Q&A - What does a willing heart look like for a sexual addict?

Hosts Tara McCausland and Justin B discuss what a willing heart, the central piece of the S.A. Lifeline Recovery Puzzle, looks like for a sexual addict. Justin describes the need for admission of addictive behavior as an important starting point and then an open-mindedness to new things in the recovery journey such as attending a 12-Step meeting. 

Transcript

Q&A - What does a willing heart look like for a sexual addict?

[00:00:00] Hey, before we get started, I wanted to share a couple of exciting pieces of news with you. First we have a brand new website up that has some really beautiful videos about sexual addiction and betrayal trauma. And we would love for you to go to SAlifeline.org and check it out. 

And secondly, we're very excited to announce that our registration for our 2023 annual SAlifeline conference is now live. So we invite you to once again to go to SAlifeline.org and click on events. There you will see an opportunity to register or view an agenda. Our theme for this year is “Come Heal With Us: A community focus on recovery from the effects of pornography, sexual addiction and betrayal trauma.” And we've got some great speakers, a great lineup. This will be held in Sandy, Utah, but if you can't make it in person, you can attend [00:01:00] online and still ask questions via a cool app called Whova. You can respond to feedback and survey forums and we hope that you'll join us for this great event. Come heal with us. Now to the episode.

Tara: Welcome to the Pathway to Recovery podcast. I am [00:02:00] Tara McCausland, and I have here with me my co-host, Justin B.

Justin: Hey Tara. Happy to be here today. 

Tara: Thanks for being here today on our Q&A. We are going to discuss the question, “What does a willing heart really look like for an addict?” and this is something that you can speak to from a very personal perspective, a personal stance. So what are your initial thoughts in response to that question?

Justin: First of all, the word in that question that I need to address initially is addict. You know, what does a willing heart really look like for the addict? If I'm not willing to recognize that I have an addiction, even if I'm not willing to address it as if I have an addiction, to say I'm an addict - if all the other things that I've tried haven't worked, maybe this is the only or the next easiest step. Even though it's a scary step, that's something I have to acknowledge. If not, [00:03:00] I'm going to be stuck. I won't have a willing heart. There are a couple of concepts in recovery about willingness that are vital, in my opinion, for recovery.

And there are many 12 step groups that actually call themselves HOW groups: honesty, open-mindedness, willingness. And those are three essential pieces. In fact, I'm going to read a couple of paragraphs of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is on page 568. It's in Appendix Two entitled “Spiritual Experience.”

But I'm going to just read a couple of these paragraphs here. “Most emphatically, we wish to say that any alcoholic, any addict capable of honestly facing his or her problems in the light of our experience, can recover, provided he does not close his mind to all spiritual concepts. To all concepts. He or she can only be defeated by an attitude of intolerance or belligerent denial. [00:04:00] Willingness, honesty and open-mindedness are essentials of recovery, but these are indispensable.”

So without willingness, honesty, and open-mindedness, recovery's not going to happen. Where I want to go with that, with the willing heart is, I've got to be willing to try something new. If someone out there is like me, whether you're an addict or whether you're the betrayed spouse of an addict who has tried everything, well, everything that they're willing to do, I need to be willing to do something else.

Because we've all heard the definition of insanity is trying the same things over and over and over again expecting a different result. 

Tara: You're spot on to talk about the admission of whether or not I want to identify as an addict, being willing to at least treat it like an addiction, as we've discussed in previous episodes. We're going to do different things if we treat it like an addiction [00:05:00] versus if we treat it like a bad habit. That's so critical. And once upon a time, in response to a question that someone had, “Do I have to always identify as an addict or is it really critical in order for me to identify that way?” you responded with, “How's that working for you?”

So just being mindful of, if the things that you have tried beforehand aren't working, why not humbly step into this different frame of mind? And if you don't want to identify or label it as an addiction, let's just treat it like an addiction. 

Justin: Yeah. How's that working for you? It's a pointed question and often doesn't come across from the person being asked very positively, but sometimes as a wake up call. You know I've tried everything in my life to not step into a 12 step room, to not admit powerlessness. I spent lots of money. I spent lots of time, I spent lots of resources and trying different [00:06:00] things that didn't work for me. And honestly, if I wasn't in the place of desperation going into the 12 step room, I may have treated it as just another, you know, therapy or self-help book or another prayer or reading of scripture or whatever.

But I had finally gotten to the point where I've already tried all those things. Well, it didn't come across immediately as, “Maybe I'll give this a shot,” until somebody pointed out to me, “Hey Justin, you just admitted something. You just admitted that you might be an addict, and that's the right thing to do. Now you're gonna have access to power greater than yourself.”

