Posted on by Abe Austin

Perpetrator and Victim: Part Six

Fallen in a Hole)

I’ve spent the last several posts talking about the situation of both perpetrators and victims of abuse. I have considered the various false narratives they start to live, lies that seem more palatable than facing their soul-wrenching reality. I have mentioned how these lies must be surrendered, though, and the harsh truths must be faced. Perpetrators must fully appreciate their wrongness and victims must fully appreciate their brokenness.

With most of our actions, if they take to places that we do not like we can reverse our steps to go back to where we were before. This is not the case with abuse, though, where our steps carry us over an edge and we fall into a hole, and no matter of walking around the bottom of that hole is going to find us a way out of it. Both for the enactor and the receiver of the abuse, they have been carried by choice or by force into a place that they cannot get themselves out of. And it is a damned place, a place that can only be described as godless. In that dark pit we will be made to understand what the very definition of hell is.

That might seem a harsh thing to say of the victim, who has not brought this travesty upon themselves, but it is the reality that they live even so. Like a dark cloud descending, their connection to God seems to be blotted out, and it is not at all unusual for those who experience this trauma to find their faith and core belief systems crushed.

Our Common Fate)

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.- Matthew 5:48

These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. -John 15:11

See in the verses above what God intends for each of us. He calls us to be pure and to be joyful. But pure is the one thing that the perpetrator of abuse cannot be, and joyful is the one thing that the victim cannot be. They cannot live in the light and glory of God because they are in the hole, and neither of them has the power to get themselves back out of it.

At some point in our lives, each of us is going to receive harm from another. At some point in our lives, each of us is also going to harm another. Thus at some point all of us will be a victim and at some point all of us will be a perpetrator. That isn’t to say that we will all receive or inflict harm to the same degree, but each of us will break and be broken in some way or another.

And in that moment we will begin to understand—really understand—why it is that we all need to be saved. We will understand how helpless and hopeless we are on our own, how incapable we are of getting ourselves back up to the light.

We will find that our friends and families, no matter how hard they try, cannot piece back together our broken soul. They might alleviate some outer pains, might provide some worldly needs, but they cannot resolve the inner despair. They have no access and no power in the most secret places of our heart. Indeed, now that we find ourselves down in the pit, for the first time we will realize just how many of them are also right down there with us!

In this situation, whether as a victim or a perpetrator, the only one that can help us is a Savior. The only one that can help us is one who has never fallen into the pit, so that he may lower us a ladder, but one who has leapt into the lowest depths of the pit, so that he can mend our heart where it is. The only one that can help us is one that can take our hopeless and dark truth, swallow it within himself, and in return give us a new and bright truth.

I realize that I’ve leaned heavily into metaphor with this post, and perhaps it’s starting to sound like hyperbole. Frankly, it’s that I am struggling to find more straightforward words to communicate the ideas that I am trying to get across. My own experiences in the dark hole have literally fueled my nightmares, which perhaps lends to the language I have used. I shall finish, though, by summing up what I am trying to say just as plainly as I can.

As I mentioned before, I have been in that hole myself. It was a horrifying place. Without exaggeration, it was my greatest suffering in life, and I was totally unable to save myself from that hell. Even so, and much to my surprise, I was rescued from it by am unseen being. And I have seen this drama play out in the lives of many others, and I know that it can for you as well.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Perpetrator and Victim: Part Five

Fundamentally Broken)

Yesterday I mentioned how some victims of abuse might twist their experience into self-justification. By leaning into their righteous indignation, they will try to dismiss any wrongs that they themselves do. They have created in their mind a sense of blamelessness, such that no matter what they do they cannot be held be accountable for it. The world was terrible to them first, after all, so any wrong they do now is just a well-deserved retaliation.

This is the angrier side of victimhood. It is not the only warped perspective that can be developed, though. There is also the sad, depressed option that we will discuss today.

This sort of victim can be described as being fundamentally broken. After suffering pain at the hands of another they go back and highlight their own failings, convincing themselves that they in some way deserved the pain that they received, justifying the abuser’s crimes for them. They might even call up transgressions that were totally unrelated from the abuse, assuming some cosmic power had been tabulating all of their secret, guilty deeds and sent the abuser as a force of karmic justice.

There are also victims who do not consider themselves as being particularly guilty before the abuse, but now, because they were a participant in such a violent or dirty experience, they feel forever tainted by it. They feel as of some sort of evil was transferred to them by their abuser. Thoughts, once innocent, are now overrun with horrible memories and images. They may be horrified by these images, but they self-identify with them still the same.

