Recovery Nation

I've recently discovered another type of trigger, another form of stress. Mainly my stress comes down hard as stressful events come by, but I have experienced another today, tenseness. It was the collection of boredom, swinging emotions, and tiredness that caused this inner tenseness and a need to be relieved. I did not successfully dodge the urge, but I have learned. This tenseness was probably one of the original reasons for my acting out. I always felt tired after school, and acting out was relieving.

I concentrated on managing my emotions re-actively, and forgot about building up values. I'm still feeling somewhat stressed and I was contemplating suicide yesterday.

Hey Hurricane

Ok. Some scary thoughts are happening right now. Suicide is as serious as it comes, but I doubt there is a single person on the recovery side who hasnt thought about it at one point or another.

I know I have considered it. The idea that my problems are simply insurmountable. That it easier - cleaner - to believe that I will end rather than them. You are not alone in this.

Here are some serious questions to consider. Are you fantasising about sucide or really contemplating it? I have done both. There are times when it has been easier to contemplate my own death rather than deal wwith my problems. The fantasy of suicide is comforting. Also the idea that that will show them.

BUT. There are more serious feelings, linked to depression, isolation, helplessness. A desire for death – not a fantasy.

In which case, we all need some help. We need to break out of that isolation – those feelings of despair. The feeling that we have been abandoned and the world is conspiring against us.

I have read your recent posts – the feeling I have is you feel stuck (the mentions of boredom) and sad – the posts about you feelings for the girl.

These are central issues that recovery can help with. To frame your feelings and guide you through turbulent waters. Follow this metaphor. Your unstable emotions are stormy seas. Your values and aaction plans are like a life raft. You may not feel dry or safe, but in an emergency, they offer safety.

When we feel stress, pain or boredom, we need to see a way out – something beyond this. This is where you plans and values can help. They guide you – even when you feel down – towards a peaceful place. Think of another image – a plane landing in stormy weather. It can’t see safe ground, but it can see the lights on the runway.

There have been good threads about boredom recently. My own advice is refuse to be bored. Don’t let yourself drift. Importantly get away from danger zones like computers and games. Get in touch with real life. Trees, the streets, friends. Engage with the world.

The crush on the girl is more tricky. But again, think this through. There is turmoil, but don’t be too quick to see things in black and white – that she is deceiving you, and therefore your feelings are invalidated. We feel what we feel – but what is vital is that we understand these feelings, and don’t just pour scorn on them. Relationships are complicated. She may well be feeling many things all at once. She may well be confused.

But you can’t control that. Focus on placing your own feelings in a context. At the end of the day, a relationship is a communion between two people. You meet in the middle.

Some suggestions.

1. Ask for help. If the suicidal thoughts are really serious, please talk to a professional who can advise you. This is not something to be taken lightly. Contact Coach Cheryl here – she will listen and give you expert advice.

There is help available to you.

2 Read the post on boredom:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19686

3 Watch these videos about shame and vulnerability.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20147

4 Look at your values and plans.

5. Cut the computer time when you are bored. Engage with the world.

6. Find a peaceful place tto think over things right now. Write you feelings down. Understand them.

Take time right now. And don’t give up.

Shaw

HA,

I have skimmed through your thread and I have some real concerns. First and foremost you need to get some professional help for your depression. You are caught in this loop that you can't break because the depression is feeding your addiction and the addiction is feeding your depression. Add on top of that the pressures you put on yourself and those imposed by others and you have a real clashing of storms with nowhere to turn. Something has to give in order for you to move forward and the most important aspect is to get some relief from the depression so you can take some steps forward. Once you experience some progress and leveling out of emotions you will be in a better place to attempt recovery and management of your emotions and thoughts.

To give you an example. You are up to lesson 32 I think it was and you are not able to control any urges or make a break in your patterns. You act out almost everyday. This is not recovery. I know you want it. I can see that in your writing. But wanting it is not enough. You have to be proactive in making it happen by taking the first steps needed. I don't think you are able to do that because of your depression and that if you got help there first then you could start taking the steps to address your addiction. This doesn't mean you have failed it means that you are not equipped yet to tackle it. Get some tools to help with the stress of your everyday life first, get some relief from the tension either through therapy or maybe even meds, whatever your doctor and you come up with. But you have to do something and sooner rather than later.

If you need some referrals or would like to discuss it further you can email me directly at coachcheryl@recoverynation.com

Those suicidal thoughts I have dealt with, and my main problem was not putting effort into my values, I instead tried to deal with these emotions re-actively, and failed. Yesterday, when I began to put effort into my values, a wonderful thing happened, and the stress became my drive to start anew, to change my life. What happened that caused this suicidal thought was actually the fact that I had graduation, and I didn't get the award that I believe I felt I should've gotten. My other classmates got like 15 awards, I was counting, and I described it as a thorn in my heart. Intelligence was only my only value, my pride, and having it broken devastated me. However, I have learned, and I feel stronger than I ever was.

