The other day I wrote about the 3-legged stool of recovery. Here’s the Link if you missed it.
As a subset of that, here are the 3 things I believe you need to recover:
Knowledge
You have to have a basic understanding of addiction, specifically the cycle of addiction. You need to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.
It doesn’t need to be deep, and it doesn’t require a PhD in psychology, but you do have to understand what’s going on.
I read this statement once: “You cannot overcome something you don’t understand,” and it just made so much sense.
Some people deep dive into dopamine and the chemicals in your brain. That can be helpful, but I think it’s more important to focus on the level of thoughts and beliefs because that’s where you have control.
You can’t rewire your brain chemistry directly, but you can change how you think and what you believe about yourself.
Nothing happens without a thought first or a thought driving it which is why the stay-as-busy-as-you-can recovery plan often fails.
Your brain and you will talk you out of whatever thing you had scheduled to keep you busy.
You gotta treat it at the source, the thoughts in your head.
Tools
Tools
Once you have the knowledge, you’re going to need some tools. Every recovery program has tools, so there are plenty to choose from. There’s no one tool that works for everyone, so you have to find YOUR tools.
I say tools plural because you may need more than one. You might have a tool for urges and another tool for guilt and shame after a relapse.
Finding your tools is part of the process, and you’ll trip and fall along the way to finding it. That’s perfectly normal. Relapses are part of recovery.
Reps
You’ve got the knowledge, you’ve got the tools, and now it’s time to get some reps using both of those things.
You got wired on porn by watching it repeatedly. To get unwired, you need to not watch it (or choose something else) repeatedly.
You’ll know it’s all working when you start getting results.
It’s not about being perfect and not being perfect is not a sign that it’s not working.
Relapses are part of recovery.
Relapses are tools themselves because they show us what we need to work on.
When you’re not making progress, look at which area needs firming up: knowledge, tools, or reps and tweak it.