Divorced From Reality)

Whether such a person thinks they earned their suffering beforehand, or whether they think that they have been permanently scarred after the fact, the intense demoralization leads them to accept or seek out further injury, because that’s just what they think they belong to now. This creates a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, where they really do become responsible for the continuation of self-harm, reaffirming to themselves that they just aren’t any good. Thus, they become entrenched in this new, corrupted identity. Left unchecked, this cyclical self-harm and self-loathing behavior can take them to all sort of terrible extremes, even to the premature ending of their lives.

But for anyone on the outside, anyone who knew the victim both before and after the traumatizing event, it is abundantly clear that the sufferer is not living in a way congruent with reality. No number of past flaws can justify another person being abusive to you, neither does having evil forced upon you make you evil yourself. What other people have done is what they have done, it justifies or condemns them and no one else. In an ideal world, suffering and abuse would have absolutely no bearing on how the victim views themselves.

Of course, the victim might even know all of this in their head as well. They might know that they shouldn’t blame themselves, they might staunchly stand in defense other victims, but knowing something in one’s head and treating others a certain way does not mean that the same goes for what’s inside. The victim can believe in their head that they are innocent and deserving of love while feeling the exact opposite in their heart. It isn’t a matter of needing to be convinced, it is a matter of needing a transformation in the heart.

Of course, even if the victim sets aside all the false narratives and self-deceptions, the truth that takes their place is still bleak and tragic. Their heart is broken. Their innocence is gone. They have seen the evil world, and no amount of knowing that that isn’t their fault will change the fact that they have seen it. They should not blame themselves for what they suffered, but even if they do manage to cease doing so that doesn’t mean that everything is fine now.

Stray Hearts)

We’ve spent some time now examining both the situation of the perpetrator and of the victim. In each case we have seen the tendency for them to have a heart divided from truth and reality. The perpetrator is in denial of his wrong or he makes it his entire identity. The victim feels that he is justified in every bitter, angry thing that he does now, or he feels fundamentally broken. All of these states are based upon the person latching onto a lie at their core.

Neither the perpetrator nor the victim should view themselves as irredeemable or incorruptible. They should be able to hold an honest appraisal of their flaws and virtues at the same time. Getting to this place is going to be a process. Core lies will have to be excised, as if by emotional surgery, and truth is going to have to be applied regularly, like a salve.

We’ve also considered that even when the perpetrator and the victim get past their self-deceit, the truth they are left with is still stark and damning. Yes, it is better to embrace truth than deception, but at this point that still does not amount to healing. It is a step in the right direction, though, but we still need to consider the other steps that follow.

We’ve spent quite some time discussing the problem, the ways that both perpetrators and victims wander into strange, forbidden lands. The following posts will now be dedicated to understanding the journey back to wholeness.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Perpetrator and Victim: Part Four

The Victim’s Veil)

In my last post I discussed the reasons why an addict who has hurt others will avoid facing the realities of his crimes. I discussed the difficult questions that come up when one contemplates the wrongs that they have done and what those actions imply about them. I also suggested that while the truth might be grim, it is nonetheless necessary to embrace it if the addict is ever to reclaim their soul.

And I don’t think that anyone would disagree with me on any of these points. I think we can all agree that the perpetrator of abuse is clearly in the wrong and needs to own up to his mistakes. All of us wish that the people who have hurt us would do exactly that.

But what I believe is less universally recognized is that the victim is often also detached from reality. Suffering at the hands of another is a profound experience, one that often shatters the victim’s worldview and introduces some false perspectives that, just as with the perpetrator, divorce the victim from truth and healing.

A common theme in this series is going to be that both the perpetrator and the victim have a different, yet parallel journey to walk. Both need healing, both need reconnection to their Maker, both need to be saved by grace. Many victims might initially balk at the idea that they need to do anything as a result of being hurt by another. They don’t have any guilt in the matter, so why do they have to make any change? This is a completely understandable reaction, and there is great need to be sensitive in these matters, but just as the perpetrator must face the reality of their situation, no matter how unpleasant it may be, so the victim must as well. At least they must if they ever want to be whole again.

Today we will look at one broken worldview that the victim might hold. It may not apply to all victims, but it certainly applies to some. Today we consider the danger of vilifying perpetrators and viewing victims as being incapable of any wrongdoing.

