2 months ago, I experienced a wakeup call; I had devastating problemsinfesting my life that I broke down rather pathetically. For 2 complete months,I managed to maintain emotional sobriety and an ability to make sound decisionsthat drove my life to the sweetest destinations, Thanks to Allah. I came torealize the pleasure of life-balance and self-respect that cannot possibly beoutdone. I have always been conscious about the importance of being aresponsible individual, carefully thinking about his initiatives long beforetaking them. And for 2 complete months, life made a pleasing sense, until Icame this close to getting shattered all over again; to turning around andhopping all the way back to square one.My emotional attachment to certain behaviors and memories grew extensiveand overriding. It was a very stressful day and I panicked as a result ofhaving my day getting out of control. I felt my breathing growing frantic. Atorrent of unwanted memories rushed aggressively into my mind. And what I havebeen fearing arrived; I felt indifferent and lost sense of the satisfactionthat I have been wallowing in for the past 2 months.
As a last refuge, I resorted to what I call: my sobriety notebook. It isa note book in which I list all the reasons that should assist me in abstainingfrom an action. For instance, the subject can be: Why should I no longercontact (X): 1: A desire to not emotionally attach her, 2: It goes against myappreciation of Women, etc. I grabbed the notebook rather limply and started toreiterate the statements out loud, attempting to summon the power of myconscious thinking, thus enabling it to outperform the authority of myemotional brain. It is because most of our unwise decisions are inspired byemotional influences that belittle our ability to be objective and focused.
Reading this helped me but only a bit. I felt more oriented and startedto undertake an ERP practice (1). An ERP practice was suggested by a former sexaddict who attended recovery programs and learned about a practice that basicallyentail 3 steps: breathing, positive statements and shifting attention. When weexperience stress, panic, sexual arousal, etc. we experience physiologicalchanges that are unchangeable at the moment such as dilation of pupils,increased heart pulse and a shallower rate of breathing. The only symptom thattolerates intervention is breathing. You can inhale and exhale rather slowly,forcing the transmission of positive signals to your brain, reassuring it andregaining a sense of control. And when you do work on your breathing, you cansignificantly lower your current level of stress, panic, sexual arousal, etc.What follows is a reiteration of positive statements that I personally keep inmy little sobriety note book. Reading statements out loud addresses yourcognitive thinking, thereby spoon-feeding it. Your inside voices are on theside of your emotional attachment to behaviors, whereas statements that youwrite consciously with the intention of being honest and sober, address theprimate brain which is entirely responsible for the level of our consciousness.
When I started getting more unattached to the yearning I felt earlieryesterday, I felt quite ashamed. I read a research (2) on compulsive behaviorsthat argues that some people are stress-reactive. Meaning, they tend to find aninability to face reality in excessively stressful situation, and as a result,they resort to self-medicating actions such as wallowing in an addictivepractice such as porn watching, restarting former relationships that used toconsume with the purpose of deriving emotional pleasure, sleeping, etc. Somepeople do not experience compulsivity in any behavior by nature. However, whenfaced with a stressful situation, their ability to internally pacify theirapprehensions is deficient enough to ensure running scared, seeking emotionalnumbness in any transitory practice.
As I understood earlier yesterday that I was at a vulnerable moment, Iimmediately decided to go jogging to give no room for further apprehensions tocause me a relapse. Vulnerable times arrive as a result of anxiety, stress,boredom, emptiness, depression, etc. They make us more prone to committingpractices that jeopardize a healthy understanding of who we are. Theirfrequency of occurring depends upon your life, how it is managed, the number ofactivities you undertake, etc. I organized my life in a manner that iscounterproductive to having a lot of vulnerable moments. However, they areinevitable. So, the solution is not only to attempt to eliminate them, butrather to learn how to have enough strategies to make them ineffective such ashaving your own sobriety book, maintaining a relationship with somebody who hadpreviously experienced your problem and achieved recovery, practicing ERP, etc.
Thanks to Allah, I did not relapse and I decided to share my experienceso it can provide insights to those who are attempting to maintain control overtheir lives. It is very important to understand that curing completely from anyproblem is not realistic. You can gethealed that is ensured, yet you should never lower your defenses, presuming thatyou are off the hook, because this is when the ugliest creatures prey upon yourflesh. Most of the people who relapse go like this, '' I have been off for 92days! What the heck was I thinking; I ruined everything!'' What is worthy ofattention here is the number of days. Usually a relapse is caused by anexcessive focus on the number of days spent clean from a destructive practicewhich sometimes justify our willingness to go back to places that weconsciously deem dark; because you relate the number of days or the elongationof the period to the disappearance of behavioristic problems. Beware; this is amean trick our emotional brains play on us.
We are humans; disregarding that consumes utterly. However, dramatizingthe premise of vulnerability in our creation may justify rather exponentially.Setbacks can take place. Would you like for a setback to arrive early in themorning at your front door? No! Will that ensure its absence? No. The best lifestrategy is to keep on digging in the soft sands. Sometimes we fall in deeppits. We hurt our knees. We shriek in pain to only realize that we are on adeserted island. We attempt to climb back to the surface only to realize howsoft the sands are. Inevitability of death in such moments seems immutable.However, those with the faith in survival
keep digging till they stumble upon acrutch hidden meanly beneath the soft surfaces.
I believe that heroes are those who you may have met long ago and feltsorry for. They had problems and they sure did appear miserable and worthless.You went back home to forget all about their contribution to life, only to hearyears later about their glorious battles against their problems and how theyrealized greatness out of them. The greatest books are written by those whopaid darkness long visits. And I respect people with a passion for defyingproblems. I did have problems and I still do, and I intend on healing furthermore to find the keys to growth and serenity and share them with the entireuniverse.------------------------------------------- References: (1):http://www.feedtherightwolf.org/2010/11/how-to-handle-triggers-or-mini-erp.html
http://www.feedtherightwolf.org/2010/11/how-to-use-erp-properly-change-your.html
(2):
http://sash-list.net/cooper-internetsex.pdf --------------------------------------------ιиѕριяє∂ ву: Experiencing a close encounter with a relapse and, thankfully, avoiding it.
