We find that no one need have difficulty with the spirituality of the program. Willingness, honesty and open mindedness are the essentials of recovery. But these are indispensable.

Honesty

First, we must be honest with ourselves and with others. This is the key to the first step. The first step is a step out of denial, out of the darkness into the light. Denial is deception, another form of dishonesty. As previously written on the types of denial (1-7, 8-14), denial can take all kinds of forms including various forms of dishonesty (e.g., omission, minimizing, half-truths, etc.). Instead, the 12 steps require rigorous honesty; “half-measures availed nothing.”

So we must be honest with ourselves. Do we want to be well? Do we really want it? Strip everything else away, our spouses, our circumstances, the consequences, everything but you, and ask, “If I were to lose everything I hold dear, do I still want this, really?” Or, better yet, “What do I want?” I’ve sat with other men who knew in their heads that they should say they want to be with their wives, but when the facilitator or leader or counselor pressed, many simply wanted out.

The thing about honesty is…it is required at every step. It is required between steps. It is Step Zero. Can I be honest with myself? Can I be honest with others? This is something that I struggle with immensely.

Open Mindedness

Openness to change, openness to do something different, openness to consider and think differently. “Our stinkin’ thinkin’ got us here; it’s not going to get us out.” As a spiritual program, one needs to be open to the possibility that there is one who has the power to help us recovery, and he would help if he were sought. In its core, it is a humble admission that we may not know all the answers, and that there may be more for us to learn.”

When you begin attending meetings, reading recovery literature, working with a sponsor, or engaging in therapy groups or therapy sessions, you will eventually hear something or read something you do not like, question, or doubt. The Big Book even devotes an entire chapter to the Agnostics.

Regardless, a closed mind is not available to change. It is a form of insanity; “attempting to do the same thing expecting different results.” Recovery requires openness.

Another form of a closed mind is a comparative soul. Do not distance yourself with comparing yourself to others to validate yourself, or to identify yourself as unique or different. Comparing is dangerous and leads to all sorts of unhealthy thinking. Instead listen to connect or draw parallels from the speaker’s life and your own. You can go to any recovery meeting whether AA, NA, SA, OA, GA, etc., by connecting with the person sharing, we can learn something.

Willingness

Recovery also requires willingness:

• Willingness to ask for help AND to receive help.
• Willingness to do the work.
• Willingness to do something different and new.
• Willingness to trust someone else.
• Willingness to go to any length to stay clean.
• Willingness to investigate and explore spiritual options
• Willingness to change one’s understanding of God
• Willingness to be uncomfortable
• Willingness to take “stupid” suggestions
• Willingness to be transparent
• Willingness to be authentic
• Willingness to stay around people
• Willingness to change one’s routines
• etc…

Willingness is not merely intent or wishful thinking. Willingness identifies itself through action. The things I am willing to do, I typically do. The things I am not willing to do, I either blatantly do not do them OR I passively ignore them. While some of us may have other mental excuses here, the root is similar.

It may be better to use a more modern word. PASSION. As John Piper and Louie Giglio defines it,

Passion is the degree of difficulty we are willing to endure to achieve the goal.

What is your passion? How does your willingness reveal your passion?

The post HOW: Basic Requirements of Recovery appeared first on PurifyingGrace.

—from The Grapevine

The post The 12 Steps in Reverse from The Grapevine appeared first on PurifyingGrace.

Since Step One requires an admission that our lives have become unmanageable, how could people such as these take this Step? …
It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest of us had hit to the point where it would hit them. By going back in our own drinking histories, we could show that years before we realized it we were out of control, that our drinking even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression…
Why all this insistence that every AA must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the AA program unless they have hit bottom.

When I read this, I ask myself, “Have I hit bottom?” Sometimes, when I am in the midst of my addictive thinking, I am asked this same question by others too, “Have you truly hit bottom?” Sometimes we are asked this with additional rhetoric, such as, “What does it take? Does it take losing your job? Losing your wife? Losing your kids? Losing your family? Losing your life?”

Personally, I believe one’s bottom is ever moving and ever changing. The only true bottom is the “bitter end,” from which sadly there is no return. Depending on one’s social, financial, mental, physical, and/or spiritual place, one’s bottom could be as high as marital discord or as low as losing everything and being homeless. Regardless of where one finds their bottom, the felt pain is both unique and the same as all other addicts felt uniquely; in a unique time, in a unique situation, and in a unique person. The only requirement for working the steps or being a member of any 12 step group is the desire to stop ____. In our case, this desire can be a desire to stop seeing prostitutes, having affairs, looking at pornography, masturbation, emotional affairs, sexual anorexia, or even sexual mental fantasies. None are worse than the other; none are better than the other. All are painful. All cause some level of suffering/pain to oneself and to others.