We Are All Perpetrators, We Are All Victims)

I mentioned yesterday how we tend to divide humanity into different groups, and how the most fundamental division is into people that are good and people that are evil. We all have our personal rubric by which we decide which people go into which camp, and I pointed out that perpetrators avoid facing the reality of their sins because their actions have betrayed their own rubric, so the moment they face the full weight of those actions they have to start realizing that that means they are one of the bad ones.

In the victim, these divisions of good and evil are perhaps even more pronounced. Clearly, their abuser is in the camp of the evil, and since they view themselves as being the opposite of their abuser, they must be on the side of good. They may not think this consciously, but the fact that they suffered at the hands of evil becomes an evidence to them of their own rightness and virtue.

But I think all of us can appreciate that this is a grossly oversimplified view of the world. One example that shatters this black-and-white sort of thinking is the fact that “over 75% of serial rapists report they were sexually abused as youngsters.” All of us have our heart go out to those who are abused as children, and rightly so. At the same time, most of us passionately condemn those who forced this abuse upon the children. But rarely do we consider the fact that there is a massive overlap between these two parties. How do you resolve the fact that the poor, victim child is also the sinister, abusive villain? At what point do you stop caring for him as the victim and start hating him as the perpetrator instead?

One example of this blended reality is when we see perpetrators of abuse justifying their behavior by bringing up their own suffering. They had a hard life, they weren’t raised in a good home, they were denied the opportunities that others had, they were victims of family, friends, and society. In the most extreme cases we see people using this sense of victimhood to try and get out of literal murder!

Even without going to such extreme cases, we probably all know people who dodge every-day criticism by holding up a shield of “well you can’t talk, because you haven’t gone through what I have!” They view themselves as above reproach. Their suffering has given them a lifelong get-out-of-jail-free card.

Another example of how we ignore the connection between victimhood and abuse came to me as I served a mission for my church in a foreign land. One day I watched a mother beat her toddler son. I asked her what she thought of boys who grew up to strike their wives and children and she suggested a very particular form of dismemberment for them! I then asked where she thought they learned to hit people that were smaller than them in the first place. She had no answer for me.

The simple truth is that all of us have suffered at the hands of others and all of us have made others to suffer as well. We make a mistake when we view these at two separate camps. Really they are one unified whole.

Two Sides of the Coin)

None of which is to suggest that we excuse acts of abuse. None of what I have said means that the victim should not feel hurt, or that the perpetrator should not face justice. Wrong still remains wrong, and the fact that the perpetrator was wronged before does not justify the wrong that he then perpetuates upon others. But we cannot point out the fact that there are perpetrators who inappropriately justify their crimes by their past victimhood, without also proving that there are victims today who are starting to inappropriately use their pain as a shield as well. The two notions are inseparably linked.

Just as the perpetrator is at risk of living in denial of his past wrongs, the victim is at risk of minimizing their future wrongs. Each of them need to be able to face the abusive transaction between them and make space for the pain that was endured, but do this without enmeshing it with their personal sense of rightness.

The victim that feels justified and exonerated because they have been the sufferer of abuse must recognize this tendency of thought and deny it. They must embrace a broader, truer view of themself and the world, one that allows for both justice and pity for all people, whether they are perpetrator or victim or both.

Of course, there is also the matter of the victim taking the opposite path, and viewing themselves as fundamentally bad and broken because of the abuse they suffered. Tomorrow we will consider this form of disconnection from reality, and how it is just as disastrous.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Perpetrator and Victim: Part Three

Despair of Self)

But I was racked with eternal torment, for my soul was harrowed up to the greatest degree and racked with all my sins. Yea, I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell; yea, I saw that I had rebelled against my God, and that I had not kept his holy commandments.- Alma 36:12-13

Yesterday I spoke about perpetrators of abuse who try to avoid any questions about the state of their soul. Deep down they know that they have done wrong, but they go to incredible length to avoid giving an answer for their behavior because they know all the answers condemn them. Obviously, a person in this state is living apart from reality, and will never be able to achieve real change until they stop running from the truth.

But it is not as if these people are only living at one extreme. They only work so hard to avoid introspection because at their core they are already convinced that they are irredeemably evil. If they weren’t already convinced of that, they wouldn’t need to dodge conversations about it. Thus, they are divided against themselves, utterly loathing themselves even while maintaining that they are totally blameless.

This is an exhausting way to live, and now and again a perpetrator will give up on this divided self-perception. Typically they have first tried to give up on guilt, to say they just don’t care what they do, but the heart refuses to comply. Their conscience betrays them, and refuses to be beat into submission. So eventually they go the other way and wholeheartedly confess that they are bad and guilty.

