Part One.
Remember, None of this is offered as an Excuse. It is Preventive Medicine Instead.
After more than six and a half years of sobriety, when I look back on my decades of acting out which progressively got worse, more extreme, riskier, as addicton does, there is still a part of me that is just dumb-founded, as shocked in some ways as those family and friends who did not know about the depths of my secret acts and addiction until it made headlines.
Maybe there will always be that gap, no matter how many times I revisit and explore it in therapy and with first step narratives that link the “what I was like then with what I am like now.” Sanity looking back on insanity.
But it is good to keep putting this part of my life into broader perspective so that it doesn’t grow inwardly to being all of my life. And it helps me pinpoint red flags that I hope are useful for others dealing with addictions or addicts or compulsives or people who have lost themselves one way or another, or are in danger of doing so. Anyone who feels trapped, even those who may "know" what is wrong or missing in their life but are stuck in "I can't change." Remember: our "best thinking" got us here.
To make sense of what follows, first a review of the Circles Method of Recognizing
Problematic Behavior and Their Triggers and How To Avoid the Triggers and Live in
Recovery. (See The Brief Overview by Re March 2 2023 for more about the 3 circles) Because not setting these boundaries is the root of the How Could I have done what I did? And of the now: How Can I Keep On Living Differently?
Our forbidden actions that carry the most dire consequences to life and relationships we place in our Inner Circle, (the bulls eye) the Red Circle or Zone, the addictive acts which led our life to hit bottom, sometimes catastrophically. What is placed in the Middle Circle or Yellow Circle are the Particular Stresses and Triggers and Actions that left unchecked will lead to Inner Circle behavior. (Yellow because like a yellow stoplight these are signals that we must pay attention, slow down, stop before we run a red light and kill ourselves or others). The Middle Circle holds the answers to the question of How Could I. How could I have crossed the bounds of decency, my own values, and of laws? These are often life-long issues of character and of being stuck in adolescence and also of addictive behaviors like workaholism that early on may have had positive rather than negative consequences but because of that become all the more seductive. Or likewise with nicotine or gambling or eating or alcohol, depending on the person, they are seen as normal acceptable escapes. Until they aren’t.
The answers to How Can I Avoid the Inner and Middle Circle and Keep Living in Recovery and Sobriety are wrapped up in what are called my Outer Circle of Sanity and Health, sometimes called the Green Circle of Growth. These aspects of my life, e.g. full and regular sleep or therapy, are the very ones that were missing or minimized during my addiction.
An Important Note: What we place in our middle and outer circles might (will probably) change over time with our own clarity and with growing sobriety and changing contexts in our lives. To a lesser degree this is also sometimes true of even the Inner Circle, our Red Zone. Perhaps infidelities, for example, were once a pressing concern and struggle and you then had to draw strict boundaries over interactions such as simply being around those you would be attracted to in order to help prevent infidelities, a behavior you had placed in your inner circle. But with decades of sobriety and trust in avoiding infidelity, it is not as difficult a struggle so you move being around those you are attracted to into the middle circle. Likewise some other behavior may have become more urgent and destructive in your life, such as porn or alcohol or substances that loosen inhibitions and they need to get the Inner Circle focus now, whereas earlier they did not.
The nature of our relationships might affect these decisions of what goes in what circle. And with relapses or being new in recovery we find we need to include things in the Inner Circle that were probably once in our Middle Circle. An example for sex addicts might be “euphoric recall”, where we let full blown fantasies occur in our minds. They are to be avoided, but early on or after relapse they might be such quick triggers that they need to be moved to the Inner Circle and become themselves violations of our sobriety. We are always wary of backtracking but over time our focus of recovery becomes more stable. With deeper self-understanding and years of abstinence, the middle circle grows larger while the inner circle contains the most consequential behaviors. Also, what are known as "integrity behaviors" might shift between inner and middle circles. For example, nicotine use or eating habits, especially if hidden, might need to be in the inner circle from time to time even if by themselves they are not part of the addiction that led you into recovery if stresses and temptations have been growing and these actions signal "addiction transfers" are opening gates to potential relapse.
So, here below in this post's part two and three is what my Middle and Outer Circles now have taught me about what I needed to avoid, and what I needed to embrace, that I didn’t. It is about how addiction grows right in front of our face and we don’t see it for what it is until it is too late. It is about the need for intervening whenever these red flags start waving. Even for those who do not identify as an addict or compulsive, I hope you find value in how these fairly common traits and struggles can end up stoking harmful behavior that you might engage in, things of which you now can never dream you would be capable.
Part Two. The Red Flags of the Middle or Yellow Circle.
This is where I went wrong, and what I still have to guard against. These are both particular to me and I believe are pretty universal in nature. They might be yours too.
1. Paradox of Feeling Inadequate and Feeling Too Self-Important.
I have always had a default setting of living in the paradox of feeling inadequate, of feeling I
was not enough in and of my very self, and that I never had enough in my life to be fulfilled, that I was starting life from the back of the pack and didn’t, or still don’t, have the attention and support I “deserved,” AND AT THE SAME TIME I have had the feeling of a bloated self-
importance, a specialness or destiny to my life “out there” somewhere to be achieved,
waiting just for me, a sense of that “terminal uniqueness” that I could take risks others shouldn’t, that I could skip corners and everything would turn out all right in the end. (Others can end up where I am with the complete opposite feelings.)
