Hi
In time I would understand that the addictions and my obsessions were just the symptoms that I was emotionally vulnerable, the emotional triggers indicated that I was emotionally vulnerable and reacted in some very unhealthy ways.
The unhealed pains of my past caused fears in me that I did not understand.
The addictions and obsessions were a form of escape from my feelings and emotions.
By getting help and attending meetings I would understand how ever unhealthy I was, and the simple fact I was not alone.
In time I would understand my emotional triggers.
My emotional triggers were pains I could not heal, fears I could not face, my unreasonable expectations I could not reduce, loneliness due to my fears of intimacy, and feelings of boredom due the fact I felt I did not feel worthwhile or productive in my life.
Being aware of when I was emotionally vulnerable and understood my emotional triggers, I would reduce my unhealthy reactions to people’s life and situations I had no control over.
The deeper I got in to healing and recovery and understood my unhealthy reactions, I would understand how to change unhealthy reactions to healthy interactions.
By opening up more with healthy like-minded I was able to articulate my feelings and emotions, by being emotionally traumatized from a very early age I lost the ability to have a healthy voice from a place of peace.
As my fears reduce my trust grows and I am able to have a healthier level of intimacy with healthy likeminded people.
Being emotionally traumatized disabled me from living a full healthy productive life, living in so many fears was disabling me.
I used to fear emotional intimacy yet today I understand that emotional intimacy is an important part of my healing and my recovery.
I do understand that s*x on its own is not love.
I do understand that emotional intimacy is important to my healing.
That emotional intimacy is important to having a healthy interactive life.
Love and peace to everyone.
Hi
Due to pains in my life the levels of fears grew in me, for me anxiety stress and panic were all fear-based issues.
Only by writing down my fears and facing each fear would they reduce.
I also got to understand my anger was an unhealthy reaction to pains I could not heal, fears I could not face, frustrations due to my unreasonable expectations of people, life and situations.
My anger, rage and aggression just indicates that my pains of the past were not healed.
I needed to admit to myself that being angry was unhealthy.
When I was being angry and aggressive, I was often hurt myself as well as others.
Being angry and aggressive I was reacting in very unhealthy ways.
My inner child was in pain and not only that my fears restricted me from having healthy intimate relationships with myself and with other people.
When being asked how am I, when I say I am fine I am lying, when I say I am not so bad I am lying.
In me were buried and suppressed pains I had no recall of the memories of my childhood.
I blanked those memories out because I could not deal with or heal them.
One thing I understand is that in my childhood when parents were not with me physically that was just physical abandonment and emotional abandonment.
When a parent was with me yet could not have any emotional or intimate connection that was emotional abandonment, feeling like I was not wanted or loved.
I used to take emotional rejection internally, like there was something wrong with me.
There were a lot of people who put up walls of fears to protect their hurt inner child, I thought that living in fear and mistrusting people was normal.
In healing my hurt inner child helps me open up to healthy emotional intimacy.
Also, in the healing process comes the ability to understand and to articulate my feelings and my emotions.
For me being able to communicate in healthy ways without fears restricting me from living a healthy life.
Whenever I was asked into the office the instant reaction what have I done wrong was assuming me being guilty even when I was not.
Asking for help is a sign of strength. Not a sign of weakness.
Setting boundaries is not be controlling other people.
Setting boundaries is saying that I value myself today.
Setting boundaries from a place of peace stops me being the victim.
Today I both need and want peace in my life.
Today I both need and want to be fearless.
Today I both need and want healthy people and healthy intimacy in my life.
Also having healthy intimacy in my life is part of the healing process.
I am a nonreligious healthy person today.
I am focused on exchanging unhealthy habits into healthy habits today.
The recovery program is about healing our pains, facing our fears and reducing our expectations of people’s life and situations.
There is physical pain and emotional pains.
I have suffered so much from both types of pains.
I at one time was so badly hurt physically that I could not feel any pain whatsoever.
The doctor warned me that having so many physical was very dangerous.