The reason we put off this confession for as long as we can is that we instinctively know it will bring with it all manner of anguish and torment. Truly owning one’s serious mistakes can invoke the most pronounced and painful suffering we will ever know. We can become lost in a labyrinth of despair, with many paths leading to a variety of unfortunate ends, especially when we discover that not even making our confession is necessarily enough for us to stop doing evil.

Convinced of the Evil, But Continuing in It)

For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.- Romans 7:15

There is a portion of addicts who discover that making confession unlocks their previously-uncontrollable behavior. Just by brining their secret shame into the light it loses its power over them. They are able to live with a freedom that they never knew before.

But this only a portion of the addicts. Many others find that making their confession does help, but the problem still isn’t entirely removed. They continue to slip, continue to do the very thing that they confess is wrong. Thus they are still divided against themselves, truthfully admitting to what is right, but deceiving themselves with their actions.

Having taken this step and still not finding relief often brings a second crushing realization. The addict realizes that he is incapable of redeeming himself. Even if he could atone for all his past wrongs, which frankly he probably can’t do, it wouldn’t matter, because he’s going to keep doing new wrong things. All along there has been a secret desire that he would be able to pull himself up by his bootstraps and come into a way of life where conviction and behavior were one and the same. But now he realizes that he is irredeemable, at least by his own power.

If the addict didn’t give up before, he certainly might now. He has realized that he is not just guilty, he is fundamentally broken. He knew that he was bad, but now he realizes that he can never be good. Trial has been held and he has been convicted and condemned. This is what it means to be damned. This is what it means to be in hell.

True, but Incomplete)

Unlike when the perpetrator was in denial of even doing wrong, this appraisal of his life is completely valid. The abuser has finally centered himself on a foundation of truth, but it has come too late.

While he has come to a truth, though, it is not the only truth. It is true that man cannot redeem himself, but it is also true that man does not only have to rely upon himself to be redeemed. There is a God, there is a Savior, and there is a redemption.

Before the perpetrator can have access to the redemptive power of Christ, though, he typically has to first reach this place of appreciating his own damnation. This low point is a necessary prerequisite before true healing can commence.

So this despair is a good place to come to, but it needs to not be the end of the journey. It must only be a checkpoint along the way. The perpetrator must pivot his self-perception twice. First to shift from self-justification to accepting the reality of his crimes, then again to shift from self-condemnation to seeing himself as a son of God. Core paradigm shifts like these do not come easily. There is a reason this is a process, not an event.

But difficult as the perpetrator’s journey is, so too is that of the victim. Tomorrow we will begin examining those that have been on the receiving end of abuse, and the various disconnects from reality that they can experience as well. I’ll see you there.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Perpetrator and Victim: Part Two

Fundamentally Detached from Life)

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. 

And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

Matthew 7:24-27

At the end of yesterday’s post I made the case that when addicts deny or avoid the harm that we have done we are living a life that is divorced from the truth. Sweeping bad news under the rug does not change the underlying reality one bit, but it does detach ourselves from reality. And then trying to live a meaningful, purposeful life while keeping a blind eye to our sins is a vain endeavor. If you want your life to flourish, you have to align yourself with the truth of that life, both the good and the bad. This is just one of those fundamental truths, so basic and atomic that it defies explanation.

Confession, at its core, is therefore all about aligning ourselves to that truth. It brings our secret deeds into the light, acknowledging our problems as they really are, creating an image of ourselves that is harmonious with reality. Even though that reality is one that we are ashamed of, accepting it makes our world more right and whole even so. Everyone, perpetrator and victim alike, need to reconnect themselves to this truth if they ever want to really live again.

Because yes, this step of fully embracing the truth is a requirement for victim and perpetrator alike. Today and tomorrow we will be considering the ways that the perpetrator hides from the truth, and afterwards we will look at how the victim does as well.

Why the Perpetrator Hides)

The fact that the perpetrator tends to run from his crimes should be something we can all agree on. Each of us has seen many others, publicly and privately, who staunchly deny the reality of their moral perversions. We think it is cowardly of them to not face their well-deserved judgment, particularly when we are among those that they have harmed. Yet even as we recognize this behavior in others, we struggle to see how it is true for ourselves as well. We all have our blind spots, whether willful or ignorant. We know it isn’t right for anyone else to makes excuses for their behavior, but when it comes to us, of course, all of our excuses are totally valid!

Why do we live in this denial? Why do we overlook our obvious hypocrisy?

