Posted on by Abe Austin

Addiction and the Angry Spouse: Part Five

Why the Abuse?)

Yesterday I examined the situation of an addict and his spouse when she is abusing him for his wrongs. To be clear, I am not saying that all forms of anger are inherently abusive, at times anger is the right and proper reaction to a situation. But it absolutely possible for the wife to go off the deep end as well. This is never okay, and an addict in this situation should look to remove himself from such a situation. He shouldn’t fight back in kind, he should just get away to a place where he can be safe.

But it is worth considering, why is the wife behaving like this? From name calling to throwing plates, why does she feel like she has to explode in rage? She might have been a gentle, peaceful person up until this moment, so clearly she isn’t fundamentally hateful. What has possessed her, then, to be like this now?

We’ll spend the rest of today exploring those questions, but the short answer is this: the wife is showing outbursts of rage because she is terrified of showing her husband her inner suffering. Behind all that rage is a terrible, terrible sadness.

Secondary Emotions)

Psychology is the study of mental behavior and processes. It takes all of the outer attitudes that we exhibit and seeks to understand what happened inside of us to prompt those reactions. Many of us live our entire lives not even considering our emotional reactions, assuming that they are self-explanatory, but the reality is far more complex.

One concept that is discussed in psychology is that of “secondary emotions.” The idea here is that sometimes an inner, core emotion gets wrapped with a secondary, outer one. A common example of this is anger as a secondary emotion to fear. It is quite common for us to react with hostility to something that has scared us, and this behavior makes sense when it comes to dangers in nature. If we were to cross paths with a wild animal we would feel terrified, but rather than show that fear we might scream and throw rocks at it to chase it off.

But this same instinct applies to non-life-threatening social interactions as well. I’m sure we have all seen a person that has an angry outburst at a seemingly innocuous statement or question. Asking a friend what test score he got might get in a sharp response if he is insecure about his intelligence. Expressing a personal opinion on “rape culture” might elicit a tirade from your partner if your words have triggered a painful memory. Asking your boss to clarify his instructions might call down a strong reprimand if he is afraid of being seen as a poor leader. On the outside we’re seeing the anger, but inside is all manner of pain and fear.

These angry outbursts are therefore a self-defense mechanism, a warning that people should back off from a tender area. It’s very similar to the rattling of a snake’s tail or the baring of a lion’s teeth. Unfortunately, most of us employ this angry warning technique to our own detriment, using them as a way to avoid our problems rather than dealing with them. At some point in our lives we do need to have these defenses challenged, but probably not by someone who is ignorant and insensitive about what is happening inside.

The Hurt Behind the Anger)

And this is the important thing to understand when your wife comes at you with an angry tirade. Most likely, all her cutting, insulting remarks are a mask over the real issue. Her primary emotion is one of intense hurt and grief, but she doesn’t feel safe showing that to you. She doesn’t feel safe because that is a very intimate, very vulnerable part of her, and your actions have communicated to her that you are not a safe person to expose that side to. So when she feels the sadness overflowing and starting to spill over she instead surges out in anger, trying to shield you from seeing the brokenness that almost got out.

I’m not going to say that it’s okay for her to abuse you just to hide her hurt, but we must appreciate the fact that she probably doesn’t even know what else to do. She is trapped in a no-win situation. You, as the addict, have proven that you cannot be trusted with the most intimate parts of her soul, but those parts are bleeding out of open wounds. What exactly is she supposed to do with that?

Well, we’ll talk about what she is supposed to do with that in the following posts, but just for today I wanted to give proper appreciation for the reality of what the spouse is going through. It is in our nature to view those who are overly angry in a disdainful way, but in many cases they are the people most deserving of our pity.

NOTE: Throughout this series I refer to the addict as “he” and the injured partner as his “wife.” This is merely a convenience for maintaining consistency. It is entirely possible for the addict to be a woman and the injured partner to be her husband. It is also entirely possible for the strained relationship to be between non-romantic partners, such as with a parent and a child.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Addiction and the Angry Spouse: Part Four

Constructive Criticism)

All of us need constructive criticism in our lives. We all have blind spots around our personal flaws. An outside perspective helps to bring our subconscious attitudes in check and helps to mold ourselves into the best version of ourselves that we can be.

But not all criticism is “constructive” criticism. Indeed, much of the critique that we receive tends to be of the “destructive” variety, specifically intended to tear us down. It’s end goal is to make us fit another person’s flawed desires, or simply to make us hurt. This sort of criticism has no value to us, and we would do well to distance ourselves from it.

