch on the emotional baggage I'm trying to clean out right now. My mom called to talk last night (we talk almost every day) and decided that she needed to give me her opinion on what we need to improve on in order for B to find a job. It ended up being a nasty discussion that we both ended up in tears from. It really threw me for a loop and upset B because of some of the things she said. I've tried to let it go today, knowing that she is my mom and she only wants what she thinks is the best for me and that even when she is mad at me she still loves me. Sometimes that's easier said than done. I've also had such conflicting emotions about my "worthiness" to seek recovery as the wife of a porn addict. I keep thinking, "What right do I have to feel hurt and betrayed by my husband's actions when I have my own addictions to deal with?" I am still really trying to come to grips with the fact that just because I have my own faults doesn't excuse B from the pain he has caused me. It's pretty tempting to just say I don't deserve to feel this way and so I'm not going to look for support. The logical part of me knows that this is my own shame and guilt eating away at me and that I am as much in need of recovery and healing from the pain caused to me as I am from the addictions that have a hold of me. 

None of this even begins to address my feelings about B's recovery and how it is progressing and how I am working through all that. I will save that for another day as I'm having a hard time keeping my eyelids open right now. 

I am sorry for the ranting jag and that I didn't have something uplifting or hopeful to post today. It is what it is today. You get the unadulterated ugly truth here, it's the only way we are going to heal. I needed to let that all go tonight so that I can face my day tomorrow with optimism as to what can be accomplished. We only need to turn it over to Him. 

Worn out and frustrated,

T.

Shame

I think this is a good time to talk about shame. Shame is a powerful tool that Satan uses to keep control of an addict. From the start of my addiction I have always felt shame. I always felt like if people really knew who I was, they would be disgusted. What I didn't realize is that my pornography addiction is not who I am. The real me is a child of God. A man with infinite potential. If people knew the real me, I would have many friends that loved me. You see, the shame has made me withdraw into myself to the extent that I am very antisocial. I have very few friends.

The shame is what has made me hide my addiction. I have always thought that I was different than anyone else. I knew that other men were addicted to pornography, but no one was as cowardly and hid the addiction like I did. Now as I face recovery and learn from other men with this addiction, I find that this shame, this hiding, is the norm. Satan has had plenty of time to learn the best techniques to keep us down. I have hid this addiction from the world. I have hid it from my wife. She has known about it for many years now, but I have told her countless times that I am doing good, that I am not looking at pornography, nor am I doing that word that I have a real hard time saying. Masterbation. You see, admitting to looking at pornography is hard. Admitting to masterbation is almost impossible for me. I have lied to her so many times about my actions that she has a very hard time trusting me. I have discovered that this is a typical pattern in a husband-wife relationship that is struggling with this addiction. Many men try to tell their wife that they are okay. But they are not. Shame has got the better of them. It is much easier to hide, than it is to take the necessary steps to recover.

You might ask, how can you lie to the person you love the most in your life? How can you pretend that everything is okay? I don't know if it is the same for every man, but I can compartmentalize my brain such that it is like there are two of me. There is the loving husband and father. Then there is the selfish addict. I can go through the motions of being a husband and father and ignore the other issue. But like Mr Hyde I will turn into a sex crazed animal that just has to have another hit of porn. This is always when I am alone, away from my family. This is how I handle it. Unfortunatly, "Dr Jeckyll" is a very selfish person. I can't be two people. I can't keep the effects of the addiction from hurting my family.

I think I have finally discovered the key to recovery. I can't hide. I have to be open about my addiction. Someday I hope to be open about this to everyone, because I know there are others that I can help. For know, I  can be open to my support group. My support group consists of my wonderful wife, my Bishop, anyone that comes to the 12 step addiction recovery meeting, and to you, the readers of this blog.

Removing the shame makes it so much easier to live my life worthily. There are many more steps I must take. I need to look inside myself and try to find out how I can love myself again. I need to figure out how to reach out to others, how to be a friend to others. But I can't do any of this when I am filled with so much shame.

My advice to any man who is struggling with this addiction is to open up. You can't hide this. It will destroy you. Go to your Bishop. Go to your wife. Go to someone who will understand. Go to the 12 step addiction recovery meetings. The Lord will bless you. Just open up.