The emotional pains which were a form of emotional trauma affected me in so many ways, it adversely affected my response times, it adversely affected my, it caused me to withdraw from any kind of intimacy, it also affected my ability to learn and absorb information and education.
One day after counselling I was in a state of healing, yet my response time was even slower and my awareness was also reduced, yet after 11 days I became far sharper than ever before in my adult hood.
Being without fear, having intimacy helps me reach new levels of awareness.
Due to emotional trauma my legs use to judder and twitch, and it happened from traumas in my life.
Once we heal, we gain so much more from life.
I do not attend recovery meetings today because of vulnerability towards unhealthy habits.
I do attend recovery meetings today because there is often light bulb moments that help me reach another level of healthy living.
The only limit I have in my life today is that I set up on myself.
How many people question what love is, one day I asked my wife what love is, she told me it is giving of our self unconditionally without any expectations.
For me I now understand that a person can only love someone else if they are able to love them self.
Love is about intimacy at a very healthy level. If people have a hurt inner child in them then they are often living in fear of emotional intimacy.
Only when we heal our pains can we be able to reduce our fears.
Ladies often have unreasonable expectations of their male partners. They want more emotional intimacy than a man can give.
Because they have unreasonable expectation of everyone in their life and everything in their life, they are in fact causing them self-pains. The only person I can change is myself, once I accepted that fact I stopped being frustrated. Often people with unreasonable expectation hurt them self-time and time again. I am not a religious person, yet I am learning to be a more spiritual person. My conscience is spiritual based values. When I try to justify going against my own conscience, I am often hurt myself and other people. My patience and tolerance indicates how healthy I am. If I am not being patient and tolerant indicates that I am also very hard on myself. Love and intimacy only happens when our hurt inner child is healed. Love and intimacy only happens when we are more loving and respectful towards our self.
Love and intimacy is very rewarding and life fulfilling. I no longer want to be a loner living in my fears and isolation.
It is very important to find a healthy person with healthy spiritual values to share our life with. If I am not able to be honest with myself, I am not able to be honest with other people.
People often refer to procrastination yet do we understand the reasons why, is it lack confidence, is it lack self-esteem, is it lack of self-worth, fear of trying, fear of humiliation, fear of not pleasing people, was it lack of nurturing and encouragement, towards me.
For me procrastination is unhealthy for me, in every way.
Am I allowing procrastination to limit me living my life to the full each day?
With procrastination, I needed to identify face and reduce my fears one by one.
Boredom was one of my emotional triggers, it was due to my procrastination and having lack of faith and confidence in myself.
Sticking with healing, recovering and overcoming procrastination really accelerated my recovery.
How committed am I in writing down my needs, my wants and my goals?
Another thing was not able to ask for help.
I now know that asking for guidance and to get people to show me how to do things was very helpful.
The simple fact is someone shows me how to do it and I do it myself. That is part of my learning curve.
By doing things no matter how imperfect they are, each time I learn something new healthy for me and for next time.
At one time I tried doing dry wall with my wife, we did the garage and then after that we did about 70% of our basement, it was very rewarding and helped raise our confidence.
Each day we make a list of things for the next day.
Writing down our needs, our wants and our goals is very focused and very rewarding.
Over time it got easier understanding the difference from our needs and our wants.
Procrastination is not very healthy, procrastination is a complete waste of time and energy, procrastination is white knuckling my recovery.
Hi
Living in guilt, shame, regret remorse is living from the pains of our past.
I understand that our conscience is spiritual based and when I do or say unhealthy things, I hurt myself and other people.
Is it healthy to live in the feelings of guilt shame regret remorse, for me it was and is now unhealthy to live in the pains of my past.
I can heal my pains yet sadly I am unable to heal people I have hurt, by me being unhealthy I adversely affect the relationship I have with myself and with other people.
Continuing living in guilt shame regret remorse adversely affects healthy intimate relationship with myself and between the people I have hurt.
An apology is not about who is right or wrong, an apology is about repairing relationships with myself and with the people I have hurt.
