Unmanageable

I am working on a formal First Step now. It is happening slowly, partly because I don't have very much time to devote to Step work and not to school work, and partly because I am doing it alone, with several books and workbooks to guide me. I have never seen or heard another person's formal First Step. I don't even know if it's a good idea to do it by myself, but I am doing it because going through the exercises and doing all the writing and journaling is good for me, and because my hope/plan is that in time I will find a good S Anon sponsor and be able to share this with them, and perhaps get some guidance. If not, I can hopefully share it with another S Anon who at least has a little more time in recovery than me, and can give me some feedback.

When I think of my powerlessness over the effects of sex addiction and alcoholism, thinking of this in relationship to my husband is the easy part, because that is what has happened most recently. Doing the exercises (in the Gentle Path workbook, by Carnes) has helped me start to see powerlessness and ways that my life was unmanageable at other previous points in my life, like my childhood, and my first marriage. I'm not even sure what addictions I was dealing with in my childhood--food addiction in both my parents, for sure, and possibly sex addiction in my mother, perhaps some others--but I can at least look at my own powerlessness and my own unmanageability with respect to my response to crazy behavior in my home.

In my childhood, my life became unmanageable when I banned my friends from my home from the time I was around 12. My home was a dark place where strange things happened--my mother slept on the couch every night since I was about 4, and claimed it was because my father snored. The house was messy and dark. But more than that, it was tense, and the inhabitants were not connected to one another in any real way other than DNA. I knew that other people sensed this, and I was too ashamed to let people see it any longer if I had any control over it. Around this time I also tried to be the family housekeeper, trying to clean and make the place liveable. This was thwarted by my mom, the chief mess-maker, who wouldn't let me throw away any of the papers she kept in numerous precarious stacks around the house. So eventually I settled on keeping my own bedroom, and the bathroom next to it when I could, clean, and I stayed in there until I was old enough to spend most of my time out of the house. These aren't the kinds of things I was thinking of when I first started looking at the 12 steps.

This process has also helped me to start to look at my own emotional state, not in an abstract or distant way, like I have done before, but in the moment. I'm noticing my moment-to-moment stress more now. On the weekends I have this restless, irritable feeling, like I am dissatisfied, or I should be doing something that I'm not doing. During the week I am in the position in my training of always feeling like I am out of place or doing something wrong. When I get a break, I feel the urge to eat something sweet, and it is not out of hunger. I can tell that it is the urge for something to make me feel better, more relaxed. By gosh, that's addiction if I've ever seen it. I've been trying to lose weight and have only managed to maintain or gain over the last 4 months. I do well during the days but indulge in the evenings when I get away. I know this isn't about managing physical hunger; now I can see it is something that I feel powerless over. And I use shopping the same way, which is shameful for me to admit but nevertheless is true. I haven't gotten uncontrollably in debt, but the fact that I sometimes shop to make myself feel better is a sign of trouble. It's not that I have never seen these things before, but I've never really felt the emotions in the moment and seen exactly why I have the urges to act in the way that I do.

I feel out of control when I do those things in an unhealthy way. I guess that's a part of unmanageability.

I'll keep working away as time permits, keep going to meetings and to our therapist. I am thinking of seeing our therapist on my own to talk about some of my own issues, not because I don't want to talk about them with my husband there but because I feel like we have to be working on other things when he is there. And I think it would be more helpful for me to address some of these things with her alone. For now, I keep writing, and running...