Well, for one we probably want to avoid punishment from others. We also don’t want to lose the things we have. Depending on the nature of our addiction, we might even be afraid of legal repercussions! But aside from any of those reasons, there is another and more immediate cause for our self-deception. We simply don’t want to face our dark reality, because doing so brings up some hard questions that we don’t want to answer. Questions like:

  • What does your hurtful behavior say about you?
  • What sort of person does bad things?
  • What do you deserve for what you have done?

In our minds, we have two clearly-divided groupings of people: those that are good and those that are bad, and the first person that all of us sort into the good camp is our own self. It is the natural instinct of all of us to see ourselves as being the prototype for all that is right and good in the world. We might admit to some flaws, but we immediately follow that up with affirmations that our heart is really in the right place, that we are genuinely trying to do our best, that our good clearly outweighs our bad, that our situation is complicated, and that we’re nothing like all those other truly bad people!

But why then did you hurt someone that you loved?

Any time you bring the introspection back to this sort of targeted, direct question, you’ll catch yourself writhing and wriggling to escape! It’s like seeing a cave-dwelling creature scurrying to get out of the light! We writhe and we wriggle because deep down, one of the most fundamental fears that we all have is that we’re actually not one of the good people. We all dread the possibility that we’ve been the villain, not the hero, all along. Stating that we have so much as a doubt about the state of our soul feels like it is going to kill us. We would rather tell a thousand lies and curse everything that we touch than to say, “I have done serious wrong for which there is no excuse. I have hurt the people I love. I am deserving of death and hell.”

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; -Romans 3:23
For the wages of sin is death -Romans 6:23

These are difficult verses to apply to ourselves, but they really are the truth. Accepting this truth feels like it will break us, but, paradoxically, this truth is the key to our rebirth. As we are told elsewhere in the bible:

The truth shall make you free. -John 8:32

This promise really is true, impossible as it may seem. Later in this series we will see why.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Perpetrator and Victim: Part One

The Victim)

Some justify their addiction by saying that their behavior is a victimless crime, but nothing could be further from the truth. An addiction always has a victim. Obviously, there are those that we use or betray, either directly or indirectly; then there are those who are being deprived of having our full presence and care, even if they do not know it; and finally, even if it were possible to live an addiction without either of those first two categories of victims, there is always the victim of our very own self.

For the addict to turn his attention to his victims is a very hard thing to do. It anguishes his very soul. And, frankly, it should anguish his soul. That is the right and proper consequence for one who has caused harm, and it is necessary for the addict to endure this if he is ever going to have a real change.

But this journey into the dark is not only for the addict. There is a parallel journey that the victim must pass through as well, one which involves coming to terms with his own brokenness and surrendering it. Throughout this study we will take a deep dive on the addict, his victim, and the journey of recovery that they both must follow. Let us start today by taking a closer look at the three categories of victims that I mentioned above.

Immediate Victims)

This is the category that most commonly comes to mind when we think of the word “victim.” If one is a lust addict it might a person they molest, if one is an anger addict it might be a person they strike, if one is a drug addict it might be a parent they steal money from. In short, it is anyone who is harmed as a way for us to get the twisted pleasure or satisfaction that our addiction demands.

Also, there are the victims who were not harmed by the acting out of the addiction, but by its aftermath. These include the nieces and nephews who wonder why we aren’t allowed to play with them anymore, the ex-spouse who can’t get a loan because we ruined their credit score, and the new employee who is never fully trusted because of the cynicism we inspired in our former boss.

There are also victims that do not know they are victims, such as the girls we leered down the shirt of. There are also the victims that we never directly interacted with, such as the kids who started doing drugs because they wanted to be like us. I would even make the case that there are victims who were distressed by the invisible, evil spirit that we brought in our wake.

If we’re honest with ourselves, I’m sure we’ll all be able to identify many, immediate victims of our addiction. We’ll even come to accept that there are undoubtedly many more that we have forgotten or never knew of.

Indirect Victims)

Even after all the types of victims mentioned already, there are still others. These are the victims who suffer from not getting to have our full presence in their lives. Most of the time, these people don’t even know that they’re getting a substandard version of us, and we might not even know it either. Most likely we’ve been emotionally handicapped for so long that we don’t know that it is a handicap anymore. Our loved ones say that we’re just “aloof” or “distracted,” never considering that in reality we are half brain-dead because of our addiction.

