Hi guys.Â
I told my wife 5+ months ago about gambling. I've installed the gambling software, blocked everything for as long as possible and handed over all my money and I'm attending counselling from NHS gambling services.Â
We are still together, and on the surface I'm doing everything right. What neither her or I can recover from however is the lies and my behaviour during gambling for 5 years. I lied and manipulated and hid things and gas lit her even though we had 3 children to raise. I am utterly disgusted in myself and I can't shake that feeling.Â
I feel like that's getting in the way of any sort of healing because I'm more than happy to take the long conversation where she lists all my faults, and I accept that I have behaved awfully. I just feel like I am an awful person too. And that's not helpful, how do I get past that? How can I be accountable when I feel like a peice of rubbish?Â
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Hi Rachel (@f6odti42c3)
Thank you for explaining how you feel. This sounds really hard to cope with, and it is not unusual for people to experience such bad feelings when they embark on recovery and look back at how gambling affected them and the people around them. Behaviour around gambling  very often takes us away from our own internal values, which is hard to bear and produces feelings of the kind you are describing. We have an online course that has an element of exploring your values and thus helping you to identify them and move towards them, which can help. You can find it here: EmpowerMe - GamCare
It can sometimes be helpful to engage with others who have lived experience of gambling harms, so that you can see that they are just people, like you. Not bad people, but people who unfortunately got caught up in gambling harms. Like you. Like any of us could. Â Perhaps try out chatrooms, you can find them here: Chatrooms - GamCare.Â
Please keep sharing on the forum and we wish you all the best.
Jane
Forum Admin
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