This year, we’ll be starting a monthly series discussing ways to engage and work each of the Twelve Steps. Stemming from the Alcoholics Anonymous tradition, the Twelve Steps have made their way into the treatment of many addictive behaviors. Our specific focus will be on sex and love addiction, particularly in women. If you’re interested in finding an in-person, online, or phone meeting for sex and love addiction, check out Sex Addicts Anonymous or Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. Before you read this post, check out our introduction to the Twelve Steps to learn about support and resources.
Step One: We admitted we were powerless over ________________ (alcohol, sexual behaviors, addictive relationships) – that our lives had become unmanageable.
The First step involves two major concepts: powerlessness and unmanageability. Powerless is defined by not being able to stop your behavior, or realizing you are held captive by your addiction. You might be absorbed in another person through a love addiction or feel ruled by sexual obsession in sex addiction. Only the hit of the sexual relationship brings a lift to your mood, which reveals a dependency on that dopamine rush. Ultimately, powerlessness means that the efforts you make to stop or control the behaviors are not working.
Unmanageability takes this addictive process a step further. Your life begins to spin out of control. The damage extends further than you could’ve imagined or anticipated. Your core values in life are threatened as the addiction tells you it’s the only thing giving you meaning. You feel crazy and out of control, beginning to see the lasting consequences of your behavior.
In the introduction to this series, we talked about the Stocksdale paradox: the importance of holding out hope for the future while not losing sight of how bad the addiction is in this moment. Working Step One involves breaking through denial to show you just how the addiction is destroying your life, while also giving you a vision of what’s yet to come.
Know there is hope for the future.
Write a list of affirmations and review them daily.
Messages of shame and pain will abound as you start to work through your first step. To combat the potential for emotional devastation, remind yourself of truth about who you are and your abilities to cope. Affirmations help you to reprogram your brain away from the negative and shaming words you use to describe yourself that you’ve been using since childhood. Write an affirmation down in a place where you can see it often to get you through.
Approach this process with gentleness.
One thing I love about the book Gentle Path Through the Twelve Steps* is that encourages these levels of gentleness with yourself. Know that this is a process, that it takes time, and use the support that you have through your Twelve Step group and your sponsor to encourage you and help you along the way.
Imagine what your life might look like if you were completely free.
When you’re feeling the weight of your addiction, imagine your life without sexual or relational obsessions. What would you spend your time doing? What are things you would pursue that you can’t now because of the time spent on your addictive behaviors? What are the relationships you could build into? Become aware of how changing addictive behavior might cause you to look inward, being available to what might happen next within yourself.
Make top lines and bottom lines.
“Top lines” and “bottom lines” are a common way to establish sobriety early in the progrm. Bottom lines are addictive behaviors from which you want to abstain, while top lines are healthy behaviors you want to be pursuing. Include any addictive behavior in the bottom lines, taking care not to exclude behaviors so you can find a loophole later. As they say in Twelve Step, there is no such thing as half-surrender. Begin the process of abstaining from the addictive behavior defined in your bottom lines, taking it one day at a time.
See the reality of how bad your addiction is.
Take an inventory of addictive behaviors you’ve struggled with, past or present.
Write a list of all the disordered sexual behaviors you find problematic in your life. If you’ve struggled with any addictive behaviors previously or currently, add those to the list. As a litmus test, look at any behaviors that you’re trying to hide or cover over. Are you minimizing, obsessing, fantasizing, or lying in any way? Where do you feel you lose yourself? This can be substance based (drug, alcohol, caffeine) or process based (food, sex, gambling). Pay attention to behaviors where you spend a significant amount of time or money or those that function as an escape or identity, like TV, shopping, or work.
List all the ways you’ve tried to control or stop the behaviors that haven’t worked.
Understanding your powerlessness to stop your addictive behaviors is one of the first and most important steps to breaking through denial. Listing these cold hard facts about past combats the lie of denial that tells you that you could only stop if you just tried harder.
List the consequences you’ve experienced as a result of your addictive behaviors.
Unmanageability often shows its true colors as you begin to see the consequences of your acting out. Identify multiple different areas of consequences: emotional, spiritual, family, financial, legal (risk or actual), physical, mental. Acknowledge the reality of how addiction has destroyed your life.
Look at the influence of addiction and abuse in your family.
Make a family tree or an outline of all your family members for patterns of addiction, codependency, or avoidant behavior. Pay attention to your own history of abuse that you experienced both inside and outside your family. Identify physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual categories of abuse, as well as the length of time and intensity of the abuse. Notice if there are any family members that you know experienced abuse.
Note that abandonment also can play a role in addictive behavior, and is often more insidious than abuse, as it is less noticeable. There are no visible bruises that signify neglect, and yet feeling unloved and isolated can drive many into addictive behaviors. Notice areas of abandonment in physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual realms as well.
Make a sexual history timeline.
Separate your life into time periods of 5 or 10 years at a time and identify different messages and experiences you had around sex and sexuality during those time frames. Trace your experience of addictive history as it relates to these experiences.
Maintain humility.
It can be easy to feel proud or smug as you go through your First Step and begin to experience the benefits of sobriety. This is a setup for relapse. Instead, maintain awareness of your powerlessness and unmanageability throughout the entire process, and surrender to those concepts.
Share your first step at a 12 Step meeting.
Once you’ve compiled this information (often with the help of a sponsor or other Twelve Step group members), completing the first step involves sharing it openly and honestly. Typically you begin by sharing with your sponsor before sharing with the larger group, and with their help you can edit the information to share what feels safe within the meeting space.