Shame is a prime force in perpetuating addiction. We have already discussed how shame is the single-most powerful belief that drives us to addictive behavior (see chapter 7). In this chapter, we want to take a look at some specific tactics we can use to take shame out of the equation and short-circuit the addiction cycle. Let’s begin by taking a look at a typical scenario for a recovering addict:
1. You see a person, an ad, a magazine cover, et cetera, and have a lustful thought, indulge in an inappropriate sexual fantasy, or go on a binge with pornography.
2. You immediately regret these thoughts and actions and feel ashamed for what you have done or the thoughts that you had.
3. You think that you must be a horrible person for engaging in such activity involving pornography, or perhaps thoughts about your neighbor’s wife, or a co-worker, or even worse, an under-aged girl (fill in the blank here with your own flavor of sexual temptation).
4. You feel hopeless of ever getting to the point of never having another lustful thought, using pornography, or having illicit sexual fantasies ever again. An inner voice whispers to you that you are obviously an incorrigible human being who is destined for failure, and your recovery program isn’t working (more shame-inducing self-talk).
5. Unknown to you, the festering shame you now feel plants the seeds for acting out again with your addictive agent (i.e. pornography) in order to temporarily generate feelings of love/acceptance/happiness so that you can avoid the intense feelings of shame and inadequateness.
6. Wash, rinse, and repeat, beginning with step #1.
Sound familiar? Probably everyone who has ever attempted to get free from an addiction to pornography has experienced something similar to the scenario I have just described. This is often referred to as the ‘shame cycle’ in recovery circles. I have faced scenarios similar to this time and time again on my own journey of recovery. It wasn’t until I finally began to examine and change the way that I think about the shame cycle that I began to make significant progress in stopping the thought processes that fueled my addiction for so many years.
In the scenario above we see a thought pattern emerging which I find common among addicts. The pattern is something like this: when I think/desire/do something bad, then I perceive that I am bad. Since feeling that you are bad or unlovable and are unworthy of being loved is the very definition of shame, you can see why this is a thought process that needs to be changed.
I have found a great deal of success in my recovery by using the following two approaches to change my own shame-based thought process. First, I began changing the way I think about the thoughts and desires that pop into my head. I began to consider where they come from, and what these thoughts and desires tell me about the state of my sobriety/recovery. Secondly, I began changing the way I think about the source of my true value and worth as an individual. The combination of these two changes has been a power aide to the recovery process in my life.
The following story will help illustrate one of the changes I made in how I think. A young Native American boy came to an elder in his tribe one day with a question. “I know the difference between right and wrong, but I often do the wrong thing. How can I stop doing the wrong things?” The elder responded with this analogy: “In your spirit are two dogs, one is good, and one is evil. These two dogs fight inside of you whenever you are faced with a decision between good and evil. The one who wins will determine which path you choose to take.” The wise old elder sat back and waited for the young boy to ponder his story. It wasn’t long before the boy had another question. “But how do you tell which of the two dogs will win?” The old man replied, “Whichever one you feed.”
This story has some interesting implications. The one I want to focus on is how the elder presented the nature of the internal struggle that we all have. He presented the spirit of a human being as having two distinct elements, good and evil. In my old thought process, I often judged myself as if all of my thoughts and desires were coming from the same place. I call this the ‘monolithic me’ viewpoint. If my thoughts and desires were evil or bad at any point and time, then my perception was that I was somehow bad, evil, or broken as a whole. After all, how could some of these horrible thoughts and desires come from within someone who was successfully on the road to recovery and changing for the better?
As my recovery progressed, I started thinking of my inner struggle more like the old man did in the story above – as having a duel nature. One-half of my nature produced these evil or destructive desires and thoughts, and the other half of my nature produced the good or beneficial desires and thoughts. By learning to view myself in this way, it became easier for me to focus on moving forward instead of getting bogged down with feelings of shame. When sexually immoral thoughts or desires came along, I no longer jumped to the conclusion that I was a bad, unlovable person who was unworthy of love. Instead, I acknowledged those thoughts and desires were coming from that evil nature within me – a nature which I was actively working to resist. I still had the good nature within me – the side of me that wanted to do what was right and resist the evil nature’s impulses and desires. By viewing my thoughts and desires this way, I could focus on how to reduce or eliminate these unwanted and destructive thoughts and desires without believing I was a horrible person simply for having them in the first place.