B.

Telling Secrets

I copied the name of this post from Glennon over at Momastry. I stumbled on her blog today and I have been eating it up. She is a real person. She has flaws and she willingly shares them. She is amazingly frank and I find it uplifting. She came to the realization that her outsides needed to match her insides, she needed people to know that she isn't perfect or put together most of the time. Her post called Telling Secrets inspired me today.

I want other women to hear me say, you don't have to be perfect, you don't have to look a certain way, behave a certain way or do anything that you are uncomfortable with. None of these things matter in the scheme of helping your loved one heal from their sexual addiction. You didn't cause the addiction. You don't make it worse. It's their disease to heal from. You can support them. You can love them. But their actions are not caused by anything you do or anything that you don't do. It took me at least ten years to learn that. Frankly it is something that I have to relearn at times. 

Now is as good a time as any to tell you my secret, my truth as it is. My name is T and I am not only married to an addict but I am an addict. I'm not addicted to visual pornography like B is but rather to both food and written pornography. 

My addiction to food started when I was an early teen. I was able to keep it "hidden" more or less until I got to college and it got out of control. I have never conquered that monster. I have taken baby steps in that direction and I want to take more. In a sense my husband's addiction has triggered me to turn to my own addiction to food to help me cope. It isn't his fault, I don't blame him. I did, oh believe me I did, but I have come to realize that just like his addiction isn't my fault, my addiction isn't his. 

My addiction to written pornography, well that was a much more tortuous road. I remember reading a book about seven or eight years ago that had some swearing in it and some mild sex scenes. I threw it away. I had paid good money for it but I was so disgusted with it that I threw it away. Over the last two to three years I have gradually let more and more sex creep into the books I read, or rather I have become more liberal in what I will allow myself to read. You might think that it would disgust me, and it did at first. However, just like with visual pornography, each time I encountered it I was desensitized to it that much more. It got to the point where all I wanted to read was "trashy" romance novels. I have e-reader accounts, and just like with visual pornography, the worst stuff is usually the free or cheap stuff. A lot of the books that have real value and don't contain the garbage are expensive. That's how I started justifying it. I even admit to not only reading all three books in the Fifty Shades of Gray series, but several books that were just as bad if not worse.

When B and I hit rock bottom I decided that I needed to take away as much temptation as possible for myself. For a week or so I deleted my e-reader apps so I didn't have any access to them. When I reinstalled them I went through and deleted all the books I knew had sex in them and all the books I couldn't remember for sure if they did. I didn't just delete them from my devices, but completely from my library so I have no access to them. This is my first step. I guess if I am working the program, I have taken step number one by admitting that I have a problem. I am working on step number two…hope. I want to believe in the power of God to restore me to spiritual health, but I'm not quite there yet. 

There is no less shame for me to admit to my addiction than there is to admit my husband is an addict. There is no less shame for me to admit to my addiction than there is for him to admit to his. It's hard for me to grasp the twisting nature of my emotions sometimes. Shame, hurt, disgust, betrayal, hope, pain, hopelessness, fear, defeat, and the list goes on…sometimes in relation to my own addictions and sometimes in relation to B's. I will leave all that for another post as it's more than I can write tonight.

Hoping for hope and putting my secrets out there,

T.

Coping with Life's Challenges

In the past I have used pornography as a means to deal with the challenges I face in my life. The high I experience takes away the stress and pain I feel for a short time. Of course when the high is over, I am left with the guilt and shame, along with the original stress I was dealing with. I have often wondered what my life would be like if I had spent all the time I have wasted, viewing pornography, doing something even halfway productive. Would I have many of the challenges I now face?

Yesterday I spent several hours on LinkedIn updating my profile. I have heard that networking is a powerful way to break into the hidden job market. Apparently the majority of jobs are never posted, but are filled by people found through networking. It is important for someone with my challenges to stay busy and productive. I feel like yesterday I dealt with my anxiety very well.

Feel free to leave comments. I would like to hear from others dealing with the same issues that my wife and I are facing.

B