As for my problem with boredom, lately I have been doing better, keeping in mind that "Mindset is Everything" as thisisforever has said. Changing my mindset made piano, what was once a daunting task, relaxing and enjoyable. I have also been enjoying boredom, and my life is slowly getting better. Yesterday, with my values built, I found getting up and working to be much easier than usually. My laziness was made by my discomfort and my need to make myself feel better by doing something interesting immediately rather than doing something productive. So when I managed my discomfort, I was able to do so much more.

My crush on the other hand, is way more complicated. Yesterday, more stress was added on when she told me that she broke up with her old boyfriend, because she had a crush on someone else, an old friend. I was annoyed, and stressed, but I blew off steam by playing a video game, and felt much better. Then when I talked to her again, I didn't feel as stressed from that, although going through a whole conversation to convince her to ask him out only for her to say she actually didn't have a crush on him is frustrating. I later heard from someone else that she was just convincing herself that she didn't like him because he lives far away. I realized that in my crush, I didn't see her as a person, I saw her as something who could make me feel better. After blowing off the steam, I saw her as a person, and a friend. It made everything much better.

Thank you for the responses,
Aero

Well done HA.

I am glad that you have got those negative feelings into order. I rather agree with Coach C that you would benefit from working on your boundaries surrounding love and crushes. Don't place too much emotional weight on other people. As you say youself, this objectifies them - and distracts you from your own values.

I am glad you are alright though.

Shaw

Coach Cheryl, what were those proactive steps for Recovery and abstinence that you mentioned? Are they like visualization, and anticipation, emotional management processes like proactive action plans, mental steps like making a solid decision, or all three? I ask this because I am stuck. After I got out of that depression, I did a little better, but I began acting out again, and the stress began building up again. I can manage it, but I want to be able to handle urges too.

My main focus now is to get over my stress and depression by rebuilding my life and values. Urge control should be significantly easier then as well.

The best tools right now are action plans. Ones that require you to get up and do something specific and that you can commit to. Don't overwhelm yourself by making too many but put enough into place to handle the most frequent triggers that lead to you acting out. So to make it simple do the following.

1. Identify the top 3 things that lead you to act out. (boredom, stress, computer time, frustration etc.)
2. Map out the ritual into steps that allows you to see the progression.
3. Make an action plan to counter the main steps. So maybe 4 or 5 actions you take to stop yourself, with each one added being more action based.


For Example if you mapped out one for Frustration or disappointment it may look something like this.

1. Graduation Today - was feeling good, proud of my accomplishment
2. Awards - Was excited to see which I had earned.
3. My friend was getting award after award, as I was counting them I started to feel a sinking sensation in my stomach. All the hard work I did this year and I may not receive an award.
4. At the end of the awards ceremony I felt cheated and then started to doubt myself that maybe I didn't achieve as much as I thought I did.
5. I became frustrated with myself and the school and it was building up inside me. All I wanted was relief from these thoughts and feelings.
6. I went home into my room and locked the door staring at my computer. I debated with myself and then decided why not? It will make me feel better and that's what I need right now.
7. I went to my computer found the website I was looking for and the perfect picture and masturbated.

Ok so that is how you map out a ritual, adding as much detail as possible and breaking down as much as you can. Then you come up with an action plan to deal with it in a healthy way.

1. When I start to feel cheated or bad about myself I will say my self-affirmations 5 times each in my mind.
2. If I reach the feeling of frustration I will go to the gym for a workout to let it out.
3. If I still feel as though I need to act out I will call a friend to go to hang out with
4. I will make sure I stay around people and not isolate myself.


That's just an example and I'm sure other';s can give you some that they have used but the point is to have these with you at all times so you don't have to think in the middle of it you just follow your plan. If the first action doesn't work go to the second, if that doesn't work go to the third etc. This is just one way to help in managing urges in the moment, to get some success, while working on yourself to remove them altogether,

Hope this helps.
Coach Cheryl

I'm reading through recovery threads and it feels like the consensus is that love addiction is thouher to over come compared to porn or masturbation. For me it was the reverse. I can't say if my love addiction has truly been managed but at least my crush is gone and I feel better. Then I think, why was it easier, what did I do right, after all, my crush was as bad as my other addiction. I clearly remember that it became much easier after I searched wikihow on how to end crushes and it gave me some reactive advice when I felt my crush. And then I remember how throughout my recovery if you can call it that, I lacked correct reaction plans, which always missed the emotional management part like the plan for getting bored was to study, wihout managing the thought and it was weird. It was very situatio oriented, wih me making plans for each and every situation, but none of the solutions solved the problem, I hope with my new understanding of reactive plans, I can control my urges until the my progressively become weaker. I think I realize why urge control was so late into the workshop, and when I skipped ahead at the way beginning of my recovery, I ingrained incorrect ideas on urge control.