This is deadly because it keeps putting the focus on me. Isn’t that what my life is supposed to all be about? No. How did this attitude come about in my life? It has too many roots in the familial, societal, genetic, cultural, spiritual to get into here. The emphasis here is on recognizing the symptom. I find the antidote to this trigger in daily reminders that I am enough and have enough and life is a gift and all of this is true even now with so much loss, and also in shifting my focus and life to the natural and spiritual world of which I am a part, to my family whether they are in my life or not at the moment. And I get over myself, this small false sense of myself, by going to meetings.
2. Feeling Entitled to Indulgence
Closely Connected to the First but for addicts worthy of separate attention is when I Feel
Entitled to Indulgences and Need for Attention and Validation by Others.
In my addiction when I didn’t feel I was getting the attention and validation I sought, then my desire for an indulgence was sparked. It is not just a FOMO fear of missing out but that others are missing out on me. Social media has ramped up this response. This felt need to indulge oneself can be triggered by many different things. It can, like most of these feelings, be natural and can be handled by some with ease. There are healthy small indulgences coming from our outer healthy green circle of growth that are good to have in our life. But for one prone to extremes, it is vital to keep track of how often these “wants” are treated as “needs” and how often we indulge in them and how they can grow and engulf us and become “the bubbles” in which our addictions take over.
The antidote for me is to not keep them as a secret, but share with others whenever these feelings of entitlement arise. They are good fodder for shares at meetings, with sponsor or others in the program, with therapist. They can be success stories. But they are red flags whenever someone is being driven to indulgences, to “hits” small or large. What does someone do, indulge in, to an extreme to manage their stress? There may be secret private things others don’t know about, yet, but there are probably things already out there in public that are causing some disruptions in relationships and work. These are their “tells.” Addiction transfers might fall into the category of harm reduction temporarily, but they are red flags nevertheless. Some of mine will be visited below.
3. Over-Extending Myself. Workaholism. Taking on too many volunteer projects.
Over-functioning. Not Sleeping Fully. Keeping myself hyper-stimulated. Eating
Poorly. Too much screen time and non-specific web browsing. Objectifying Myself
and Others.
These were all public signs of my then secret addiction (except for the sexual objectification of others which over time I mostly had kept confined to secret private behavior and not overt public expressions). And they all were the unhealthy responses in themselves to the emotionally struggling life described in the numbers 1 and 2 elements above. Why did I overextend? Because I felt inadequate and unworthy and my brain needed the rush it got from deadlines and emergencies. In return these all led to the burnout that led deeper into addiction. As such these Middle Circle feelings were just as much a part of my reasons for addictive acting out during the same time as were all those mentioned above. These all fed into and from each other.
Each of these public red flags are where I could have begun to address my addiction. They
are ones that would have benefitted from therapy, 12 step and sponsor work. Anything that
would have disrupted my routines and treadmill I felt myself trapped on. But they are the ones that garnered me the rewards I was also seeking. The successes I received publicly were driven by my sense of inner and private failure as I tried to over-compensate for my addiction and shame, BUT the successes were also what helped keep me on the treadmill of stresses and triggers that itself kept me turning to my secret and sick behaviors. This personal system or dynamic of my life led to heart attacks and then to criminal arrest. This was the insanity that kept me from seeing how insane I was acting, all in the full awareness that what I was doing was wrong. My belief back then that I could change, that I could be helped, was infinitely small. I both didn’t know about any recovery group in my area that could help, and to a large degree I didn’t want to know. I wanted desperately to stop, to be stopped, but didn’t want to stop. I had been in therapy off and on but it hadn’t gone deep and I didn’t want it to go deep. I did so much in my life on my own volition, and was rewarded for it, that I felt only me by myself alone could handle the addiction and yet my frequent attempts at white-knuckling had been futile. So if I couldn’t manage fixing myself, I felt I could manage not getting caught, could manage to keep carrying the burden by myself to the grave if need be while at the same time the addictions and the outward signs of its addiction transfers and red flags mentioned here were all growing worse and culminating inevitably in exposure.
4. Conflict and Intimacy Avoidance. Being Emotionally Distant. Being Uncomfortable
with Being Bored and with Being Uncomfortable. Feeling Easily Overwhelmed and
Defensive.
All of these are responses also that grew out of my personal sense of fear, imposter syndrome, and an ego that was both too fragile and too much overblown. They are about lacking the courage to be emotionally vulnerable. They were also more entry points into The Bubble of addiction which was always waiting to offer its form of self-soothing and self-medication so I could avoid the risks of real relationships based on rigorous honesty and transparency. The more you have to hide, and the more practice you have at hiding, the quicker you will be at turning to these reactions that offer convenience and fleeting comfort. They become the default for how to get through the day, and the days turn into years. Each of these are the fuel that drives all of the public red flags of secret addictions, and the addiction makes sure that the tank for these kinds of fuel are always full.