It takes me to the final paragraph of that section in the Big Book, and this is a quote from a guy named Herbert Spencer, and it's in the early 1900s in England. So it's a little bit tricky.

So I'm going to read it and then I'm going to try and interpret it in a way that sounds a little bit more 2023. [00:07:00] So the quote is, “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

So what he's saying here, what Herbert Spencer is saying here is, there's a prejudice, there's a barrier that's set up by somebody that is not ever defeatable. And that barrier is, if I am not willing to see something through a different point of view, if I'm not willing to consider something different. 

And I'm going to get specific here, that may ruffle a few feathers and would've ruffled my feathers 10 years ago big time, eight years ago, seven years ago, it would've ruffled my feathers. For me, religion was not the answer. I tried all the religion stuff. It was not the answer. But God is the answer. And I had to separate religion and God.[00:08:00] When I successfully did that, not only did my connection with God, with Him at my center, as we look at the circles models of SAL, when God is at my center all the other stuff starts falling into place. 

When I'm at my center or when my spouse is at my center or when anything else other than God is at my center, it starts getting fuzzy. It starts getting lots of white noise and cracking apart. But when God is at my center, I become a better, more faithful, more useful member of my faith tradition. Rather than trying to be a better member of my faith tradition, a better participant in it, connecting me to God. That is not how it works for me. I have to connect to God, and then I become the more faithful, have more adherence. 

More faithful, more adherence to my faith is not going to solve the problem. More connection with God, honesty, honest, open-minded, and willing connection with God, trying to do things differently than [00:09:00] I ever have was my solution so far. It's just working for me one day at a time still, hopefully will continue to. 

Tara: Which we appreciate. Well, and that will be a conversation for another day, but I love that you bring up that point that religiosity and spiritual connection with God and that relationship are not always synonymous. Often they are not. I have known some people in my lifetime who have been very religious, but have had no relationship with the God of their understanding. But they were very committed to their faith tradition in the sense that they went to Sabbath day services every week. And they did all the things, the outward things, but inwardly they were God hungry. There was a void because they weren't connecting in that personal way. 

Justin: And there is a scriptural reference that really I identify with and I can, looking back at things, I totally identify with - I was a whited sepulcher full of dead men's bones.

I looked the [00:10:00] part on the outside, but on the inside I was a disaster. So until I became open-minded to, “Hey, maybe this is a different way I need to approach my higher power. Maybe this is a different way I need to approach God and understand things differently.”

I did that with the, not the expectation, but the understanding that maybe this is going to lead me away down paths that I, in my life, I thought, “I can't go there.” But for me, it made me a stronger adherent to my faith after that happened. 

Tara: Well, and on a different point, I know that from the perspective of a loved one, we want the addict to get into that space where they have a willing heart, but we can't force that on anyone. And one of the things that I spoke to Eddie Capucci about in another episode, is that we mentioned that we can't want recovery more for our loved one than they want it for themselves. So what can we do to help [00:11:00] hopefully facilitate the addict getting to that point where there is a willingness and openness? That willing, soft heart, and I had brought up in that episode that we can pray. And this again comes back to that connection with the God of our understanding.

We can pray and ask for an interruption so that they can come to it themselves. And we cannot make the rock bottom. We can't create that ourselves. There are things that loved ones can do.

Boundaries are really critical for the betrayed loved one. And as I often hear, the only language that an addict understands is boundaries. So that is something that we can do that can be empowering. But the bottom line is, we cannot force anyone to change, and the willing heart must come of the addict's own volition.

Justin: Yeah, I think it was [00:12:00] a conversation with Rhyll Croshaw that I had, but she said something that really made a lot of sense to me in answering this question that you just brought up.

If I am the spouse of someone who is just flailing and not open, not willing to do the next thing that is necessary, yes, I can't create their rock bottom. Yes, I can pray for them to have that interruption, to do something different. But one of the more powerful things I could do if I'm in that position, is to get recovery for myself. To do things I wasn't willing to do otherwise beforehand, to connect with God in ways that I wasn't willing to do beforehand, because I thought I knew it all to get that light and light attracts light or light chases away darkness, whatever it is. And that will facilitate change as well, if not better than anything else.

Tara: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your thoughts today regarding, “What does a willing heart really look [00:13:00] like for an addict?” So to our listeners, we hope that was helpful. Thank you for being here with us. We'll see you next time. [00:14:00]