Problems & Symptoms
It’s so easy when beginning our journey of recovery to do what some therapists call “arresting addictive behaviors”--in layman’s terms, it means solely going after the addictive, compulsive habits themselves and getting them under control. Many people evaluate their recovery and success solely on how often they are tempted or give in. While it may seem like success on the outside, arresting behaviors actually sets one up to fall into an addictive cycle again. Why?
Because pornography and masturbation are symptoms of a problem--they aren’t the problem themselves. This isn’t to say these behaviors aren’t problematic or sinful, but rather to say that they’re caused by something deeper that must be resolved and healed in order to truly live in freedom. If the wounds that cause our compulsion and sin are never addressed and healed, we can only expect to continually fall into our old patterns of distraction and diversion.
Typically, those places of woundedness are the hardest places for us to go to--in fact, it’s the one place that we sometimes beg to never go back to. This is one way that we stay in addictive cycles--something convinces us that if we go back into that place of pain, we have to feel it again, be hurt again. It’s easiest to just distract, self-medicate. But, journeying into that hurt, while holding the hand of Christ, is the only way to truly heal. We have to feel it again, and feel it in His presence.
A quote I use often, particularly in our podcast episode on self hatred and shame, is from C.S. Lewis’ novel Till We Have Faces. The novel is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, through the eyes of Psyche’s bitter, resentful, ugly older sister, Orual. She writes the book as a complaint against the gods for her ugliness, but when it comes time for her to finally voice her lifelong complaints before them, she finds herself saying the same word over and over again. This quote captures it all:
“When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
When you watch pornography, masturbate, fantasize, or engage in whatever behavior you find yourself at a loss to eradicate, you are doing the same as Lewis’ brilliant character above: you are saying the same word over and over, a word that’s been at the center of your soul for years. It’s a wound that probably only you and He know, and one that only He can heal. Orual’s perpetual ugliness wasn’t the problem, it was a symptom worsened over time by the pain of her loss and anger.
Maybe your wound is loss, maybe it’s abuse, maybe it’s neglect or rejection or grief or anger or pride. Whatever the wound is, as long as it goes untouched, it will continue to control you—in this struggle, and in others.
It’s difficult to go to the center of yourself and dig up that one word that silently haunts you, and is the cause of these sins that you hate yet find yourself doing over and over. The beauty is you don’t have to go in alone. Our Lord wants to go to the center with you, and hear you, and heal you. He doesn’t want the one word, the one wound to steer your ship anymore.
In recovery, don’t focus all your energies on just sobriety (though sobriety is important). Focus on addressing the places of pain of which your behaviors are a symptom. Your journey to recovery, as well as your life, will be truly successful because of it.