Further complicating matters, though, is the fact that there is also “mixed” criticism. This is criticism that really does have a good point, a revelation about ourselves that we would benefit from learning, but the speaker of this criticism has impure intentions. What they’re saying is right, but they’re saying it with the intention of hurting us.

Allowing another person to mistreat you isn’t appropriate, but neither is dismissing the fair points they are making about your character. Today I want to focus on a way that you can manage both of these sides at the same time. I’ll start off by illustrating it with an allegory.

The Shot)

Imagine for a moment that a piece of criticism is like getting a shot. Having a needle stuck in your arm, even when administered by a professional, is always going to sting. It’s exactly the same as when we’re being told that we’re doing something wrong, no matter the abundance of tact used, it will always sting a bit. How we respond to this prospect of pain depends on how mature we are.

Children might respond to a shot by resisting the person trying to administer it, or going limp and falling over so that the needle can’t pierce their skin, or even striking back. We do the same thing with criticism when we start dismissing it as incorrect, entering a depressive state where we tune out everything that has been said, or start hurling insults back at the person. We don’t care about the medicine that is being offered, we are exclusively focused on the pain that is associated with it.

A more mature person will sit upright and calmly receive the inoculation. They’ll accept the momentary discomfort as a necessary inconvenience, and the whole thing will be over much sooner because of their cooperation.

But so far we’ve been assuming a careful administrator of the shot/criticism. Now let us imagine that the person coming at us is enraged, and they’re swinging that needle wildly! That needle may still have some worthy medicine inside of it, but we’re going to suffer more damage than good by letting this person carve into our flesh with reckless abandon.

The ideal solution (and this is far easier said than done) would be to stop the would-be attacker, take the syringe into your own hands, and calmly administer its composition to yourself. In terms of dealing with abusive criticism, this means that you will not permit yourself to be insulted or screamed at, and if someone breaks this boundary you will leave the situation, but at the same time you will be sensitive and empathetic to the emotions that are behind the attack.

An Example)

Let us give a clear example of this. Imagine a lust addict in recovery who goes out one evening with his wife. An attractive woman passes them by and the wife starts to wonder if the husband is lusting for her. The wife feels hurt and insulted, and after getting home she lays into her husband, accusing him of having been emotionally unfaithful the entire evening. She brings up all the past wrongs that he has committed. She shouts, she insults and disparages, she swears, and she tries to push him back into the role of irredeemable cheater. Maybe she even starts to get physical!

And all the while, let’s assume that the husband in this case was having a perfectly innocent, sober-minded evening. Now he’s under attack, though, and his fight-or-flight instincts are kicking in. He wants to shout back, or to disappear into his shame, but that will only make the situation worse. Instead, he realizes that he needs to disarm the situation and acknowledge his wife’s justified hurt.

That doesn’t mean that the husband has to engage with any false narrative, though. He doesn’t have to take her insults to heart. He doesn’t have to say he was lusting that night if he really wasn’t. But he does need to speak up and admit that that he has betrayed his wife in the past and he can see that she is still hurting for it and he is sorry. He validates her underlying pain, but he does not condone her out-of-line behavior.

If his wife is able to come back to a calm place, then he can remain in her presence and work to understand more of that underlying pain. He takes ownership for past faults and meditates upon them. As a result, the wife sees how he has applied the syringe to himself and allowed himself to feel sad and emotional for the harm that he caused. If, on the other hand, the wife remains abusively hostile, and needs some space, then the husband moves somewhere else and has that moment of empathy and introspection in private. In either case, he has done his part to learn and grow from the constructive criticism that was hiding inside the abusive criticism. He has responded to the situation in a way that is respectful and honest.

NOTE: Throughout this series I refer to the addict as “he” and the injured partner as his “wife.” This is merely a convenience for maintaining consistency. It is entirely possible for the addict to be a woman and the injured partner to be her husband. It is also entirely possible for the strained relationship to be between non-romantic partners, such as with a parent and a child.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Addiction and the Angry Spouse: Part Three

Toxic Criticism)

In my last post I explained that the addict needs to find empathy for the pain that his behavior caused his wife, though this is easier said than done. Speaking for myself, even after years of practice I still have many emotional safeguards that tried to dissuade me from really leaning into the pain. There is always that tendency to become defensive and search for any other path. I have even tried to fake empathy at times while keeping my heart securely locked off, but nothing but sincerity works. As my mentor in my first addiction recovery program often repeated “you can’t go under it, you can’t go around it, you can’t go over it. You have to go through it.”