Our spouse doesn’t get the partner that they thought we were, our children don’t get the attentive parent that they deserve, and our employers don’t get the employee that they thought they hired. And as I’ve said, we don’t even realize just how much of our real self we are holding back until after we have been in recovery long enough to discover who that real self is. It is only in hindsight that we understand just how much our loved ones put up with that they shouldn’t have had to.

Cheating the world of our best self puts an undue burden on everyone else. It creates a perpetual sense of longing and dissatisfaction in others that they may never understand the source of. They don’t know how to vocalize the ways that we weren’t there for them, just the sense that we weren’t. They only ever got the shadow of us, when what they wanted was the real thing.

Victim of Self)

And, finally, there is the very first victim of them all. The one that suffers more than any other victim in almost every case. Every time we hurt another person, we also hurt ourselves. And even when we don’t hurt another person, we still also hurt ourselves.

We break our own heart, destroy our own innocence, and subject our own selves to misery. Every negative action we project outward also has a negative reaction directed inward. An addict who burns a hundred bridges deprives each of these people of only one relationship, but of himself he deprives them all. Everyone else gets a portion of the pain of our addiction, but we get all of it combined in one.

We lose our self-respect, our health, our optimism, our faith, our friendships, and our freedom. We subject ourselves to punishments that we would never accept at the hands of another person. There are plenty of addicts who may not break a single law, but whose behavior to their own self would be considered criminal if it had been done to another person. And while that addict may never end up behind real bars, inside he is prosecuted, convicted, and incarcerated still the same.

Facing the Victims)

So, as I said at the start, addiction always has a victim. It must have at least one, and frankly I have never met an addict that didn’t have hundreds. It’s a grim reality that most of us go to incredible lengths to avoid facing. But denying the existence of a reality means trying to live apart from the truth, and that only tears us apart. Sooner or later, if we ever wish to be whole, the truth has got to be faced. The victims have to be considered and the remorse has to be felt. A little bit later, confession and amends will also be necessary, but first and foremost, one has got to look at their damage unflinching.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Hitting Rock Bottom

Diving Deep)

“Hitting rock bottom” is a common phrase in addiction recovery and twelve-step programs. Addicts will include it when describing the shocking depths they descended to before they were willing to wholly commit to recovery. They lost jobs, were imprisoned, lost their families, declared bankruptcy, were excommunicated from their church, lost their physical and mental health, and perhaps even found themselves on death’s doorstep. In short, they sunk as low as they possibly could, and then, having “hit rock bottom,” they finally started to look upward.

This pattern is so common that some addicts will attest that no one will ever find real recovery until they first hit rock bottom. It’s not that everyone’s rock bottom is the same, but they claim that one must hit their personal moment of absolute devastation before they can recover. Some will even tell newcomers who haven’t suffered enough hardship from the addiction that they aren’t possibly going to get better until they first get much worse.

I absolutely disagree with such claims. I think there is a real pattern being recognized, but extrapolating that pattern to say it is an absolute rule for each and every single individual is a terrible mistake. No one should ever be told that they cannot yet begin the process of getting better.

The Power of Fear)

But as I just said, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t a real pattern occurring here. I saw it in my initial recovery group of six members. We each had our own highs and lows, but only one of us totally stopped working the program. I have to say, from the very first meeting I had my doubts about his commitment. The most obvious difference between him and the rest of us was that he was still young, unmarried, and had relatively little to lose if he didn’t get better right away.

Well, that’s not true, we all had just as much to lose, but for some of us the losses were occurring in the present, whereas for him much of the potential losses were still in the future. Since that time, I have met other young addicts who were able to stick to a program, even without their feet being held to the fire by the threat of losing marriage and family, but they are a small demographic in our ranks.

Fear of real and dramatic loss is one of the greatest motivators for change. It isn’t the only motivator, and people can achieve recovery without it, but there will always be more scared and desperate individuals in recovery than cocky and sure.

Pivot Points)

Of course, fear does not properly account for the phenomenon of getting sober after “hitting rock bottom.” Fear is an emotion that comes from potential unpleasant outcomes. Fear is always looking forward to a future experience, usually one that may or may not even occur. But “hitting rock bottom” would mean that the thing you were afraid of has already occurred. The loss has happened, the relationship has ended, the freedom has been taken. Fear has already been replaced with reality. So what else is it about these moments that might inspire real change?

Well, these are pivot points. They are moments that force a huge reality check on us. Up until these moments we might have been in denial, finding other things to blame for our problems, but huge tragedies like these usually make us take a hard look inside. We finally see ourselves as we actually are, and having gained that perspective we get to make a choice whether we will accept what we see or not. We have a chance to say to ourselves “no, I cannot tolerate this. I cannot be this way. I will do whatever it takes to change.”

