My first steps

Good work.

Get blocks in place. Read around the forum. 

Well done for being here and being honest.

Thanks for the support.  Reading through a few of the links I get the feeling that I am in the same boat as you.    I am fortunate enough not to have the money I have gambled affect my house while bills but if I hadn’t made a stand to  control this now it would have crashed in front of me.  The hardest part for me is dealing with the shame and guilt.  Every day without gambling is a positive and I am becoming more optimistic that I am going to succeed.  

It goes.  Trust me.

I no longer feel that shame (140 days in) as I'm at peace with myself.  I do look back and honestly don;t recognise the person i've been and that brings other feelings rather than guilt, but what can be gained by looking backwards too much.

Moving forward is key.  What's done is done and the future is ours to make.  God, that sounds cheesy....but it's absolutely true.  How are things going?  first few weeks are tough.  stick at it.

Hi

The big step is being honest to our self.

That for me Gambling and my other unhealthy habits were adversely affecting me and people close to me.

Gambling was a form of escape, escaping from people life and situation I could not cope with emotionally.

When ever I went against my own conscience and against spiritual vales (Non religious) I would try and escape responsibility in one way or another.

I use to lie because I feared rejection and abandonment, that unhealthy reaction was from my painful child hood.

With each lie my fears grew and grew till I reached a point of panic.

My panic was an indication that I was living in far to many fears.

Understanding my emotional triggers was important, my emotional triggers were my anger, my anger was an unhealthy reaction to my pains, my anger was an unhealthy reaction to my fears, my anger was an unhealthy reaction to my frustrations.

As a child I was a victim, people use t dump on me in many ways, there was abandonment,  there was rejection, there was emotional abuse, there was physical abuse, there was sexual abuse.

By the time when I read step one my life was unmanageable I read it as due to my Gambling and my lack of money.

Then as I got more serious about my recovery I understood that my life was emotionally unmanageable long before my addictions and my obsessions.

My addictions and my obsessions were indicators that I was just emotionally vulnerable.

It seemed very difficult walking in to the recovery program, yet I can say today that walking in to the recovery program helped me heal my inner child.

I know today that only by acknowledging my pains could the healing process start.

For me the recovery program helped me help myself, it made so many things happy for me to become healthy and complete.

For me the recovery program helped my emotional age and physical age gap reduce and reduce.

Love and peace to every one

Dave L

AKA Dave of Beckenham

Thanks for the kind words. The hardest part for me at the moment is visualising the future.  I am trying to take each day as it comes but there’s a crippling feeling in me saying what if.  I also wanted to know how you were coping without telling your partner.  I have done he same as I don’t feel ready or that I am in a place where I have been dealing with this well enough to explain the situation as I would like too.  

My wife caught me out years ago and i promised to stop.

After that I started to do things to try and stop me from gambling.  One was a joint account. 

In preparation for giving up (actually really giving up...and not the half arsed attempts i'd had before) I started to make sure the joint account statements were clean.  i'd done this before in the 6 months leading to buying a house, although i'd still used creidt cards and withdrew cash.

Once statements were looking OK and just before new year i announced that i wouldn't gamble in any form for a year.  It was like a challenge i'd set for myself and also opened the opportunity for any discussion.  We havent really had that discussion and its more often than not me who says "i still haven't gambled all year and its XXX days".  I tell friends and colleagues the same and its actually working as a support mechanism for me.

At the end of the year I'll tell everyone how its working for me and it will be a life choice not to gamble again.

I don't think I need to have any deeper discussions about it with anyone, but maybe I will in the future.  I'm sure others would say I'm doing this wrong and I hope I've never been hypocritical by telling anyone they must tell others (I don't think I have?), but i'm certainly an advocate of getting the blocks right and always being positive.  For now, this is working out just fine and I'm taking back control. Hope that's helpful?

Hi

If we go back to our addictions and obsessions we only make things much worse.

No matter how much money we won it was just fuel for our addictions.

By getting back money lost will never resolve our emotional vulnerability.

The addictions and obsessions were just indicators that I was emotionally vulnerable.

When our fears reduce our trusts grow.

Keep at your recovery it helps reduce the pains you are causing your self and others.

regards Dave