Living Out Your Values in Addiction Recovery

When you first enter recovery, it is often because you’ve come to a crisis point.  You’ve hit rock bottom in your addiction.  You’re forced to face the consequences of your behavior, like a spouse discovering your deception and threatening to divorce.  Intense feelings of depression or anxiety hit you like a wave, and you might even find yourself wanting to take your own life in the depths of your despair.

This initial motivation propelling you into recovery, however, tends to fade over time.  While attempting to stay motivated, many addicts recognize that they don’t have a strong sense of identity.  So much of who you are has been wrapped up in this addiction.  Leisure time has been spent acting out rather than on personal interests and hobbies.  Relationships have been superficial and shallow.  Perhaps your history of past trauma communicates (mostly negative) messages to you about who you are. 

Without that sense of identity, it can be challenging to determine what you value or what is important to you.  Your addiction has distorted what is important and places itself as the highest priority in your life.  When that addiction is removed through sobriety, it can feel like there is now a void in your life.  You might find yourself wondering: what does life look like after addiction?  This question often arises when you’re grieving losses associated with the consequences of your addiction, like loss of relationships, physical health, job, or financial resources.

How do I learn and live out my identity?

Staci Sprout, a fellow Certified Sex Addiction Therapist, shares that the key to developing your recovery for the long-term is identifying your vision and purpose.  The first step requires you to become more familiar with who you are.

It is essential to develop your identity in recovery because it can replace the narrative of shame you’ve lived under for so long.  Many addicts have also experienced abuse, trauma, or neglect in their childhoods that meant they weren’t celebrated for their unique personality and gifts.  If that sounds familiar to you, you may have no idea what your talents and personality are when you enter recovery, and you need to learn and celebrate your qualities that make you who you are.

When you have a more clear sense of your identity, that paves the way for you to connect with a vision for your future and a purpose to your life. 

Vision

Vision involves connecting with your “’why” – why are you committed to recovery?  Why are you making these changes in your life?  If you don’t have a clear picture of your “why,” motivation can wax and wane.

To connect with your vision, ask yourself some of the following questions:

• If you were free from the pull of addiction, what might change in your life?  What would be different?  What would you have more time to do?

• Addiction is often associated with shame and low self-esteem.  If you were free from addiction, how might you feel more confident? What effect might that confidence have on your life?

• Relationships often serve as motivators for change.  What relationships are important to you?  Who do you want to be in those relationships?

• You’re likely seeking out help from a therapist, 12 Step or support group, or even just reading books or articles online.  What do you hope to get out of those support experiences?  How will you know these have been successful for you?  What will change in your life?

• If you’ve completed a three-circle plan, ask yourself why the activities in your outer circle are important to you.  What purpose are they serving?

• What desires or wants do you have for your life?

When you answer these questions, you might begin to see a theme of values you hold.  Values include such things as family, marriage, mental health, career success, authenticity in relationships, service and volunteering, or advocating for causes that are important to you.  This leads well into the next stage, which is looking at purpose.

Purpose

Examining your purpose pushes you into a more existential frame of mind.  It requires you to ask questions like: why am I here?  What is my purpose on this earth?  What am I meant to do with this one life that I have? 

These questions can be challenging for a few reasons.  First, they put your mortality into greater focus, which can stir up challenging emotions.  Also, they are broad topics that can feel overwhelming to tackle.  If you are a person of faith, your Christian faith or other religious practices can inform your purpose, as they lead you to a sense of belonging to something greater than yourself. 

To make your purpose more practical, consider these questions:

• Use the values you identified in the above vision section and broaden then to fit your entire life.  Ask questions like: what might change about my actions if I wanted to live as if this value were my highest priority?  How might my life look different?

• If you’re involved in a 12 Step or support group, you may appreciate how others have helped you along in your recovery.  How might you want to give back?  How can your story of walking through recovery serve or help others?

• For those in middle-age or older, generativity is a major life goal – passing along the knowledge and wisdom you’ve gained.  How might you pass along this insight and wisdom to others?  How could you mentor younger adults in a similar career field, through their recovery journeys, or in their faith?

• For those who haven’t hit that generativity milestone, what life dreams have you considered or hoped for that you haven’t accomplished yet?  What might you still be able to do with the time you have left?

• What do you want others to stay about you after you’ve passed away?  What legacy do you want to leave?  How would you like to be described in a eulogy?

Exploring these questions related to life purpose can help you recognize the end goal of your sobriety and recovery work. Ultimately, your work isn’t only for you, but it is for those who will benefit after you.  By clarifying your vision and purpose for yourself, you’ll have a more clear path forward whether you are dealing with discouragement in your recovery journey or if you’ve hit a major milestone of sobriety and are looking for what’s next.