Step One is designed to show me and to remind me of the depth of the pain I’ve caused on myself, on others, and to God. In therapy groups, 12 step meetings, and in other recovery-related meetings like Celebrate Recovery, this step is first modeled where members speak openly and honestly about their acting out histories. These models create a safe environment and demonstrate similar behavior and thoughts that I can relate. But regardless of whether I see a good step one modeled before me, I still can take certain steps to ensure a solid step one. In step one, the bottom serves as the ultimate picture of unmanageability and powerlessness.

Here are some questions for thought or even journaling…

• Have you hit your bottom?
• hat was/is your bottom?
• How did knowing your bottom help you take Step One?

The post Bottoms Up: Why Does Every Addict Have to Hit Bottom? appeared first on PurifyingGrace.

So principle #1 is:

Realize I’m not God. I admit that I am POWERLESS to CONTROL my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is UNMANAGEABLE.

This is based on Mt 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Step #1 is we admitted that we are POWERLESS over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives have become UNMANAGEABLE; based on Rom 7:18, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” (Smart Note: Rom 7:18 deserves a special note since many scholars disagree over the meaning of this passage. Is Paul talking about himself pre-Christ or post-Christ? Or is he speaking about a hypothetical person or something else entirely? Obviously, CR has chosen autobiographical Christian view. Regardless of whether one believes this to be true; it is at least partially true of the carnal Christian.)

One of the good things about CR is that it helps you remember the stages by giving acronyms. Denial here stands for (which I condensed more for memory sake):

Disabled feelings
Energy lost
Negates growth
Isolates from God
Alienates others
Lengthens the pain.

(I have a hard time with the last one because I constantly want to say LONELINESS; however, that would be redundant from I and A.) This based on Jer 6:14, “You cannot heal a wound by saying it’s not there” (TLB); “They have healed the brokenness of my People superficially saying ‘Peace, Peace’.”

Denial disables your feelings and makes you numb to both spiritual principles/convictions, moral compass, and emotional issues/problems. We choose to repress instead of allowing our emotions to impress upon us. We choose to believe that feelings are a sign of weakness instead of owning up and facing them. CR uses quotes 2 Peter 2:19, “They promise freedom, while they themselves are slaves of destructive habits–for a man is a slave of anything that has conquered him” (GNB). I remember when I was struggling through this phase; I talked about myself in the 3rd person! I remember plainly even talking with a guy quite knowledgeable when it comes to filters (being an employee of a company similar to Covenant Eyes) that I was disembodied watching myself talking to him devoid of feelings and emotions. My wife has often told me that she doesn’t trust my judgment because my moral compass has been so compromised through rationalizations and straight rebellion.

Any user of pornography can tell you that porn drains your energy for a variety of reasons. Loss of energy due to partaking and masturbation. Loss of energy from hiding, running, and covering up keeping up with the lies and hypocrisy trying to motivate yourself and “love” your spouse. Loss of energy from constantly looking over one’s shoulder, from being anxious, dreading being caught. However, the Bible tells us “He frees the prisoners…he lifts the burdens from those bent down beneath their loads” (Ps 146:7-8) and “cast our cares on him because he cares for us” and “be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:6-7).

Denial not only disables our feelings and causes us to lose energy, denial also negates growth. While common sense may tell you this, there are many pastors, lay leaders, seminary students and elders/deacons who struggle with internet pornography. We cannot grow until we stop denying our problem, stop wrestling with God over this sin issue (which he will not budge from since it is against his nature). Instead we only need to cry out to Jesus (as Third Day sings about) and he will rescue us from the darkness, death and our chains.

Denial also isolates us from God. When we practice pornography we walk in the dark out of fellowship with Jesus (1 Jn 1:5-7). I remember constantly thinking that I was banging up against a glass ceiling like a cold basketball team trying to get a goal through the glass covered hoop.

Denial alienates us from others causing us to feel alone and in complete solitude. The power of porn is its secretiveness. We think we are getting away with it but we aren’t! People know something is off and wrong but they just can’t put their finger on it. Eph 4:25 says, “Stop lying to each other; tell the truth…when we lie to one another we are hurting ourselves” (TLB).

Finally denial lengthens the pain. It not only lengthens it but also intensifies it. While we may believe denial protects us from pain, it really leads us to shame and guilt. It paralyzes us. And it causes others pain and more pain.

Do you realize there is a higher power? Do you recognize there is a God? Do you agree and believe that you are truly powerless to control anything? In what areas of your life are out of control? How will taking this first step help? How do you handle pain and disappointment?

The post Denial appeared first on PurifyingGrace.

This was a post originally written for PorntoPurity.com by me that I wanted to reproduce here (click here for Part 1).

