Transitions--they occur every time you face a major life event. Death, marriage, divorce, graduation, being raped, being fired, being promoted, having an affair, ending a relationship, having a child, retirement...life is full of transitions. Some triggered by positive events, some from devastating ones. But most every time you experience one, you are faced with the feelings of insecurity, pain, confusion and anxiety. And, with more positive, constructive feelings like personal challenge and the opportunity for growth...but these are not as readily seen and may not occur within the immediacy of the crisis. Your role is to recognize that there will likely be two major transitions that you will encounter throughout this workshop: one that occurs as you go from acting out to active recovery; the other as you go from active recovery to an active pursuit of health. These will be explored in greater detail later.

 

Recovery itself is a transition. It is a process of change. And like all healthy transitions, it will be most effective when there is an ending, an emptiness/loss and finally, a new beginning. Not preparing for a full transition to health is a trap that many fall into in early recovery. They see the first transition (from addiction to active recovery) as 'recovery'. But it is not. It is only a part of a healthy recovery process. For these individuals, 'managing their addiction/compulsive behavior' is their immediate goal. It is what they expect and it is how they measure their recovery success. They are not aware of, and so they don't prepare for the second transition: moving from active recovery to health.

 

If you currently believe that your learning to control your destructive behavior constitutes recovery--it does not. Stopping your compulsive behavior is merely a single step in the process of transitioning from active addiction to active recovery. Even with a recovery platform involving the pursuit of absolute abstinence, to continue holding on to a belief such as, "until it is proven to me that I will never again have the need to act out, I will be content with controlling my compulsive behaviors to the best of my ability--without actually committing myself to ending them permanently...", you will not experience an ending to your addiction--merely a series of temporary reprieves. And because an ending has not taken place, a healthy transition cannot be experienced. It just can't. You cannot wait until you have replaced your compulsive patterns with something more satisfying, before committing yourself to changing. The decision to commit to ending those destructive patterns must come first. Then an ending occurs. Then a new beginning.

 

Endings

In recovery from compulsive behavior and/or addiction, there must be an ending (emotionally and physically) to your addiction before you can accurately perceive a new beginning to your life. Until this ending takes place, you will continue to see any future dreams and aspirations--including your ability to live without the addictions--with an asterisk. That asterisk will remind you that you can always go back to the compulsions if things don't go the way you want them to. That you always have a way out of taking responsibility for what happens in your life. Soon after this ending occurs, you will likely experience an emptiness--a confusion. A sense of loss. You may go weeks and/or months (depending on how ingrained the addiction was) with a feeling that you are not yourself. That something is missing. This void is an experience that, while having the potential to be extremely uncomfortable, is a clear sign that you are putting yourself in a position for true, core change to take place. It is a sing that real change is taking place to your core identity. More on this later.

 

If you are a healthy person, looking for a healthy partnership, would the person you select be one who just broke up with their long-time partner? Chances are, you wouldn't. Why? Because rebound relationships never work out. Now, I'm sure that some do, but there is some logic in the fact that most don't. When this break-up is fresh, there has not been an ending to it. There remains unresolved feelings that must be managed before that individual is capable of fully creating a beginning with someone new. They need time to reduce the emotional intensity that is currently attached to that person/relationship--be those feelings positive, negative or both. They need time to regain their emotional balance and direction. Once this occurs, they will be free to explore new relationships with new partners. They will be free to explore and experience others with a clear mind and without transferring the intensity of one relationship onto another. They will be able to see the new relationship as it is, not as it relates to the old relationship. They will have completed a successful transition.

 

What happens in an unsuccessful transition? You name it. The person tries to replace the emotional intensity of a longtime partner with that of the new one--an impossible role if ever there was one. The person tries to intoxicate themselves with the passion that new relationships offer--which allows them to temporarily forget about the long-term relationship they were just in. The person continues to experience mixed emotions regarding the old partner, which then gets transferred onto the new relationship. There are hundreds of things that can take place in an unhealthy transition. The one thing that each shares is the lack of a clear ending. Somehow, in some way, the behavior (or person, or event) that the person is attempting to transition from is kept alive. Somewhere in their brain, they are not completely letting go--just in case. And so they hold on to that person--there is no ending to the relationship.