Willingness in Recovery: What To Do When You Don’t Want to Stop Acting Out in Sex and Love Addiction

In recovery circles, willingness to change is a necessary part of leaving behind destructive patterns of sex and love addiction to experience freedom.  Sometimes willingness comes easily.  For example, if you are married and your spouse discovers your addiction, that often creates a push to change as you work to heal your relationship.  You may be experiencing real consequences of your addiction, like an arrest or the dissolution of friendships.  Or you’re early in the process of recovery and motivated to put in the hard work of change.

But as time goes on, you might notice your willingness fading.  You might miss the dopamine rush you got when you were acting out.  Or you’ve ended your relationship with your partner, which removes that motivation to change.  Perhaps you’re feeling shame about your behaviors, and the easiest way you know how to self-medicate shame is with more acting out.

Maybe you relapse, getting caught back up in the cycle of acting out.  Perhaps the boundaries you know you need to put in place to help you along the path to recovery seem way too hard to implement. 

You could be struggling with the cost of recovery, recognizing the extent to which your life may have to change.  Sometimes the work involved in the process recovery leads to a feeling of weariness and a desire to just give up. 

Regardless of reason, it is common to see willingness ebb and flow in the process of recovery.  Instead of viewing your lack of willingness or motivation to change as a death knell to your recovery work, use this opportunity to learn more about yourself and lean in to practices that will help you stick with recovery even when it becomes challenging.

As a note: these recommendations are specific to sex and love addiction.  There are likely different, more targeted recommendations for addictions that involve a substance, such as alcohol or drugs.  If you are dealing with those addictions, reach out to 12 Step resources and specialized counseling or treatment centers to get guidance on how to address willingness in that area. 

What to Do

Remind yourself of your vision for your future.

It can be a challenge to find hope when you’re stuck in the (often devastating) consequences of your acting out behaviors.  Define for yourself what a recovered life could look like.  Even if you never achieve this, what would be the ideal?  Why did you choose recovery in the first place?  What could life be like when you are free of your addictive behaviors? 

Use this vision to help you identify what you’d like your life to look like in 10 years, 5 years, and 1 year.  Breaking down those goals into more manageable time frames can help you make concrete goals or plans for what’s right in front of you.

Target your denial.

Your unwillingness to change often finds support from denying the impact of your behaviors.  This denial often comes in the form of distorted thinking patterns.  I often call this process “addict thinking” versus “rational thinking.”  When you’re acting out in addiction, the rational, healthy component of your brain goes offline. Instead, the addict part of you is at work trying to persuade you that your addictive behaviors are not only okay, but good for you.

Identify the “voice” of your addict part of yourself by writing down the statements of denial that are most common for you.  They might include words such as:

• “It’s not hurting anyone.”

• “I only do it because my spouse isn’t meeting my sexual needs.”

• “I deserve this.”

Then, when you have some space from your acting out behaviors, sit down and write responses from the point of view of your rational brain to address those denial statements with facts.  Come back to these responses when you’re tempted to act out and remind yourself of truth about your behaviors.  To the above comments, you might respond:

• “Addiction hurts my spouse, my children, and most importantly, myself.  I lose control over myself and expose myself to further and more dangerous consequences.”

• “My addiction is how I shortcut my way to a dissatisfying false intimacy instead of pursuing true intimacy with my spouse.”

• “I am not entitled to harm myself or others by my actions.  My behavior promises that it will feel good, but I consistently end up feeling miserable afterward.”

Be patient with yourself.

Acknowledge that this process takes time.  Consider climbing a mountain: when you begin at the bottom, it is obvious that you have a long way to go to get to the top.  As you climb and begin to grow weary, it can be easy to get distracted by how much further you have to go.  You might look up at the summit and get discouraged by the time it will take you to reach the top.  Instead, focus on the step right in front of you.  In 12 Step terminology, this is taking “one day at a time.”

Recognize that recovery is a lifestyle change, not a one-time experience; a marathon, not a sprint. But the rewards of a recovered life will make every step worth it.

Stay committed to your recovery plan.

If you’ve been in recovery for any length of time, you probably have been participating in some recovery-related activities and have potentially even made a plan for how to best address your addiction.  Even if you’re currently acting out, continue to engage in these recovery behaviors. 

If your plan was to go to 12 Step meetings regularly, keep going to your meetings.  Meet with your sponsor.  Make calls to others in recovery.  Keep attending therapy or support group.  Use the principle of “fake it til you make it” until your recovery behaviors begin to shape and mold your thoughts and emotions.  This will eventually create motivation to change if you give it time.