8.  Blaming: This is when you shift blame and responsibility from yourself to another person, and many times this is done unconsciously since in the depth of our being we really don’t want to be held responsible for something. I call this the Adam Syndrome as this is what Adam did in the Garden (Genesis 3) by wrongly blaming Eve for his rebellion. This includes, “Well, you would cruise all night, too, if you had my job,” or “If my spouse weren’t so cold…” or “I can’t help it, the baby cries day and night and makes me nervous.”

9.  Intellectualizing: This is avoiding feelings and responsibility by thinking or by asking why. This person tries to explain everything getting lost in detail, rabbit trails, and/or storytelling. This often includes pretending superior intellect and using intelligence as a weapon. If you watch the TV Show Bones, Dr. Temprance Brennan does this often.

10.  Victim Mentality (Carnes, Hopelessness/Helplessness): This is where a person says, “I’m a victim,” or “I can’t help it,” or “There is nothing I can do to get better,” or “I’m the worst.”

11.  Manipulative Behavior: This usually involves some distortion of reality including the use of power, lies, secrets, or guilt to exploit others.

12.  Compartmentalizing: This is something that almost every addict does (I actually want to say EVERY but will hold back). This is separating your life into compartments in which you do things that you keep separate from other parts of your life. This is like a Jackel and Hyde or a separation of Public and Private life to the point where it is unhealthy driven by thoughts of “If they only knew, then…”

13.  Crazymaking: This occurs when we are confronted by others who DO have a correct perception…we simply tell them that they are totally wrong. We act indignantly toward them attempting to make them feel crazy by simply positing that they cannot trust their own perceptions.

14.  Seduction: This is the use of charm, humor, good looks, or helpfulness to gain sexual access and cover up insincerity.

It is a process that is continuous, and I must continually choose to step out of denial in my thinking and definitely any time I do something wrong. For me, while I struggle with many of these denial types (Blaming, Intellectualizing, and Compartmentalizing) and probably have done them all at one point or another, my Big Three are Minimizing, Omission, and Intellectualizing. It is a good practice to take this list and mark the ones that you think you do, and confirming it with your spouse and/or your sponsor and/or someone close to you that knows most of the story and has lived through things with you. The goal is to identify which ones we tend towards so when we are facing our secrets and/or our problems, we can identify some of these behaviors in order to face the truth at all costs and comfort and live out the Stockdale Paradox. What are the types of denial that resonate with you?

The post 14 Types of Denial in Addiction, Part 2 appeared first on PurifyingGrace.

This was a post originally written for PorntoPurity.com by me that I wanted to reproduce here (click here for Part 2).

If you are into your recovery process, you feel like you’ve done step #1 of the 12-steps.

 ”We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.”

We think we’ve got that covered and we never need to revisit it.

When I first entered recovery, my sponsor would constantly tell me I was still in denial, and like any good addict, I denied it!  He couldn’t articulate why he thought I was in denial. He would simply say, “It just sounds like you are still in denial.”

So I brushed it off.

When I began therapy, my counselor walked me through Patrick Carnes’s Types of Denial (originally 12 from Facing the Shadow, which have been expanded by Dr. Carnes recently).  I started to realize that  there were many areas where I was in denial.

So I wanted to share these 14 with you guys. While some of these may overlap with one another, it helps to have these 14 categories to really know what denial really is.

1. Global Thinking: This is attempting to justify something with absolute terms like “always” or “never” or “whatsoever.” It also can be something along the lines of “every guy does this.”
2. Rationalization: This is justifying unacceptable behavior saying things like “I don’t have a problem, I’m just sexually liberated,” or “You’re crazy,” or “I can go months without this, so I don’t have a problem.” As Rick Warren states, “Rationalize is telling yourself Rational Lies”.
   http://twitter.com/RickWarren/status/6315557546
3. Minimizing: This is trying to make behavior or consequences seem smaller or less important than they are saying things like “only a little,” or “only once in a while,” or “it’s no big deal,” or simply telling the story in a better light than it really should be.
4. Comparison: This is shifting focus to someone else to justify behaviors such as “I’m not as bad as…”
5. Uniqueness: This is thinking you are different or special saying things like “My situation is different,” or “I was hurt more,” or “That’s fine for you, but I’m too busy.” This one can also be considered Entitlement.
6. Distraction (Carnes, Avoiding by creating an uproar or distraction): This is being a clown and getting everyone laughing, having angry outbursts meant to frighten or intimidate others, threats and posturing, and doing shocking behavior that may even be sexual. This can be when we simply blow up upon being confronted hoping that our explosion will draw attention rather than the actual issue.
7. Avoiding by Omission: This is trying to change the subject, ignore the subject, or manipulate the conversation to avoid talking about something. It is also leaving out important bits of information like the fact that the lover is underage, or the person is a close friend of your spouse, or revealing enough information while keeping back the most “dangerous” information that will get you in more trouble.