Each new low presents a new chance to have that introspection and to make that commitment to change. They are stations along the railway, and at each one we have the option to change trains if we want. There is a train station when you are caught the first time. There is a train station when you lose your marriage. There is a train station when you go to jail. One might take the first exit, another the second, another the third, and another might never get off the ride at all.

Thus, “hitting rock bottom” really means the time you reach the pivot point where you finally decide enough is enough. Each person has a different point where this occurs for them, and it is based entirely on their individual personality and choice. Many of us are too stubborn to choose to change until we have suffered great loss, but as I have said already, I do know others who made a real change far sooner on their journey. It’s entirely up to you.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Overwhelming Stress: Part Four

A Broken Schedule)

Yesterday I addressed that we might not have the capacity to do all of our daily tasks, but we might be able to use some techniques to get through them anyway, such as shifting some to an every-other-day cadence, or quickly knocking out high-effort tasks that then become low-effort maintenance.

I acknowledged, though, that even this may not be sufficient for everyone. It is possible to simply not have the resources to do all the things that we need to maintain balance, no matter what strategy we employ. An example of this would be if one didn’t have enough income to pay off even the interest on their debt. Or perhaps if one suffered an injury that prohibited exercise. Or of one’s need for education and a regular day-job were mutually exclusive.

In situations like these, more drastic strategies are required. But as a prerequisite to any of these strategies, we first have to accept that we aren’t going to be able to do all the things that we want to do. Any solution at this point is going to require sacrifice and a change of expectations. Coming to terms with this disappointment is painful but necessary if we are ever to make the most of a hard situation.

Once we have made this peace, then here are two options to consider.

Ask For Help)

I am certainly one that wants to take care of everything myself. I want to prove that I have the strength and wherewithal to take care of everything on my own. Part of me feels that I would rather live a broken life by my own power than a fuller life by the power of others. But that part of me is simply pride, and now that I’ve tried both options I can tell you definitively which one is better,

For years I remained entrenched in my addiction because I insisted on taking care of it on my own. But the more I tried to handle it on my own, the more it became apparent that I simply couldn’t. My deficit wasn’t time or money, it was spiritual strength, and I had to finally accept that I didn’t have the wherewithal on my own and that I needed to reach outward for help.

I finally did so, and I have leaned on the strength of dozens of people since. My therapists, my group members, brothers in recovery that I’ve met along the way. I have an entire village of supporters who help me to do what I couldn’t by myself, who help make up for my spiritual strength deficit and then some.

The principle is the same if you’re talking about financial shortcomings, or scheduling conflicts, or simply not having enough time to do everything. If you really can’t do it by yourself, then can you swallow your pride and surrender some part of this plan to the care of another person? We are born into families and raised in communities for a reason. The resources are almost certainly there if we’re willing to just look outside of ourselves.

Make the Hard Cuts)

I have an entrepreneurial and hobbyist mindset. I always have a number of projects and developments that I want to work on, both so that I can learn new things and also create new sources of income. These endeavors seem justified by the fact that success in these areas would make me a more skilled individual and bring greater stability to my life. So I prioritize working on these projects, even trying to progress several of them at a time.

Of course, things of substance never come quickly or easily. The cost of doing this work gets higher and higher, other untested fields start to look more promising, I try dividing my focus into even more areas, and even my basic self-care starts to evaporate as I pour more and more time and effort into all these ventures.

Many times I have had to give myself a sharp reality check. I realize that optional projects have become obligations, hobbies have become jobs, and ambition has become obsession. At this point, letting these projects go feels like cutting out some of the essential parts of my life, but really they’re not. At some point I have to decide what genuinely is essential and what only feels like it is.

Obviously this is a problem of my own making. More difficult to deal with are the demands that have been put on us by duty and necessity. The principle remains the same, though. If you really can’t maintain everything that you want to, and you can’t get enough external help to make things manageable, then sooner or later you have to accept that some things need to go.

Maybe you really just don’t have the capacity for a relationship right now. Maybe you really do have to declare bankruptcy. Maybe you can’t maintain every friendship. Maybe having a clean house just isn’t in the cards for today. Maybe you just won’t be in shape to run the marathon this year.

None of these are happy sacrifices to make, but at least we can have the dignity of letting them go ourselves, rather than watching them shrivel from neglect. It’s better to throw the food you won’t get around to eating away than to let it grow moldy on the shelf. Better to stop making half-measures that accomplish nothing and preserve our strength for full-measures on what we can actually accomplish.