Yesterday, when I began to focus on developing my values, I was able to go without urges and problems. But today at basketball, I felt outmatched by taller better, and stronger players. Not to mention, if I end up playing skins instead of shirts, I will reveal that I am not that fit and I have large scars from my eczema. I ended up making sexual fantasies that boosted my self esteem to feel better. The acting out only made me feel worse and I tried to manage it but was unsuccessful. I let it slide, and it came back throughout the day as anxiety, stress, and just general uncomfortableness. Like on the computer, I stopped working for dinner, and when I came back, I ended up being lazy and didn't work no matter how much my healthy side begged me to. After acting out again, I realize that the unmanaged emotions were the main reason for my laziness, not some mysterious force. It feels weird saying that this far in the lessons, but I really had no answer for that before this. After going through a full blown relapse, now I need to know how to bounce back, get out of the depression, and keep moving forward like I was.

I'm going to reread the lessons because I have some big gaps in my current knowledge, namely emotional management, and that when I build up my values, it seems to wear off after a while, and I may end up acting out. However when compared to not doing anything about value building, there are still some slight improvements even when it wears off, like it becomes easier to make a break. My guess is that maybe it has to do with building a solid image for me, and that maybe I;m not stable yet with my values. My guess on how to fix this is to keep building values to sustain it throughout the day until my image is built, which will make emotional management easier. I'm now thinking that it might not be that values are worn off, but maybe the stress begins to counter it, and destable my image. I remember that when my mom kept complaining in the car about the distance of my high school, I felt stressed and angry, which led me into the direction of acting out. However, I knew to concentrate on my phenomenal day at basketball camp and use the pride to stabilize. Unfortunately later when my game idea got humiliatingly bashed by this hobbyist project leader whom I used to work for at one period of time, I couldn't manage it. I've also come to the realization that when an unstable person cools off from an incident, he ends up maybe in a worse mood, mainly because his values can't defeat the stress that remains. It's like the flame goes away but you can't push away the ashes. A person who is stable can let things cool off and he becomes better because his values allow him to recover and he can fall back on it.


Rant ahead!!!
Read at your own risk, nothing to do with reocvery is mentioned here, just pure complaining.