But this change was only part of the equation. At the same time, I was learning to change the way that I thought about my value and worth. Shame is, after all, a misconception about the true source of our value and worth. Shame occurs when we determine our value and worth from our performance. But our performance, either good or bad, is not where our true value and worth come from. Our true value and worth come from the Creator. He created each of us with unique, immutable, and intrinsic value and worth that cannot be diminished by our performance, or lack thereof. Nothing we do can change our true value and worth. Truth be told, Hitler had just as much worth and value as a human being as Mother Theresa had. Now, I know many of you just cringed, but it’s the truth. The fact that your mind wants to immediately reject this claim illustrates that there is a part of our human nature that seeks to define a person’s value and worth by their performance, or their actions. Understand that I am not saying that the effects of the actions of Hitler and Mother Theresa produced equally valuable benefits for the human race. Understanding the difference between the value of a person and the value of the results of their actions is key to this second piece of the puzzle.
It can help to understand this concept if you look at it from the perspective of a parent with two very different children. Every parent who has had more than one child can identify with what I am describing. As a parent, you love your kids. You would jump in front of a car to save their lives if necessary. But you also know that during their lifetimes, you enjoy certain children more than others at different times. You may have one child (child A) who always cleans their room, makes good grades in school, and never gets into trouble. You may have another child (child B) whose room smells like a pig sty, who is failing every subject because they don’t even try, and who is constantly getting into trouble. You will certainly enjoy the process of living with child A more than living with child B at that point in their lives. However, you would still give your life to save either of them. That is to say, you value or love them both the same regardless of their performance.
As humans, we aren’t perfect, and therefore the above example may produce some skepticism. As a human parent in the above scenario, you may not love both child A and child B the same – we aren’t perfect after all. But the Creator Who made each of us is a perfect parent, and He is somehow able to pull it off. You see, God loves each of us the same. He loves and values you, me, Hitler, and Mother Theresa the same, even as at the same time He is not equally pleased with the choices we may or may not make in the course of our lives. The more you internalize this truth, the more you will be able to detach your value and worth from your thoughts, desires, and actions, and begin to focus on making positive changes instead of getting waylaid by tormenting thoughts and attitudes about your value and worth as a human being.
By learning to think of myself as having a dual nature and believing that my true value and worth as an individual is not dependent upon my thoughts, desires, or actions, I have been able to significantly and continually reduce the presence and effects of toxic shame in my life. Fighting the negative effects of shame takes a great deal of energy. However, with shame becoming an increasingly smaller factor in my life, I have been able to focus more of my energy on reducing destructive thoughts and desires, and on finding effective strategies and disciplines to feed the good desires and thoughts. This process has led to an increase in beneficial actions and behaviors (i.e., greater freedom from addiction to pornography).
Up to this point in the chapter, I have been keeping my references to our Higher Power very generic. I chose to do this because I realize that not everyone reading this book has the same religious beliefs that I do, and I want to respect that. However, I think it would be disingenuous of me to omit the fact that an integral part of my journey to understanding these truths came directly from my religious experience as a follower of Jesus Christ. Toward that end, I would like to share the following excerpt from the Bible that encapsulates several of the points I have made in this chapter that I think you will find helpful. The Bible records the following exchange between a man named Nicodemus, and Jesus (John 3:3-6;16 NASB translation of the Bible):
Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”
Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
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“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life."
I am not suggesting that a person can only be free from an addiction to pornography if they become a Christian. However, the passage above does describe the points I am trying to make very succinctly. In the Christian paradigm, this ‘new us’, or the part of us that is ‘born of the Spirit’, has only good desires and thoughts, and the ‘old us’, or that part of us that is ‘born of the flesh’, generates bad thoughts and desires. Until we are reunited with God in the next life, we still have the ‘old us’ to contend with. The old and the new continue to exist inside of us, vying for control of our lives. Our minds perceive thoughts that originate from both sides of us, the good and the bad. The course of our lives is directed by which thoughts we choose to act on.
The second observation about this passage that I would make speaks directly to our value and worth. Jesus is saying that God loves us all the same. God sent His son Jesus to help save us all from our evil or bad natures because he valued us all equally. God’s love for us is not based upon our performance, but is rather based upon our status as sons and daughters of God.
Conclusion:
Shame is toxic and can sabotage our best efforts to get free from an addiction to pornography. In this chapter we have discussed two powerful techniques for getting rid of toxic shame that both involve changing the way we choose to think about a) our thoughts, desires, and actions, and b) what the source of our true value and worth as individuals is. By learning to view our inner struggles with both good and bad thoughts and desires as part of our dual nature and not as an all-or-nothing statement on our value as a person in any given moment, we can focus on positive change rather than on an unproductive battle for self-worth. In tandem with this viewpoint, we can choose to believe the truth that our intrinsic value and worth is an immutable truth established by God rather than a fluctuating gauge that depends on our current performance. Together, these changes can sap the power from toxic shame and push us one giant step closer to freedom from addiction to pornography.