Conclusion)

Strategic management, asking for help, and making sacrifices, it certainly seems that everything would be nicer if we didn’t have to do any of these things, but these are the realities of life. All of us will need to take all of these steps many times through the years. Sooner or later we can have to make our peace with imperfection and make the most that we can of it.

If we do make our peace and move forward, we still may not accomplish everything we wanted in the way that we wanted, but I do believe we will all accomplish more than enough. Life can still be whole, even when it’s parts are broken.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Overwhelming Stress: Part Three

An Untenable Situation)

Yesterday I recommended a process by which a person can get their life under control. I suggested that they identify the minimum, daily effort that is necessary to change all areas in decline into areas of progress. Not massive progress, only a steady, consistent movement in the right direction. Then I suggested one commit to that daily quota, prioritizing sustainability of effort over grand, but short-lived surges.

But at the end I brought up the fact that for some even their bare minimums would still be too large an effort for a single day. You might have capacity for some of them, but you just don’t have it for them all. There are still a few ways that a person can respond positively to this situation, depending on the nature of their shortcoming. I will present two of the easier strategies today, and the two more difficult ones tomorrow.

Alternating Schedules)

Ideally, one would like to have balance every day. In 24 hours they would have sufficient sleep, spiritual communion, exercise, work, time with family, leisure, and whatever other life qualities they value most. But 24 hours is a hard limit on one’s daily resources, and sometimes there literally aren’t enough hours in a day to get all the things that one needs.

I found myself in this very situation. Trying to balance my family, writing, career, spirituality, rest, exercise, recovery work, budgeting, house maintenance, and pleasure only resulted in hurried efforts that didn’t really progress any of those areas and left many of them untouched for weeks.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit how long it took me to realize that several of my “daily” tasks could actually be “every-other-daily” tasks. While it may not be ideal, I’ve decided that I’m okay writing Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and exercising Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Being consistent with writing and exercising on an alternating pattern is still better than the sporadic, weeks-without pattern that I’ve had before.

Of course, not everything should be split into an alternating schedule, for example I still want to have a prayer and seek connection with God every day, but I have nearly cut my daily tasks in half. And again, so long as my every-other-day effort is enough to progress me towards a healthier lifestyle, then I will still reach my goals eventually. And you will, too!

One might even consider a three-day rotation, but the more you space things out the harder it will be to establish the habit. You really want the cadence to be as regular and rapid as possible.

Short-Term Goals)

Another strategy to consider is that some areas of life might require a higher effort temporarily, but then will become more manageable afterward. An example of this would be if you need to get your finances under control. At the beginning, you probably need a higher-than-usual effort to track down your expenditures, figure out your budget, and cut out unnecessary expenses. But once you’ve done all that, you then only require a fraction of that effort to check yourself against your budget moving forward.

Again, ideally you’d be able to do all of the work for all the areas of your life simultaneously, but if you can’t, it may be worth considering whether you have any of these temporarily high-effort areas. If you do, for the short term prioritize getting through those tasks. Once they’re taken care of, then try to settle into a daily or every-other-daily cadence to take care of everything else.

It will be up to you to decide what other areas of your life are put on hold while you’re focusing on these temporarily high-effort areas. Is it okay to not work on your physical health while you get your finances in order, so long as you make a solemn commitment to bring that area back into your schedule once your budget is established?

I had this situation when I got serious about overcoming my addiction. At some point I needed to be able to integrate my recovery work with all the rest of my daily self-care, but for the short term I needed to focus on gettimg some momentum into my sobriety. For a temporary period, everything but the bare necessities was put on hold as I attended group meetings, went to therapy, and did hours of homework. I experienced a great change of heart, and then, with a little trial-and-error, I transitioned to a lower-effort strategy that would still maintain the recovery I’d achieved while still having time for all the other parts of my life.

Minor Adjustments)

Scheduling regular, daily efforts is a great step towards taking back control of our lives, but there will probably be a couple wrinkles in that plan. Fortunately, many of these wrinkles can be smoothed out with the minor adjustments described above. By shifting some things to an every-other-day cadence and by focusing temporarily on areas that could later be reduced to a lower effort, we will find that life becomes far more manageable.

But as I mentioned at the start, this still may not be enough to resolve every situation. Come back tomorrow as we’ll deal with the areas of life that are imbalanced through-and-through. As we will see, even in these areas, there can be relief and growth.