 

In recovery, an ending can be seen as the absolute commitment to recover. A feeling that, no matter what happens from here on out, I am going to fight these damned compulsions every chance that I get. I am going to use every tool in my arsenal. I am going to see my compulsive behaviors--and all they have done to my life (or kept me from doing)--and I am going to conquer them. That is what you are facing now. That is the first transition that you must undertake...if you are to permanently end these patterns. The behaviors involved with this transition will include the development of a functional understanding of your addiction, along with an awareness/initial development of the tools necessary to end this addiction. As you begin to gain experience and confidence in managing your addiction, an emotional change will begin to take shape. You will begin to look around and realize that this addiction recovery work wasn't nearly as hard as you thought it would be. And this will breed additional confidence, along with an even more successful implementation of the tools. Soon thereafter, as you find more and more success in managing the compulsive urges...you will begin to experience the second stage of the transition: the emptiness.

 

Emptiness

The second common trap that people fall into when transitioning from compulsions to recovery (or from any emotionally intense behavior to another) is their perception involving the emptiness phase of a healthy transition. To understand this, let's take a brief look at the broader addictive process in a person's life. In most addictions, the person has come to depend on their addictive behavior to manage their emotional state. The longer this person relies on such patterns, the more intense and ingrained this pattern becomes. Now, this is an extremely brief synopsis, with many additional issues to be discussed later in the workshop, but the point is: without the ingrained addiction, they are left with an emotional void that is very real. And very uncomfortable. The trap is in seeing this void as proof that their addiction was a natural, necessary entity in their life. They begin to feel an emotional emptiness...no urges...no pleasure...no anything. And they assume that something is wrong. That they need their addiction in order to feel normal. And here comes the porn, or the masturbation, or the affairs. And then, right on que...here comes the excitement and pleasure and passion. Along with the guilt and shame and depression. But it doesn't matter. They would rather feel all of the emotions, than to feel nothing at all. And so, relapse occurs.

 

I remember thinking many times throughout my own struggles that I would rather experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows than to ever take a medication that would dim my emotions. I never feared feeling bad. I never feared the chaos that was my life. Not the misery, nor the pain. I cherished my emotional extremes as I believed that it was my ability to experience such extremes that made me who I was. My only fear was to feel nothing at all. This is common with many people who struggle with addictive behavior. Even those who state that they drink or use drugs or otherwise act out in an effort to "numb the pain" of past abuse, overwhelming stress, etc., are not completely accurate. They drink, use or otherwise act out to shift the emotions that they are experiencing--not to dull them.

 

The point to this is simple. To someone used to experiencing the extremes of the emotional experience--and suffering from true compulsive behavior is to experience emotions to their extreme--the emptiness that comes with a transitional ending can be overwhelming. The blandness, the void that is created when eliminating the behavioral patterns that managed the majority of your emotions is like removing your soul. You no longer feel "normal". You feel as if there is something wrong inside of you; like you are broken somehow. You might even feel that, without these compulsive behaviors, life isn't even worth living. That it is these behaviors that made you special. So, inevitably, you go back to acting out because even the potential negative emotional consequences of your behavior (guilt, shame, failure, loneliness, etc.) are better than to have no emotions at all.

 

So, in preparing your road to recovery, you will need to prepare yourself for a time when you might feel empty inside. It will come after the euphoria of beginning your recovery, and it will come after you have put an end to your desire to continue your life the way that it is. This period may last a few days, it may last a few weeks. Rarely, will it ever last longer than that. And in those few weeks, your goal will be to recognize this emptiness, and begin to fill it with the values and the dreams that you believe in.

 

A New Beginning

Ah, a new beginning. That's what this whole thing is pretty much all about. If you are happy with the way that your life is, you wouldn't be participating in this workshop. You seek a new beginning of some sort. Either in a relationship, a career or even possibly your entire life. You seek the opportunity to say to yourself, I didn't do things the way that I wanted to, and so I'd like to start over. Except this time, I am armed with the knowledge of where I want to go and how I want to get there. And I have learned the skills to succeed along that path.

 

At this point, it is not necessary for you to know exactly where you want to go (or the person that you want to be). You will develop a clear understanding of these things as the workshop progresses (your values/your goals--not ours). All that is necessary for you to understand now is that transitions do not end with a cessation of previous behaviors and then nothing. All transitions end with a new beginning.