Guilt tripping is very unhealthy, it indicates that people continue to live in the pains of their past, that they are unable to heal their pains and unable to move on in their life.
Guilt tripping can also indicate that people have expectations and when their expectations are not met, they continue to bring up their pains and try to have their expectations met by people who do things resentfully and reluctantly.
Guilt tripping is very unhealthy and causes unhealthy reactions and people feel they can not move on with their future having been continued caused emotional due to very unhealthy guilt tripping.
Guilt tripping is very unhealthy and hurts relationships and people are not able to move on to healthier relationships.
People will often avoid intimacy guilt tripping people because they find them too unhealthy to live with.
Guilt tripping people will find people try to avoid them and they live a lonely life living in the pains of their past. Never being able to be content with them self or their life.
Hi
In recovery I got to understand that the gambling addiction and other addictions and my obsessions were just the symptoms that I was emotionally vulnerable, the emotional triggers indicated that I was vulnerable and reacted in some very unhealthy ways.
I got to understand in my recovery that was about healing my pains, the recovery would help me be able to articulate what my feelings and emotions were.
One of my biggest fears was being honest because I felt that I would be rejected if I was open and honest with people.
Also being honest would be painful.
Yet in my recovery being honest was very helpful in my recovery my trust growing and my healing by having healthy emotional intimacy.
Being in a healthy recovery meeting where there were healthy therapies, I would open up more emotionally and with that honest and exposing how vulnerable I was my fears would reduce, my trust would grow and I would get to understand more about my self and my vulnerability.
Just because I went to meetings did not mean I would stop gambling right away, it took me many years to get wise as to what my emotional triggers were.
In all the meetings I went to different meetings and found that therapy based meetings were the most beneficial to my healing and a much healthier recovery.
Often there would be times where a person would exchange one addiction or obsession to another. This was just another way of escaping.
I am a non-religious person yet being in a recovery program dedicated to religions I found my unhealthy reaction to the mention of God or religion slowed me in my recovery.
The simple fact is if a person can understand that the recovery program works if you work it.
One thing is very important to find a very healthy person sponsor with healthy nurturing encouraging spiritual interactions religious or not.
A healthy sponsor will help you feel more comfortable less afraid less fears and help you get focus in your needs your wants and in time your goals.
Each time I went back to my addiction I would understand that I did not love my addictions that often going back to my addictions was very much an adrenaline rush and fear based.
In truth I would escape from people reality and life when I could not cope emotionally.
No matter when my last bet was it was very important to go to meetings or more meetings when I was vulnerable.
One can gain some clean time in a healthy recovery program, and if ever we go back to addictions or obsessions learn and understand what our last emotional trigger was.
People will often put on a façade built on their fears and try to hide how vulnerable they are.
Often people will think that getting large sums of money will some how help them get healthy overnight, that was and is not true for me.
The simple fact money would never heal my pains, in fact I found that I could not be trusted with money, handing over all finances helped me in my recovery.
In time I would learn to not only value money but would also become more relaxed with money; money for me was never an attraction or an emotional trigger.
Simply money was the fuel for my addictions and unhealthy living.
It is often said that people have lost clean time going back to their addiction or obsessions, not so clean time cannot be lost, no clean time cannot be lost.
Why do people not take advantage of a meeting telephone list when they feel vulnerable?
Is it that difficult to talk to a like minded person and say I am vulnerable I need to talk things out?
Being emotionally vulnerable does not mean you are weak, not at all and making a call indicates how much you value yourself.
Emotional triggers for me my were pains I could not heal, an emotional trigger were my were fears I could not face and reduce, an emotional trigger were my unreasonable expectations of people life and situations I could reduce, an emotional trigger were my fears of emotional intimacy and feeling a loner and disconnected, an emotional trigger for me was boredom because I could feel productive and I was not able to commit to my needs my wants and in time set goals for me to achieve.
So, before my recovery I was not a bad person, I was not an evil person, I was not a stupid person.
