Say Hello
to You
We made a searching and fearless moral
inventory of ourselves.
—Step Four from the Twelve Steps
Let us examine our ways and test them,
and let us return to the Lord.
—Lamentations
3:40
Complain if you must, but don't
lash out.
Keep your mouth shut, and let your heart do the talking.
—Psalm
4:4 MSG
—Matthew
26:41 MSG
Sexual
addiction is about escape. The addictive acting out we have done made it
possible for us to temporarily avoid uncomfortable and painful feelings like
inadequacy, fear, hopelessness, loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted or
unloved. But we could not escape these painful feelings forever. Sooner or
later they always returned, usually with a vengeance. And, because most of us
grew up having painful feelings we could not escape, we may have grown callused
to them, and not realized we felt like we did. We often even trained ourselves
subconsciously to avoid our feelings through thoughts, fantasies and other
intoxicating experiences, thereby losing connection with what was really going
on inside us. It’s like we had unknowingly developed our own world of make-believe
and become lost in it. But this will never work for long. Anyone who wants to
recover will have to leave their fantasies behind them, and accept the real
truth of who they are and the reality of their lives.
Making an inventory of our feelings,
beliefs, attitudes and actions is a pursuit of this reality. It is a commitment
to recognize and acknowledge one’s personal truth, so that our wounds can be
healed. Personally, I would have much preferred to do someone else’s inventory,
but I was the one who needed recovery, so I stuck with taking inventory of
myself. It was not fun and it was not easy.
This is an excerpt from When Lost Men Come Home, not for men onlycopyright, david zailer 2012
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