Defeating the Me Monster

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For me, addiction recovery is like sharing my life with another 'me' - a different 'self'. I've recently studied a little about an approach to therapy called Internal Family Systems (IFS) which has me picturing my life being shared with many 'selves' which have developed throughout my life.

In this writing, though, I keep it simple and refer to just one other self as the "Me Monster". I'm borrowing the term from a very funny bit by comedian Brian Regan about a 'Me Monster' that takes over conversations with stories that one-up everyone else's.

Over the past several months I've had some success at eating less and moving more. This morning, however, the Me Monster drug me over to the pantry and ate some toffee that I didn't expect to see there. He said no one was looking, that I deserved it, that it was just a little, that it wouldn't hurt and that I was bored and needed it to feel okay. He made a good case and I didn't stop him. I regretted it as soon as I'd eaten it so he ate some more. Now I'm white-knuckling it and staying out of the kitchen.

This rings a bell for me. Like many others, I've 'permanently quit' viewing pornography more times than I want to think about. But the Me Monster has a way of wrecking those plans. For decades I fought him unsuccessfully with goal setting, discipline, will power, scripture study, prayer and religious obedience. At times I've shaken a fist at the heavens in anger and fear of the Me Monster's power to persevere. Nothing has been more frustrating. When fighting the Me Monster inevitably resulted in fatigue, I would give up and he would throw a party. I have to say, the respite was nice - but I couldn't live like that - it's a train wreck - and so I always crawled back into the fight.

From my experience in the recovery community, it seems that there are two approaches to the fight that can work long-term. First, scientifically, the Me Monster is a series of neural pathways that can be re-forged into healthy pathways through therapy and practice. Second, fully surrendering to God in the belief that if He can make a blind man see, he can defeat a Me Monster (example of a practice: 30 Days to Resilient). This second approach is the one championed by churches and 12 Step programs (let go and let God), but isn’t dependent on them.

These approaches can be followed independently or in conjunction with each other. They both have much in common: both approaches embrace brutal, painful honesty, they both often involve confronting wounds and trauma, and both include engagement with groups of other people fighting a similar fight.

I've benefited from both approaches, but my best success has been found in the second. After a long, exhausting fight with my Me Monster and after he'd nearly wrecked my life, I managed to surrender enough space to God for Him to work a miracle. The song "The In Between" by Matt Maher reminds me of my experience. I rolled into a holy collision and rolled out a free man - no longer a slave to pornography.

What now?

  • Give up! If what you’re doing isn’t working, stop fighting with tools that don't work and chose an approach (or both) that work and commit to it

  • Embrace honesty and confront wounds and trauma

  • Engage with others fighting a similar fight

  • Surrender enough space to God for a possible miracle

By Ty, Writing Team

A Fresh View

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Growing up in a religious community, there was much talk about sin and repentance, and it didn’t sound like fun. Well, maybe the sinning part, but certainly not the repentance.

If I didn’t repent there was an Eternity in Hell…or something like that. It felt heavy and difficult, and the last thing I wanted to do was to tell someone else about my “secret” life with sexual abuse and pornography.

I was introduced to pornography at the age of eleven, about the same time I was being sexually abused by my Assistant Scoutmaster. As I became hooked on porn and masturbation, I knew I couldn’t tell my mom and certainly not my church leaders. After all, I held various leadership positions in my youth group and in Scouts I was a Senior Patrol Leader. I was good at checking the boxes. So, the idea of honesty, confession, and repentance wasn’t a consideration…

This belief and attitude stayed with me for the next fifty years, until I hit my rock bottom and spent ninety days in a rehab facility in St. George, Utah. It was there that I was able to finally understand that repentance is just change, and really is just a willingness to change.

Repentance is often defined as ”a fresh view about God, about oneself, and about the world” It comes to mean a turning of the heart and will to God. In rehab, I learned the freedom that comes with finally unloading all of my garbage on God, of being brutally honest with myself, Him, and other people. It was incredible!

And the more people I shared with, the lighter that load became. I learned that Christ’s invitation to “take my yoke upon you” really works! And I discovered this amazing thing we call Grace! As Adam Miller says, “Grace is not God’s backup plan.” It is THE plan, and has always been THE plan.

I also learned and experienced what Bob Goff says…”I used to think there were some prisons you couldn’t escape from, but I know there’s no place I can go where God can’t rescue me.” I know that too!

I love Isaiah, chapter 1, verses 16 and 17 from “The Message” Bible: “Go home and wash up. Clean up your act. Sweep your lives clean of your evildoings so I don’t have to look at them any longer. Say no to wrong. Learn to do good. Work for justice. Help the down and out. Stand up for the homeless. Go to bat for the defenseless.”