For me, while I struggle with many of these denial types (Rationalization, Minimizing, Uniqueness, Distraction, Avoiding by Omission) and probably have done them all at one point or another, two of my Big Three are Minimizing and Avoiding by Omission. It is a good practice to take this list and mark the ones that you think you do, and confirming it with your spouse and/or your sponsor and/or someone close to you that knows most of the story and has lived through things with you. The goal is to identify which ones we tend towards so when we are facing our secrets and/or our problems, we can identify some of these behaviors in order to face the truth at all costs and comfort and live out the Stockdale Paradox.

What are yours?

The post 14 Types of Denial in Addiction, Part 1 appeared first on PurifyingGrace.

Admiral Jim Stockdale who was the highest ranking US military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prison-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over twenty times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965-1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner’s rights, no set release date, certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. He shouldered the burden of command, doing everything he could to create the conditions that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken, while fighting an internal war against his captors and their attempts to use the prisoners for propaganda…[In Collins’ preparation of meeting with Stockdale, he read In Love and War]

As I moved through the book, I found myself getting depressed. It just seemed so bleak–the uncertainty of his fate, the brutality of his captors and so forth. And then it dawned on me: “Here I am sitting in my warm and comfortable office, looking out over the beautiful Stanford campus on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I’m getting depressed reading this, and I know the end of the story! I know that he gets out, reunites with his family, becomes a national hero, and gets to spend the later years of his life studying philosophy on the same beautiful campus. If it feels depressing for me, how on earth did he deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?”

“I never lost faith in the end of the story,” he said when I asked him, “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

I didn’t say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff lef that enever fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, “Who didn’t make it out?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” he said, “The optimists.”

“The optimists? I don’t understand,” I said, now completely confused, given what he’d said a hundred meters earlier.

“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said ‘we’re going to be out by Christmas’. And, Christmas would come and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. Then they died of a broken heart.”

Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

That conversation with Admiral Stockdale stayed with me, and in fact had a profound influence on my own development. Life is unfair–sometimes to our advantage, sometimes to our disadvantage. We will all experience disappointments and crushing events somewhere along the way, setbacks…What separates people, Stockdale taught me, is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.

The Stockdale Paradox simply is maintaining unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be.

And so it is with recovery. We must do two things:

1. Maintain hope and unwavering faith that I can and I will prevail in the end, and
2. Confront the brutal facts and effects of my current reality.

Hope. Reality. In my own recovery, it is extremely difficult for me to do both. Typically in the past, I either have one or the other, but primarily one and that being a naive, faint hope. I have only been an Optimist, as Stockdale put it, and I have died again and again and again. I am not surviving whatsoever. I tend to shy away from confronting the “brutal facts” of my current reality. And that’s what they are: brutal.

My reality, your reality, is often exposed by our significant others, our spouses, at many times we may not find convenient…then again, no time is convenient! This paradox forces us to get out of denial and fantasy and face reality and real life.

As the Calvin (little boy) and Hobbes (tiger) comic goes, Calvin says something like, “If I see/hear something I don’t like, I think I’m going to ignore it.” And Hobbes says, “Don’t you think that’s kind of irresponsible.” And Calvin says, “Wow, isn’t it a nice day?”

That is many of us. We ignore things I don’t like instead of confronting them and facing them head on. I am the big pink elephant in the room, and I am perfectly happy so as long as no one talks about me, talks to me about me, or brings a mirror in the room.

Scot Peck, in the Road Less Traveled, says:

We must always hold truth, as best we can determine it, to be more important, more vital to our self-interest, than our comfort. Conversely, we must always consider our personal discomfort relatively unimportant and, indeed, even welcome it in the service of the search for truth. Mental health is the on-going process of dedication to reality at all costs.

This is extremely difficult; however, it is one that we must do if we wish to live and be free. John 8:32 says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” For so long I wanted to be free without knowing the truth, without anyone else knowing the truth, and if I could help it, without God knowing the truth. Recently, I have been thinking more and more about this verse, so let’s break it down a bit. John 8:32 states that the truth will set me free. Then in John 8:36, Jesus says, “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” So who/what sets me free?

And part of knowing the truth, that is, Jesus is obeying Jesus, for John 8:31 says, “If you continue to follow my teaching, you are really my disciples.” This is consistent with much of 1 John which speaks about abiding in Christ and obeying Jesus’ commands. However, for many of us, the truth is that we haven’t been following Jesus’ teachings in regards to sexual immorality. The truth is that we haven’t been obeying Jesus Christ with my tongue, lying constantly and rather consistently. The truth, my reality, is that we have created a wake that is ugly, devastating and brutal for all parties involved.

However, now is the time for a commitment to both sides:

1. Maintain hope and unwavering faith that I can and I will prevail in the end, and
2. Confront the brutal facts and effects of my current reality.

The post The Stockdale Paradox and Pornography Addiction appeared first on PurifyingGrace.