Do the bare minimum.

If you’ve already gotten out of the routine of your recovery plan, it might seem challenging to get back into the habit.  When commitment to recovery feels overwhelming and too much, focus instead on one practical step you can take right now.  (Remember the mountain metaphor.) 

Make one call to a supportive friend.  Schedule an appointment with your therapist or sponsor.  Read a chapter in a recovery-related book.  Practice a small act of self-care – eating a healthy meal, going to sleep early, getting outside for a walk.  Any of these small steps can have a huge impact over the long haul. 

Focus on recovery, not sobriety.

It’s common early in recovery to find yourself focusing only on sobriety and “white-knuckling”, attempting to force yourself to stop by your own willpower.  This usually is accompanied by a lack of commitment to the whole-life change required in recovery.

What’s the difference?  Recovery is a holistic process - much of your life must change.  Sobriety is one part of that, but it is not all of it.  Attempting to keep your life exactly the same and get sober is a recipe for failure, because likely some of what you were doing in daily life contributed to your desire to act out.  Focusing on sobriety involves only focusing on what you can’t do, while recovery shifts that focus to what you can do. 

Focusing only on sobriety leads to beating yourself up about failing when you inevitably slip or relapse.  Rather than placing so much of your identity and hope on sobriety, place that relapse or slip under the context of recovery and see what you can learn from it.  Sobriety is categorized by shame; recovery is categorized by hope.

Ask God for willingness.

The 12 Steps are built around reliance on a Higher Power to do the work of creating change in you, recognizing you are incapable of creating that willingness to change on your own.  Speaking from a Christian worldview, we are told in the Bible that it is God who works in us to will and act in order to fulfill his good purpose (Philippians 2:13).  Ask God to help you with this process. Invite the Holy Spirit to do a transforming work in your heart.

Remember the message of grace here: that if you are in Christ, you are no longer condemned (Romans 8:1) and you are set free (Galatians 5:1), and if you invite God in, He will do a healing work in you and transform your willingness.

Know that you can’t do this alone.

In addition to having the support and help of God, it is essential to have the support of other people to help you make these changes.  Social support is one of the most important factors in any addiction recovery.

Reach out to the people you know who are in recovery circles or who you trust are safe for you.  If you don’t know who those people are, now is a good time to find them.  Start by attending a 12 Step meeting, support group, or counseling session and connect with supportive people who can help you along your path to recovery.

Why You Do What You Do: Using the Tree Model to Understand Your Behaviors

If you’re ever noticed yourself caught in destructive cycles of behavior or dysfunctional thought patterns and not understood how to stop, you’re probably like most of us.  Maybe you’ve found yourself in one of these situations:

• You’re noticing negative and critical thoughts about yourself and wondering where they’re coming from.

• You wonder why you can’t seem to maintain a solid friendship or romantic relationship.

• The intense pressure and fear you feel around being perfect plagues you.

• You find yourself struggling with eating and body image, no matter what solution you try.

• You’re constantly feeling taken advantage of by others.

• You’re dealing with an addiction that feels impossible to understand.

When you don’t have a framework to understand why you do what you do, it can feel like you’re flailing in search of an answer.  You might have tried solution after solution, finding that none of them seem to stick.  Or instead, you put your head in the sand and pretend like you don’t have any problems.  Often, we blame other people or circumstances for these behaviors or thoughts, which only keeps us trapped in the vicious cycle that got us there in the first place.

There’s a reason you do what you do, even if you haven’t fully uncovered it yet.  Often our behaviors stem from unconscious forces at work within us that are influenced by experiences in our early life, like trauma in our family-of-origin or experiences growing up that taught us certain lessons in life.  These can be positive or negative behaviors that were modeled or experienced.  They seem “normal” at the time, because you don’t know any different until you’re in a situation where someone has a different perspective.

Let’s use the image of a tree as a reference point to help us make sense out of these destructive cycles.  (I am indebted to the Harvest USA Tree Model outlined in their book Sexual Sanity for Women for inspiring this imagery).

The Tree Model

Imagine an image of an apple tree.  Your eyes are drawn to the red, plump fruit hanging from the branches. But what distinguishes a tree that produces good, healthy fruit from one that produces sickly or diseased fruit?  Much of that has to do with the health of the soil, the roots, and the inside of the tree itself: things that we cannot see or touch, but that have essential roles in the growth of a tree.