And then…verse 18 from the King James Version: “Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord: Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

This could not be more clear to me. I needed to get my stuff together, straighten out my life, get it back on course, repent, do the necessary work, change my heart and my intention, and then…God will forget everything I have done. All of it! I have experienced a restoration of many things I did not think possible within my Church and marriage. Bottom line…it’s been forgotten.

If I do the work, if I’m willing, and if I just don’t give up along the path, someday I’ll have a conversation with Jesus. And when I mention some of my worst stuff, He may say something like, “I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I don’t remember that.” And then He might say, “What did you learn along the way?” And that’s repentance. That’s a change of not just behavior but of heart. That’s real joy…

What next?

  • If you haven’t been, be honest with yourself, your spiritual leader, and then your spouse, parents, or someone who loves you. Don’t hold back…get the poison out. Seek forgiveness.

  • Let go of the shame. God is not ashamed of you or anything you have done. He just loves you and is always inviting you to change. Just be willing.

  • Do the hard work of recovery. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. Find a Band of Brothers to share and grow with. And as Phillip Yancey says, “Choose to live in the Grace of the day.”

By Chris, Guest Writer

Changing Directions

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My family and I took an impromptu vacation to Southern California to, in part, escape the lingering summer heat of Southern Arizona, but also to connect with family and take the kids to amusement parks.

This morning we visited a nearby Japanese Garden. There, I noticed much symmetry but the lack of straight lines. My wife explained that during a previous visit they had a guide who shared that the tradition is that evil only goes in straight lines. And if we didn’t believe in that to consider that in life when we get stuck, we should zig-zag our behavior and path.

I’ve thought a lot about traditions and religious pursuits. They don’t always have a positive effect on my life. For example, a false tradition I was brought up with is that God is all knowing and all seeing, and cannot tolerate imperfections. This led to a false belief that all things I do wrong disappoint God and thus remove me from Him.

To move forward in recovery, I had to abandon this tradition. I know and accept that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, and that He does all things through Love. He knows this is an imperfect world and that this is the only place where I can learn and grow and develop to be more like Him. In sickness and pain, I learn the serenity of peace and well-being. In trials and tears I learn the magnificence of mourning with others and extending to them the same love that I’ve either been a recipient of previously or by being present for others in their time of need.

I was stuck for many years in rinse-and-repeat recovery. Swearing it off, confessing to a church leader and promising to sin no more … only to be right back at the beginning. I added 12-step meetings and they did a lot to help me see outside of myself, but I was still stuck, although at a higher level and my relapses were not as long or to the level of degradation of the past. I added in therapy and that helped.

I often found myself going back to what had worked previously expecting the same level of fullness as before. But what I am learning now is that God likes variety and surprises - contrasting the beauty of the desert and cacti of all varieties to the stark differences in lush greenery of the Japanese garden today.

A missing component for me was the connection to people. And in order to get there, I had to first accept that God is Love. Complete, total, unconditional Love. That speaks peace to my soul and then I feel worthy of being loved. And in that worthiness, I can give love to others.

God is a God of Mystery. He likes variety. He likes to do things differently. Each recorded time Jesus healed a blind person was different and tailored to the belief and experience of the person requesting the miracle. From spitting in the dirt to pronouncing clean.

Peter - my namesake - also had to learn this lesson. Christ often used fish - either the catching of so many that it broke his nets and almost sunk his boats, or instructing Peter to catch but one fish to find the exact amount needed to pay their tribute to Caesar and move on with life. Exactly what was needed at the time was provided, but in a different way.

As I contemplate my many spiritual experiences I can see where I was stuck for decades. I kept doing the same thing over and over again but expected a different outcome. Or I would do something that worked before and expect it to work exactly the same way again.

As I see the patterns of recovery, there are similarities - reaching out to others almost always puts me in a much better place - but that each encounter is different. Each person - or the same person on a different day - is slightly different. And in that difference my mind is awakened and I see things differently.

What next?

  • Reach out!!! Now. Whatever name pops first into your mind, just reach out and keep going until someone picks up the phone. Go to lunch or early breakfast before work.

  • Work out, walk, do something creative like start painting, or taking photos, or journaling, or whatever. If you think you “should” be writing in a journal or reading your scriptures but haven’t for years, you can start … or maybe your spirit is telling you that isn’t for you right now but find something that is! For Chris on our team God is most accessible in the mountains. For me it is by the water - and a view of the mountains amplifies it. Find out what it is for you and start doing it!

By Pete, Writing Team