Spiritual or Mental Defense: Bottom lines Part I

In my addiction, I had no ability to identify how my emotional, sexual and relationship patterns influenced my life. My life strategy was ingrained in my behavior early on in my formative and teenage years.  I was essentially powerless to see my patterns. I was powerless because the way I thought and felt about what I did and what I did in general was of no matter to the consequences I got. As my shame got deeper ingrained and reinforced from the people I engaged with or the actions I took, the more my mental defense grew to shield me from my memories and the acting out went on.  The big book clearly outlines this. When I substitute alcoholic for sex and love addict and drinking with outing out or relationship behavior I relate completely.

“The fact is that most alcoholics for reasons yet obscure have lost the power of choice in drink our so called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without a mental defense against the first drink” – Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous Fourth edition pg 24 There is a solution

Since entering SLAA recovery I have had slips into old behavior and it has brought me to a higher awareness of my problem and more surrender to the need of a higher power. One insight I received was that luckily enough the SLAA program has bottom lines, these are the actions I stop taking that are addictive and are mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually harmful to myself and others. From here my job is to ask a higher power to come into my day and help me maintain my bottom line sobriety.  As the quote says

“In the stark recognition of our profound frailty we experienced the need to find a power greater than ourselves something that would be at least one step ahead of our diseased intentions and give us the consistent guidance we could not provide for ourselves’”— Sex and Love Addictions Anonymous First Edition pg 75

This is a great example of how to use spirituality and practical action for my sobriety.  For example, in my experience,  the bottoms lines are useful only in as much I incorporate spirituality and god into them.  Otherwise I am just using a mental defense of “no” don’t do this behavior. I spent allot of time using bottom lines as rules against behavior and got no where.  I was, in fact, reinforcing my mental defense against acting out. It also didn't matter how many slip questions I have had and how many times I go through the steps. However when I incorporate a god / higher power element into my bottom line then I am guaranteed a defense. The humility in acknowledging that I need a spiritual defense to help me not act out in addition to the awareness of the behavior gives me the psychic change/ability ( change in my thoughts) necessary to be in a state of neutrality. I no longer crave to be  with my qualifier or acting out related behavior.  Spirituality is key. The spiritual element must be coupled with my awareness otherwise I will fail miserably and suffer consequences not yet known.








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