Part of the challenge facing the addict is that he will likely face all manner of challenges that trigger his defense mechanisms. Typically the addict’s wife is not only hurt, she is angry, and that anger can come through in a multitude of ways. Insults or shouting or misrepresenting events will tempt the addict to dismiss everything his wife is saying. She’s being irrational, unfair, or intentionally derogatory, so he feels excused from taking anything that she says to heart. After all, this is already delicate, shameful ground for the addict, and anything abrasive is likely to drive him into his shell.

Certainly, the wife of the addict has a right to be angry. She has been profoundly hurt, and no one would reasonably expect her language to be unaffected by that. But at the same time, there must be a point where the expressing of one’s hurt can go too far, starting to become a form of abuse itself. Where is that point? Where is the line where one’s invective just isn’t okay any more? Even if someone has justified anger, they can express it in an unjustified way. And when they do, how are you supposed to respond to that?

Well, we will get into all of that, but before anything else I wanted to spend the rest of the day discussing a fact that every addict needs to appreciate.

Ricochet Damage)

If your spouse is expressing her anger in a way that is unfair, isn’t that basically the same as exactly what you did to her? Wasn’t the revelation of your betrayal something that caught your wife totally off guard? Didn’t it hurt her without justification? Didn’t it come on her totally out of the blue? You might be totally right that this pain your spouse is putting on you is unfair, but paradoxically, undeserved pain is exactly what you do deserve!

Now I’m not here to say that two wrongs make a right, but I am going to maintain that you can use this as an opportunity to better appreciate the reality of what you inflicted upon your spouse. You can feel all the stinging, out-of-line, crushing pain and say “I get it, that’s what I did to you.” In most cases, what you are feeling is nothing more than a part of the damage that you put out into the world ricocheting back in your face.

Which, once again, is not to say that we should live an eye-for-an-eye, but we do need to appreciate what it was for like for the other person when we took their eye away. We need to be able to have a taste for that experience, even if we don’t have to experience all of it.

When the addict’s spouse sees that he is deflecting her pain, that is only going to aggravate her further! The fastest way for the addict to de-escalate his wife’s anger is for him to develop a genuine and profound understanding of her pain. Cheap, phony efforts are only going to prolong things and make it worse for everyone. The addict must learn to lean face-first into the pelting hail. He needs to allow some of the shrapnel bouncing back from his own actions to land in the flesh.

I’ve said it twice now, and I’ll say it one more time. None of this is to say that verbal or physical abuse from a wounded spouse just has to be put up with. There is a line between holding empathy for another’s pain and just being their punching bag. And maybe that makes sense conceptually, but how do you actually walk that line in practice? Come back tomorrow as we explore the answer.

NOTE: Throughout this series I refer to the addict as “he” and the injured partner as his “wife.” This is merely a convenience for maintaining consistency. It is entirely possible for the addict to be a woman and the injured partner to be her husband. It is also entirely possible for the strained relationship to be between non-romantic partners, such as with a parent and a child.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Perpetrator and Victim: Part Seven

The Place of Rescue)

Yesterday I made the point that both the perpetrator and the victim of abuse find themselves cut off from the presence of God. The perpetrator by their guilt, the victim by their despair. I explained that they do not have the power to bring themselves back into the light, either. Each requires an act of divine intervention to rescue them from the darkness.

It is not in the scope of this series to fully detail this rescue process. This process is outlined in the Gospel, it is conducted through the Savior, Jesus Christ. Anyone that searches for how one is “saved” in the Christian theology will find numerous explanations. For here I will simply say that this rescue or saving comes by accepting Christ as our Savior, and him redeeming us through no special merit of our own. It begins a new life within us, one of discipleship to Jesus.

My focus in this series has been to examine the hard path that precedes this saving grace. All of us have to be lost before we can be found, that is our common pattern in life. All of us are broken by others, and all of us break others in turn. Accepting these realities brings us to the bleakest place in our lives, but it just so happens to be the very same place where Christ’s rescue is waiting for us.

A dear friend of mine understood this concept and would often repeat the phrase “there is sacredness in suffering.” He understood the courage that it took to admit how guilty and broken one was, and he also understood that it was the prerequisite to a transformation for a soul. Nearly four years ago he passed in a tragic accident, leaving behind his young family. They have had their own “sacred suffering,” to be broken, and to be rescued to a new way of life.

New in the Light)

No one is rescued from the hole as the same person they were before they went in. They can be innocent again, they can be whole again, but they won’t be the same innocent or whole that they were before. That might be difficult for some to accept. Most of us spend so much of our time remembering how we used to be and trying to get back to it, but that’s something we just have to surrender.