However, I was very limited in learning and absorbing skills, getting an understanding, and retaining education.
These limitation on me were due to emotional scars from my childhood.
After one session of counselling in dealing with abandonment issues after the counselling session my self-awareness my attention span time were adversely reduced for 11 days.
After those 11 days of emotional healing my self-awareness drastically improved, my retention improved and much clearer thinking and a faster response time.
When asked how I was I use to say I was fine or not so bad, I could not be honest as to how emotionally vulnerable I was.
Being in recovery I would get to understand each one of my traumatic emotional pains caused by fears in me that I did not understand.
With honest open therapies the fears are reduced, and my trust improves.
In time I was able to open up to very healthy emotional intimacy with like minded people who wanted to heal and find a much healthier life with healthier relationships.
The simple truth was that I could not heal my pains if I was not willing to be honest and admit to myself, that I was in emotional pains.
Inner peace comes from healing our hurt inner child and becoming spiritually healthy. My anger and rage were an unhealthy reactions to the unhealthy pains, unhealthy fears and unhealthy frustrations due to my unreasonable expectations of people life and situations.
Due to not being able in healing my emotionally hurt inner child the pains caused fears in me that I did not understand.
A recovery program will help people be aware that they are emotionally vulnerable people not being able to heal their pains.
A recovery program means to me healing our emotional pains.
Our guilt, shame, regret helps us understand that we have a healthy conscience based up on spiritual values, when we adversely affect other people we hurt our self.
I am a non-religious person, yet today I have a very healthy conscience.
When people justify saying they want justice the truth is they are not healing pains they are transferring their pains fears and frustrations on to other people.
In my non-religious recovery program I would open up to healthy therapies which would help me articulate and heal and resolve my confusion, my emotional traumas.
If we are healthy people and heal our pains we do not react in such anger rage or venomous ways.
The addictions and obsessions only indicate that we are vulnerable people.
The addictions and obsessions indicate that we react in unhealthy ways to those things we cannot resolve.
Inner peace comes after our healing process.
If all we do to the world is say I am fine or not so bad we are lying to our self and we are denying our self a healing process.
Me having a healing process enables me to have more intimacy with myself and with all people.
My rage anger resentments vengeance and insecurity only indicate how emotionally vulnerable I am.
At first in the recovery program they often seems to be more questions than answers.
It is very important in a recovery program to find a very healthy spiritual person who will demonstrate nurturing and encouragement towards exchanging unhealthy habits in to unhealthy habits.
Once we change from unhealthy reactions to having healthy interactions we are on the road to safe healthy healing and recovery.
In saying I am fine or not so bad I am denying myself a healthy life.
There is no doubt in my mind that the unhealed pains of my past made me a very victim.
Some people might think that being a victim is a physical thing, or a s*x thing, or due to our limitations.
For me being the victim was very simple I was not able to speak up for myself from a place of peace.
I did a lot karate for over two years and find that I still lived in my fears, I questioned myself and then found out my fears were of aggression.
This fear of aggression was due to unhealthy people being aggressive towards me from a very young age.
Simply I could not stand up for myself.
Aggressive people do not like it when people have a voice and stand up for them self, one way or another.
Sometimes we just have to walk away from some very unhealthy people.
Love and peace to everyone.
Dave L
AKA Dave of Beckenham
Hi Dave and thanks for sharing your recovery.
This forum has been instrumental in me stopping gambling.
Lots of people requiring support read these forums without posting, I did for years. So it's great to read others success stories as it makes us know it is possible.
Why don't you concentrate on one post and update it rather than making multiple different posts? Just an idea. It means you can update your success story and people can follow it in one place. It also means others people successes can be seen and inspire more CG to get better?
Just a thought. Take care
This site helps so much.... knowing others have been where I am and have managed to turn it all around. Just completed another day with out betting or drinking. It's hard, really hard at times, you get lost in your own mind and before you know it all your thinking is my next go my next buzz... but reading all these stories of success is driving me forward.
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