One of the biggest gifts I have received from SLAA is that it has made me far more humane and understanding of people than I was before. I could be so judgmental and harsh that I shudder to think about it now. But sitting in the meetings and listening to people from all walks of lives, of all different ages and levels of income and education, talk with absolute honesty about their struggles and efforts to get better and help themselves...it is extraordinarily humbling.
Sometimes though, it can happen that someone's share makes me uncomfortable, or it feels so removed from my own experience that it is hard to find common ground. But this is quite rare. It's usually not about differinces in how we act out - there is quite a big spectrum of sex and love addiction related behaviour found in the fellowship. For some people acting out means completely avoiding romantic or sexual relationships, while others find they cannot stop.
But I have found that in SLAA the strength of the common experiences means that such differences rarely matter. I have found deep identification with people whose acting out takes a totally different form to mine, but I recognised myself in their descriptions of what drove them, how it made them feel and impacted their lives.
In the instances where I feel I disagree with someone or just cannot relate, I remember one of the mottos of SLAA, which is to "take what you like and leave the rest". This works well. Everyone has a right to be in those rooms and if I don't identify with someone, then this is my problem, not theirs.
However, I have found that I don't get as much identification as I would like on issues around relationship abuse. Of course there are women and men in the fellowship with similar experiences, and I have really been profoundly inspired and moved by some who shared. But I often feel quite alone with it at meetings. I am not sure why that is exactly.
People also differ on how they conceive of their sex and love addiction. My views on this has changed considerably in the last year, but one take I never subscribed to was the idea that this is a "disease". For me, this term gives it too much power and also makes it something we cannot get better from. I don't totally disagree with this.
It is often said in the rooms that even after years of recovery, much of the painful stuff doesn't go away - you just learn to cope with it better. We lead better lives, stop acting out because we apply we have so many more tools and experience to cope.
But I just don't see myself as diseased. I feel parts of me are damaged, wounded, and that slowly, slowly, I will be able to heal them. It will take a long time and much "work" (or as little as possible?) but I feel I can see a path ahead.
Having said that, I understand that for some the idea of their sex and love addiction is a disease can be helpful. The term contains everything the addiction entails, bundles all the dysfunction together, perhaps making it more manageable. I can see how it could also seem like a curse though, inescapable, a sentence. This I don't want for myself.
Of course some also use the term in its literal meaning "dis-ease" - I think (?) to say that sex and love addiction is the main cause of their struggles.
I have even begun to question the term addiction in this context. I certainly exhibited addictive and compulsive behaviour in the past, but that was a long time ago. I am starting to think that addiction/compulsion is a symptom of the whole, not the whole itself. I have other symptoms too, eg being manipulative or needy.
Anyway. I am glad I wrote about this subject, it's been bothering me for a while!
No comments:
Post a Comment