This shouldn’t be considered tragic, though. The new person that emerges back into the light will not be equal to the person that went in, they will be indescribably better. We rise higher than we fall, our suffering and healing purifies and strengthens us into a purer form.

Of course, this is a transformation and journey that we never plan on. In the case of the victim it comes about entirely against their will. In the case of the perpetrator it does come about by their will, but they are ignorant of the full consequences they are calling forth. Most of us like to think that the greatest journeys of our lives will be ones that we elect for ourselves, ones that we choose deliberately and then carry out entirely by our own power. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those sorts of journeys are the most insignificant of our lives. The greatest journeys are the ones that catch us by surprise, even against our wills, and feature long periods where we are carried by various others. These journeys are far more dangerous, but the reward is far greater, too. There’s a reason why this is the sort of journey that all our literature has been obsessed with for thousands of years.

Parallel Journeys)

Here at the end I want to revisit a notion I mentioned in an earlier post. Many of us view the victim and the perpetrator as being two completely separate entities. We feel that each has entirely different needs from the other, that the only relationship that they share is those isolated moments of abuse.

But the reality is that both of these souls have a parallel journey to redemption. They both are prone to self-deception and false ideology, they both must overcome these lies to accept the hard truths, they both must come to despair so that they can then be rescued by the Savior.

And, indeed, each must deal with the other in their journey many times over. Even if they never see each other in the flesh again, each must come to terms with the specter of the other. No perpetrator will emerge whole without acknowledging the victim and doing whatever he can to make amends. No victim will emerge whole without accepting that the abuser is still their brother or sister and releasing their hate for them.

As I have suggested several times, I have been victim and perpetrator both. I have walked both journeys at various times, and I know firsthand the patterns of these paths. I know with all confidence that the way is hard, but also that it is beautiful.

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 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

The Captive Heart- John 15:19-20, Exodus 21:24

If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot

COMMENTARY

But because ye are not of the world, the world hateth you
In our lives, others will hurt us. Indeed, we experience this unpleasant heartbreak when we are still very small. Our parents are harsh with us and our peers make fun of us. Those we depend on for support and love while still so vulnerable betray us instead.
When we get older the circle of criticism goes out further. When we are children our view is limited to immediate family and friends, but when we grow older we become aware of the greater world. And there we discover that there are those who call us evil and wish we were eradicated. It frankly doesn’t matter which ideology or belief we subscribe to, there is always someone who sees our way of life as the source of all the world’s problems.
We feel the truth of Jesus’s words: that we are not a part of this world, and because of that the world hates us. This experience is true for all of us, for all of us are foreigners to this Earth. We don’t belong, and we distinctly feel the friction of that.

Eye for eye
And, of course, the natural reaction to being hurt by that friction is to hurt back again. An eye-for-an-eye is the rule of this world, it is simply the best form of balance and justice that the mortal realm can provide.
It is a hard law. Each of us will transgress it at some point, because we are imperfect. Each of us will unquestionably wound another, and then balance will demand that we must be wounded, too. Thus we must all be hurt, but should we just try to be hurt as equally as possible? This would mean each new invention of cruelty must eventually be permeated through the whole. The entire world situation could only become more miserable. In a way it is fair…but what a horrible fate for us all.
Can anyone question that somehow we need to be saved from this mortal condemnation?

Posted on by Abe Austin

Service to Others- Matthew 5:38-41

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

COMMENTARY

An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth
Our carnal tendency is to give as we have received. Not to give as we would like to receive, such as the golden rule recommends, but only to give as we have already received. As such, we have no mortal motivation to show a kindness to another unless they have already shown a kindness to us first. The problem with this approach is that then no kind act can ever be performed, as it requires an initiating factor. The whole pattern must be begun by one who does a kindness without reason, having received no kindness of their own. To the carnal mind, this is inconceivable.
What is conceivable, though, is an initiating unkindness, a moment where someone takes advantage of another for their own benefit. This would then start a toxic chain of retaliation unkindness through all humanity, and there could never be an end to the series because it requires a terminating factor. The whole pattern could only be closed by one who receives an unkindness and then, without reason, chooses not to retaliate. To the carnal mind, this is inconceivable.

Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also
So would acting charitably mean giving unfairly and forgiving where it isn’t deserved? Quite frankly, yes. And that is the ultimate ambition. It is just that sort of charity that brought our Savior to lay down his life for us, even though we did not deserve any such kindness. And so charity is a principle in direct contrast to that of an eye for an eye. It is an uncomfortable principle, one that goes against our natural sense of indignation. But it is the only way to ever end a dance of abuse and counterattack, and the only way to ever start a dance of benevolence and generosity.