Learning to Feel Pain

One of of the most difficult aspects of addiction recovery is learning how to feel again.  After years of numbing any type of pain or stress or disappointment, letting myself feel again is hard.  I am not good at it.  I don't know how to process it and sometimes it is difficult to cope from minute to minute. 

For decades of my life I just didn't entertain pain.  If someone hurt me, I numbed by acting out.  If I was scared, I numbed, if I was stressed I numbed.  As those familiar with my story know, I was first exposed to pornography at around age 8 and then fully started to engage in addictive behaviors around age 13.  So that is over 25 years that I numbed pain and stress instead of learning normal coping skills.  Yes, I have had stretches of sobriety and times when I was able to process pain and disappointment but it was usually by relying on others.  Bishops, my wife, friends in recovery.  I learned to look for help and support but rarely did I turn to God who is my only true source of comfort.

I have started working the online program that Addo offers and I did an assignment last night where I made a list of positive thoughts and then made a list of fears and negative thoughts.  The point of the exercise was to think of at least 3 positive things that countered each negative.  It was a good exercise and it felt good to surrender some of the negative thoughts and emotions.  But others were just too painful and scary.  Writing down 3 positive counterpoints just wasn't enough to release the fear.  It just brought the fears and stresses back to the forefront.  

So here I sit.  It is nearly 1 AM and I work in roughly 6 hours.  But laying in bed just gives the fears and negative emotions a sleepless playground to run amok.  So I am here to surrender them.  I know that my Savior can carry my pains and fears.  I know that he will help me with these burdens if my faith and desire is strong enough.  I know that the secret to getting through it isn't to be strong enough but to be humble enough to ask for His help and let Him carry my burdens and take my pain.  He understands perfectly what I am feeling and how unequipped I am to deal with it so I publicly surrender these fears and pains to him.  The only positive thought I really need to embrace to let go of my stress and fear is to simply trust Him for He can bind all wounds and heal all pain..

As I felt the weight of my stress and pain build up tonight, I fell to my knees and prayed mightily  and then listened to hopeful talks from Elder Holland and President Utchdorf.  I had a friend in recovery once tell me that the key to learning to feel pain again is to "lean into the pain", like a tree bracing for an oncoming wind storm.  To embrace it and eliminate some of its power.  So I am trying.  I am trying to lean into the pain, to meet it head on and trust that with faith in God that it will not beat me.  That it is not all consuming.

I am trying but it's hard...