For the month of June I thought I’d try an experiment.  I’m going to share my thoughts on pornography addiction, recovery, prevention, relationships, healing, helping others, depression and anxiety, and anything else that comes up in my daily study, interactions with others, working with sponsees, and 12 step group meetings.  I don’t know what the topics will be until I write them.  I’ll try to keep them to 3 paragraphs or less.  Today is the first post and to kick off this journey I thought I would share my experience with a fellow group member from my SAAPP group.  Let’s call him Carl (for fun, I use a random name generator and pick the first name).  One day on the way home from work I got a call from Carl.  He said he wanted to check in with me.  I had never had someone call me to do a check in.  I’ve done check ins before with a private group I used to hold in my home so I thought it might be something like that.  As it turns out, it was basically a  sharing how he felt overall with a focus on any strong emotions like anger, fear, resentment, loneliness, stress, anxiety, etc.  Carl would also talk about how he was doing with his 12 step plan and how his family was doing, especially his wife.  I also took the time to get to know him better and found we had some similarities working with our church youth group and we swapped some stories on helping the youth recognize the dangers of pornography.

The most interesting thing to me was when I was done with the phone call.  I felt great!  It really lifted me up.  He called several more times over that month as it was his own 30 day challenge to call someone every day.  I looked forward to the calls and I began to share my own check in of how I felt.  I even found that there were two times that in talking with him I realized I had been holding on to some resentment from work and that is a big no-no for a recovering addict.  I wasn’t being honest with myself and I wasn’t working my program.  Sharing that with him, got me back on track, lifted me up, and made me feel great!  Thanks Carl 🙂

So if you’re looking for a way to strengthen your resolve, or to help you work your 12 step program, consider giving yourself a 30 day challenge to call someone each day and just let them know how you’re feeling and whether you’re holding on to any strong emotions.  Holding on to those emotions is the first step to being triggered which can lead to a slip.  You can read more about triggers in some of my previous posts:  overcoming a trigger, bottom lines to avoid triggers, and what it feels like to be triggered.  Resolve today to create a new pattern of good behavior.  Pick up that phone and call someone 🙂

My name is Mike