The Fruit

Let’s start with the fruit.  The fruit of the tree represents the results we see in our lives.  These are visible and external.  Good or healthy fruit may signify areas that are going well in our lives.  But fruit can also be negative: problems or issues we can’t seem to shake.  These are hard to miss when they cause us distress or pain.  Any of the situations mentioned at the beginning of this article would be categorized as fruit.

What results are you seeing in your life with which you are dissatisfied?  What do you want to be different?

The Branches

The branches that produce the fruit are the actions we take in our lives that contribute to the results we like or don’t like.  Leaves or other branches may obscure some of these, signifying that you might not be aware of some of these behaviors.  At the very least, you may not know why you do these behaviors until we explore more deeply. 

Which of your behaviors make this problem or issue worse?  Are there behaviors that you’ve tried to use to solve the problem, but they’ve failed?

The Trunk

Tree trunks include a core with rings showing layers that have grown over the course of time.  In our model, the trunk represents the core beliefs and emotions that motivate the actions that spill out onto the branches.  These might be beliefs you have about yourself, others, God, or the world around you that influence your behavior.  Paying attention to the thoughts going through your mind when you’re engaging in your “branches” behaviors might shed some light on these core beliefs.

What do you believe about yourself when you’re dealing with this problem?  What is the narrative you make up as to why your attempts to change haven’t worked?

The Roots

Roots reach down into the soil to get nourishment and strength, which in turn, feed the trunk.  Our roots represent legitimate desires or needs that were either met or not met and have influenced our core beliefs.  These legitimate desires become problematic when they take primary importance over everything else in your life or when you seek to meet them through unhealthy practices.  False intimacy experienced through sex and love addiction rather than fostering healthy (and often more difficulty) intimacy with a spouse or friend is one example of this. 

You might struggle to see your desires as legitimate, particularly when they feel self-focused or destructive. But I believe all desires are legitimate when they get down to their core.  Let’s say you desire to be rich.  When we explore the “why” behind that desire, we may find that growing up in poverty, you associated wealth with security and safety.  Being rich represents an experience of feeling safe.  Therefore, the true desire underneath is the desire for security and safety.

What core desire or desires underly your behaviors and results?  What are you hoping for, at your core?

The Soil

Finally, the soil, which provides nourishment for the tree, represents circumstances or people in your past that have answered your desires in healthy or unhealthy ways.  Often these are things you cannot control, as in other people, your inborn personality or body type, influences from media or the church, trauma, or other cultural messages.  This soil formulates the lens through which you view yourself, others, and the world.

While we cannot blame these external factors for our current behaviors, it is important to acknowledge their influence and normalize where our core beliefs were solidified by these experiences.

What experiences and perspectives from your past inform the problem you’re dealing with today?  What messages have you received that have impacted your beliefs about yourself, others, and the world?

Making it Personal

How do I apply this tree model to my own life?

First, take something that is going well in your life and trace it backwards, starting with the fruit.  Identify what actions contribute to that particular circumstance or experience.  Notice what thoughts or emotions led you to those actions.  Identify the desires you are meeting.  Pay attention to what circumstance or person taught you to meet your desire in that way.

Now repeat the same process with a problem or issue.  Here are a few examples to help you get started:

Positive Example

• Fruit: A good friendship

• Branches: Spending time with one another regularly, having fun together

• Trunk: Friendships are important to my well-being.  I’m capable of making friends.  I feel love and comfort when I’m around my friend.

• Roots: desires for connection and closeness

• Soil: I always saw my mother relying on her friends when she was stressed or having a hard time.  I learned that habit from her.

Problem Example

• Fruit: I can’t stay in a romantic relationship.  I find myself getting bored quickly.

• Branches: I seek out dating and the rush or the beginning of the relationship.  But after we’ve been dating for a while, I get bored and then end the relationship.

• Trunk: I’m no good at relationships.  I’m incapable of making a healthy relationship work.  I feel shame and guilt.

• Roots: desire to be loved and wanted

• Soil: My father was an alcoholic and often chose the drama of his addiction over loving his family.  I learned that I wasn’t worth quitting and addiction for, no matter how hard I tried to make him love me.

Remember, just as is the case with actual trees, you might find several different branches, roots, and influences from the soil that create the fruit you’re producing in this area.  Often I bring in a second metaphor here: the spiral staircase of healing.  You might come across the same issue from multiple angles, just like you would if you were climbing a spiral staircase.  But you have a different perspective on it each time you move forward.

As you explore these roots, this forms the foundation of change: change in your thinking patterns, releasing old trauma, and diagnosing the issue so you know how best to address what’s at the core.  This is significantly better than just attempting to fix the fruit.  If you get at the roots and trunk and change what’s happening there, the fruit will follow.