I couldn't stand it, I was so angry, he compared my game to mini ninja's, said my game was generic, make fun of my generic makeshift game name insisting that "title=game" saying that I was stupid for choosing such a small base, and my bad design. I sent him the story line he asks for and then asks why there isn't gameplay details. I mean what the heck, you asked for story not gameplay. At the beginning when I was inquiring for information on his current team, he asked me what I can do for his game. He told me that the game design position is filled up so I told him I can't work, and that I didn't like his game idea anyways. I was already mad at that point, because he completely forgot to message me for like 3 weeks right in the middle of giving me a job when I told him I was 14 (I'm not being paid money) and this time, he suddenly stopped too, but I remessaged him. To be honest, it was bad even when I was working for him, he told me to change all these things because he was too lazy too, and acted very rude and snotty in general. Anyways, He asks me if I have a game idea and I ask him why he wants to know. He said he doesn't want to waste his time answering that and tells me to give him the idea if I want any chance of it being created. I give him a short description, what he comes up with is that my game is depressing, and morbid. I said I had only told him the first 5 minutes, and I send him a link of what I have typed so far, the first thing he asks as I mentioned before is about the gameplay not being in the document. And he tells me that the title is generic, and stuck to calling my game generic instead of morbid and depressing. That's actually more of an insult to me because my story is kind of a fantasy version of the pain and loneliness of my addiction but to my characters instead. Not like they develop addiction or anything, but they fight monsters, and I made it to be in my mind anything but generic. I guess he didn't know that. Because of his complaining, I explain to him about the way they fight, dodging from distance, and close ranged, while finding weaknesses. He compares it to "Mini Ninjas", another insult. Angered but trying to remain collected, I tell him how the difficulty is ramped to inhuman levels at high difficulties and that it pumps your adrenaline. He says that's generic too. I mean c'mon, I've never seen a game that tries to ramp the difficulty to unbeatable levels as a challenge in the action jrpg category. Even in other categories it is never the main edge of games. Seeing he has no idea about what I am talking about, I send him a video of Mysterious Figure battle from Kingdom Hearts BBS, and he tells me it's the last straw before he boots me. Personally that video doesn't do the boss justice, because it is insanely hard. I beat him after maybe 30 straight tries, dying pretty much seconds after the fight initiates. The dodging is adrenaline pumping, kinda like maybe acting out without the pleasure from sexual acts. I saw things in slow motion after that, and when I played another boss, He looked so slow and I could see like everything at once. He completely ignore how awesome the video is, and continues to bash my game, saying it is generic, poor design, poorly thought out in terms of audience size, but has a good, not great story. There might be points to re-look at, based on what he said, but he gave me no direction on what to do, like an example, and continued to bash my game solely on small quirks. I still have no idea what he meant when he said bad designing. He has not mentioned designing once, maybe in gameplay if I stretch it but not really and poorly chosen audience is like, he completely doesn't understand how I am marketing, but sticks the bad choice tag solely because it is a jrpg. So I'm like alright then, waiting for him to keep going, maybe help me, but he's like I'm trying to help you and says go get more experience and come back 6-10 months. As if I could stand the humiliation, I mention I am already designing for another hobbyist group. He's like I hope it's better than this one. I almost broke something because of that part. I wanted to respond but what can I say, he got me that time, and as much as I can either defend my game, or bash his, it doesn't matter. I didn't burst into full on cursing, not even if I was that mad would I curse. But I really hate that dude. He stepped all over my game, my life's work, believing that his idea was so genius. It was an underwater strategy game that somehow works like a regular fps. It has no story, okay design, okay originality, but I have to disagree on the audience choice. Sure, an fps strategy has a large fanbase, but no one will care about his game, with the amount of better versions there are. That's why I chose not to be generic, or at least I thought I did. He had to make that one last step on me and I am still mad. That other hobbyist I was designing for that I mentioned has talked to me about the group that the critic was in. He told me how all they had was unreal engine freebees placed poorly around, some drawings, and pretends to be a business. He picked up on an interesting fact, that the critic kept switching back to I and me when talking about the game, rather than we. That's why he might be alone too, although he has like 3 coworkers from what I asked. We also said that he must be real desperate with the amount of help wanted ads he puts up.(like about 2 a week) That's why we don't think he will get far, especially how nasty he was and how quickly he literally forgot about me. Well enough with the rant, I'm feeling better now.

Wow, I can't believe that I'm only 14 with myself mentioning horrible bosses.

Today wasn't all bad, after all at basketball camp, I did great in knockout landing third. At first I gave up, chucking a three with no intention of making it, but I gave it a second try, caught it, turned around, and hit the fade away at mid range. It felt like God wanted that one to go in because I never make that shot. Then I say You Only Live Once, so I tried my best (unlike others that think YOLO is about Hedonism) and began hitting these magic threes, that got out even the best players. I was on a roll, and the people I got out had the sportsmanship to cheer for me. The entire camp of over a 100 except for the people still on the game were cheering for me of all people. I hit threes, and lost when I missed one at third place, and the campers did the booing for me, relentlessly booing until the end of the game. It was like a dream come true, the moment that children dream of having. All these amazing players were cheering for me, and I hit loads of clutch threes. The only other time I had ever been cheered on playing basketball was when my crush saw me playing one on one and cheered. Then after that on the team games at camp, I was in the worst team losing all the games. But with willpower and team spirit, we blown out the best team by 9. That was the best moment of basketball probably in my life so far. I don't know but so much is happening right now, like all these great moments, minutes of extreme courage and strength, and happiness, I have never had. I want to keep building my values, I want to live. For the first time in my life, I feel that I don't regret the way i spend the day. I only live once so I want to live in a healthy way. And also, God is like helping me because I grow so much each day, each thing I realize, and all the small miracles. I won't give up!

I'm building my values up and my life, but I run into urge control problems, nothing new. Yesterday I had a heartfelt conversation with my mom about my future. (She doesn't know about my addiction.) It felt really good and I hope to continue this. About my urge control problems, I need to will myself back into complete resistance against urges and acting out. I need to work on my existing reaction plans in order to break out of the mold and start a good one instead. Over this summer, I have been working hard to improve myself and to make up for my slacking off during the fourth quarter of my school year. I've already gotten myself back to my peak except for math, back in the end of second quarter. In Recovery, not so much. My acting out persists and is a serious problem. Coaching is not an option for me, but I have confidence that I have learned much in my summer so far and I can do this.

I've managed my depression one of the biggest problems. I've had trouble coming back from urges but I'm learning to just power through. I'm improving in urge management, but I still need to remember to finish the break off right by doing something values based. I generally stop the action way too soon before the urge is completely dead. I'm also slowly building my life and my image.