Today has been a good day so far. I am, unfortunately, doing my work now at 12:00 p.m., but better late than never.
As I mentioned the other day about my talk with Becky, working on the relationship with my parents is crucial; I agree with this.
I’ve learned that negative emotions are the core of my sexual addiction: A (Debilitating Negative Emotions) => B (Lust) and B => C (Acting Out Sexually).
This is called the Addiction Recovery Relationship.
As I think about the answer to my question in the title of this post, “How can I educate my parents about addiction recovery?” this is the first thing I’d share.
Addiction starts with debilitating negative emotions.
What are my debilitating negative emotions, and what causes them?
Here’s a list that comes to mind:
- Shame
- Blame
- Criticism
- Not being enough
- Not being good enough
- Stress
- Clutter
- Feeling over-protected
- Feeling like I’m an object to show off to others
- Feeling spoiled
- Feeling like others are playing “poor me”
- Feeling overwhelmed with too much to do
- Feeling like others don’t approve of what I’m doing
- Feeling alone
- When others try to control how I do things or push their agenda on me
- When others don’t take responsibility for choices and attempt to push them on me or other people
When do I feel these debilitating negative emotions with my parents?
I feel that, many times, my mom is about “must be seen as.” She’s not being 100% honest with herself or others. She goes to all this effort to hide her messes, clutter and unfinished projects in a closed off room, or she justifies why things aren’t done because her life is so hard and busy.
I feel Dad shames and blames Mom for everything and doesn’t always take responsibility for his part in the mess that is their relationship.
I feel, when Mom and Dad come here, they are envious of what Becky and I have: our family, our home, the organization of our home, how we get along, how we are raising our kids, the money we’re making, and I’m not sure what else.
I feel they cope with this envy by looking for anything they can to point out, generally in the form of a question – something like, “You don’t have any saltines?” or “Do you think Jay needs a jacket?”
Why do they question how we’re doing things?
Why do they seem to try to “row our boats?”
Don’t they have enough to worry about regarding their own life and their own problems?
Why point out ours or create additional problems that we don’t need?
When I see these things happen, I immediately start feeling resentment, anger, shame, and insecurity. At this point, I generally check out: I don’t want to be around that. I don’t want to feel those feelings. So I bury them as deep as I can and try to do different things.
I push the responsibility on to someone else. As a kid, I would fight back or isolate (and often times act out). As an adult, I push the responsibility onto Becky, who already feels her own stress based on similar feelings of not being good enough for their strict guidelines of “what we should/shouldn’t be doing.”
Does it go deeper than this?
I would guess it probably does. I feel that being an only child has always been a tough challenge for me. I feel shame. I feel spoiled. I feel people look down on me or don’t like how I am. I feel people are jealous or envious (not sure why). I feel I’m not good enough. I feel the world revolves around me. I feel people are always watching me – when, in actuality, they aren’t – they could care less.
I feel like this is a good start.
I want to write more about this and try to uncover any feelings that I can share with Mom and Dad to help them understand where I am, how they’ve contributed to these feelings, and how they can help mend the raging rivers of resentment and frustration that have been there nearly my whole life.
Hasta luego!
Nate
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