5. Unprocessed Emotions especially Grief, Guilt, Shame, Fear, Anger, Resentment and
Self-Pity.
The particular emotions which need to be processed ARE not as important as the fact that when I am not processing emotions with others and/or by myself if necessary then I am keeping secrets again even from myself. This time it is secret feelings themselves. And we are only as sick as our secrets, which includes feelings as well as behaviors or events. Unprocessed emotions back up in our minds and clog our thinking. This itself helps to create our “stinking thinking.” We live too much in our heads anyway, in our private personal space inside us, a place that is its own kind of Bubble, where we can create our own sense of reality, act out our own dramas and create the faked endings we desire.
Our real minds are so much more than just what we think and feel. They are in fact connected to others and to nature and all around and beyond us, the way a tree is much more than an isolated tree, but is always a part of an ecological system. So too if we don’t regularly process our emotions and in so doing help keep our minds in a healthy open system then we get stuck in our inner and middle circle living and our minds will become warped out of their inherent potential and instead become something like our own virtual reality headsets, our own online artificially created worlds, cut off from what they need to survive.
Processing emotions is our first line of defense that will keep all of these other red flag actions and attitudes from turning into our actions that can destroy ourselves and others. When we aren’t FACING EMOTIONS by doing this we are putting everything and everyone connected to us at risk.
Part Three. Seeing The Light AND Feeling The Heat. The Way Forward in the Outer or
Green Circle of Life.
Underlying all of this was the brain chemistry that gave me the rewards from the addictive acting out both in the secret ways of getting dopamine hits and in all the very public red flag ways of getting the hits as I was pushing everything in my life to the furthermost limits. This is brain chemistry that had been kicking in, in ever extreme dimensions, from these secret and public acts since the time I was ten years old. It is brain chemistry that over time turns all the red flags into the consequences they were warning of or leading to. Red flags that say Stop become green flags that say GO, or white flags that say I surrender to my Addiction, or checkered flags that say the race is on to how fast you can hit bottom.
How could a 62 year old man still be doing what I was doing before entering recovery? Because that 62 year old man was still in many internal ways the 10 year old boy. I only grew up in 12 step meetings, therapy sessions, prison, and a marriage that finally got real. I hadn’t at home, in school, in church, at several universities, at work, in seminary, or from the limelight shone upon me. It took seeing the light from within and feeling the heat of the consequences, from fearing that even as bad as it did get that it could get worse, and from the love I felt from the Greater Power of my understanding that now comes to me in and through different lens and people and encounters. This is how and why I could do what I did, and why I don’t anymore.
Here is my Outer Circle of Healthy Practices, designed to keep me out of my red flag life
outlined above.
Sleep. First and foremost on the list. For the mind to change, the brain has to be in good shape. It can’t be in good shape without adequate, full and regular sleep. Putting this natural boundary on ourselves is required. It is resistance to a culture that seeks to use us up. A high-functioning addict (or compulsive) thinks they can manage without sleep, but the body will sabotage the mind in order to bring balance back into a life. Without sleep, the brain will feed the mind junk food and the mind won’t be able to see what it is doing to itself.
Without sleep, the mind cannot begin to answer the deeper, truly important questions of one’s life, as opposed to the false sense of urgency questions that try to trap us. Questions like: What are we getting out of our behavior now, especially the behavior we tell ourselves we know we shouldn’t be doing, the behavior that is filling in for the healthy behavior we know we need to be focused on, like sleep, like therapy, like the other things on this outer circle list. Questions like what is the pain we are avoiding to the extent that our seeking to avoid it is going to cause even more pain to ourselves and those whom we love and those who depend on us at work or in the community? It begins in the very basic biological fact of life that marked our life at the outset. Sleep and Rest. Sleep and its inherent vulnerability with echoes back into our ancient history of danger; and the danger of nightmares that come with vulnerability too, but nightmares waiting to be lessons. Sleep and Living in a sense of the Finite that comes from knowing we must stop our striving each day in order to open our minds up to true thriving.
The other practices: All are designed to remind me daily that I am not alone, that my life is not fixed and fated by my past, that I can be at peace, have a purpose in life, and find deeper perspective and meaning than I used to. They include: Being Present in the Moment and Not Future-Tripping or Sinking into Past Shame and Regrets. Being in Nature. Being with Loved Ones and Checking in Emotionally With Them. Being in Groups for Recovery and
working the steps. Being in Therapy. Being Sexually Healthy and Caring and Conscious of
My Body. Being Creative, Curious and Grateful (for me being a reader, writer, and Being
Focused on a Spiritual Life and with a Spiritual Community). Setting Boundaries with
Monitored Devices, Polygraphs. Being Self-Assertive and Setting Boundaries with People
as Needed as Well, seeing Conflict in Healthy Ways. And Helping Others.
In all of these, as in recovery, it is Progress Not Perfection. In all of these then it is no longer
“How Could I?” but now “How Can I?”