…more people would live life in the spirit of the Twelve Steps.
When I got into recovery from sex addiction, I was sitting in my first SAA meeting and I remember the yellow painted room, the tiny chairs, and the poster on the wall displaying the “12 Steps of Sex Addicts Anonymous”. Half of them made either reference to or explicitly spelled out the word “God”. Having been an agnostic for most of my life, I thought to myself, “this is a bible thumper program, and I won’t have any of it”.
However, I kept an open mind and over time came to see that the word “God” is just a place holder for whatever I believe my Higher Power is. So, with that out of the way, I began working the steps with my sponsor. As I was progressing through the steps, especially steps one, two and three, I noticed a shift in my life. I became less triggered by events outside my sphere of control, I was less angry at the world that didn’t do what I wanted it to do, and I mellowed out quite a bit. This had a profound effect on the quality of the relationship with my wife – less arguments and more intimacy. I realized that not everything I thought of being the best thing since sliced bread is actually the best that could happen. I learned to let go. To let go of the need to control everything and everyone in my life. And – surprise! – life became much more manageable.
As part of my daily spiritual routine, I make the Serenity Prayer relevant for what it means to me on any given day. What are the things I cannot change? Where do I need to bring up the courage to change the things I can? And where is my sphere of influence and control? In other words, where do I need to let go and where do I need to engage? The wisdom to know the difference. This spiritual exercise is both humbling and empowering because I am becoming clear of my limitations as well as my power to make a change in my life, and hopefully in other people’s lives as well.
Each of the 12 steps has a correlated principle and a key question to ask of oneself. For the sake of this being nothing more than a blog, I refer you to the “Twelve and Twelve”, the 12 Steps and the 12 Principles. If you want to dig deeper, I recommend a book by Patrick Carnes, “A Gentle Path Through the Twelve Principles”. When I read it, my view of recovery widened beyond just my addiction to sex and porn.
Over time, while practicing these principles, I realized that living a life guided by the 12 steps and principles is actually a pretty cool lifestyle. Moreover, I came to believe that one does not need to be an addict to benefit from the 12-step wisdom. The only difference in all the 12-step programs is the first half of the first step. “We were powerless over…” fill in what you were powerless over; be it alcohol, drugs, sex, food, you name it. The question then becomes, what were we really powerless over? The short answer is: most of what we’re facing in life. Mostly other people. We can’t control other people. At best we can influence them. This goes for most circumstances as well.
Dr. William Glasser coined the term “external control psychology”. By that he means our basic need to have control over everything and everyone in our lives. He developed Choice Theory which is the antidote to external control psychology and teaches us to get along with each other in a much better way. He once said that we are all recovering from external control psychology. When I heard that, my perspective on recovery widened even more. Wasn’t our addiction an attempt at having control over all the things we couldn’t control? It certainly was the case in my life. My addiction gave me the perception of being in control. When I didn’t like a scene or a model on a porn site, I could change it with one mouse click. They didn’t talk back. The world was at my command…at least in that moment. Once the rush of ecstasy, lust and intensity was over the stark reality of life returned. I had to recon with the fact that I had very little control over things in my life.
In recovery I realized that there are two ways I can satisfy my need for control. The control over people things and circumstances, and the control that comes from within.
The first one is external control, the other is internal control. This brings me back to the powerlessness part of the first step and the Serenity Prayer. The serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Doesn’t that apply to everyone – addicts and “normies”?
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