Step 4: Understanding The True Nature Of My Addiction

     I recently completed a refresh of my Step 4. I had done a Step 4 before but I never really felt great about it and I struggled to get through Steps 6 and 7 so I decided to re-visit it recently. I realized that the aspect of Step 4 that I had completely overlooked was trying to understand the true nature of my addiction. The LDS ARP Manual gives more detail on this concept;

As you do your inventory, look beyond your past behaviors and examine the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that led to your behavior. Your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are actually the roots of your addictive behaviors. Unless you examine all your tendencies toward fear, pride, resentment, anger, self-will, and self-pity, your abstinence will be shaky at best. You will continue with your original addiction or switch to another one. Your addiction is a symptom of other “causes and conditions” (Alcoholics Anonymous [2001], 64).

I realized that this was exactly what I had been struggling with.  I hadn't truly analyzed the roots of my behaviors and so my abstinence and sobriety was "shaky at best".  I recently finished writing about what I feel is the root and true nature of my addiction and I wanted to share it here because it was a powerful learning process for me.

The True Nature of My Addiction

         I did not spent much or any time on this section the last go round.  I have learned a great deal about myself in the past couple years since first starting this process.  I realized that despite doing a relatively adequate job of discussing my sins I had never really understood WHY.  Why do I act out like this?  Why have I continually chosen this path even when it affects my family, my children, my finances, my employment and my ability to complete my education?  I have finally started to come to some conclusions after my last relapse period.  I realize that far and away my biggest character weakness and flaw is that I have never really loved myself.  I have lived with intense feelings of shame and inadequacy for most of my life.  I have never really felt loved or connected to other people.  I have never really understood or believed that I was truly a child of God that had great value.  I have never been able to look into the mirror and be happy with what I see.  It is because of this that when I trigger or act out it often strays to fantasy environments where I can be someone else.  Where I can envision the stereotype of what the world had taught me a successful, attractive man is.  When I would feel inadequate I would trigger and then the easiest solution was to enter my fantasy world.  When I entered chat rooms or called phone lines it was because I could become someone else.  I hated myself so I would slip away and be the person that I thought was better, more valuable and more desirable

         Then in the depths of my addiction it dominated everything.  I would make poor financial decisions because I felt my family would think less of me if I said that we couldn’t afford something they wanted.  That would lead to lies and more deceit which just motivated me more and more to live in that fantasy world.  It all became a tangled binding of flaxen cords like Nephi describes.  But at the root was that constant fear, that constant belief that I am not enough, that I don’t have value.  I truly came to believe that I was beyond the help or care of a loving Father in Heaven and Savior.  It is still something I struggle with.  It is something I have to really be conscious to work on and be proactive about.  I know that this is something that I can remedy with learning to trust in the Lord.  With believing that I have an eternal Father and Savior who love me infinitely.  I have moments when I believe, when I do really know that to be true.  But in moments of weakness I have never really been able to believe in that enough for it to override the fear and the inadequacy. 

         The inadequacy leads to poor decisions, which then leads to the second scariest prong of my addiction, deceit.  I make poor decisions when I am feeling inadequate and then I lie over and over again to cover up the mistakes I made as a result of my lack of self-worth and self-esteem.  This creates the nasty cycle of my addiction.  I am finally starting to see that.  I am still learning how to overcome it, how to really trust and give it away.  But I think it is important and empowering to finally recognize and understand what the cycle is, what the true nature of my struggle is.  That way I can start to recognize when problems will arise.

         I am also starting to understand that idle time is a far bigger trigger for me than stress.  The stress does eventually come but when I act out and when I turn to my addiction it is almost always in moments of boredom or lack of planning.  When I allow myself to be alone when I shouldn’t, when I fail to reach out when I should.  I have never been good at reaching out to others and saying, I need help, I am not in a good place.  One of my favorite things in the world has always been “do nothing days”  Days when I had nothing planned and I could just lounge around and have no plans, no obligations and obviously tons and tons of time to act out and put myself into very scary and dangerous situations.  I relished it for so many years.  I have now started planning out my days, especially my idle time.  I text my Bishop or a sponsor when I know I will be alone for a few hours and let him know what my plan is and then follow up with him when I am not alone anymore.  It is just a small step but it is a start and it is helping me to understand.

~~~ Tim