Acting out and such - TRIGGERS

Acting out and such - TRIGGERS
B

Beyond Abuse

Registrant
I dont know what I feel tonight. I have spent the best part of the three day weekend acting out and its getting incredibly more difficult to stop it. Its a draw that I cant resist and its very, very intrusive. I looked up sex addiction just a thought it seems I have the profile. Just another thing to add to the load. Even when I dont want sex, I act out. I am getting more daring in my attempts to act out and I fear that I might get caught. Im scared that this is taking me over.

I suppose feeling something is feeling better than nothing if you know what that feeling is and if that makes sense. I watched a television program that made me very sad. It was about military family reunions ... I had so many thoughts and a realization of so many things that I didnt have in my life that I didnt know what to think. I had tears in my eyes but I refused to let them go, as if I didnt deserve to cry. I know it doesnt make sense. Now I feel empty inside, more numb than I usually feel. I only seem to feel alive when I am acting out, the rest of the time I am an outsider looking in on my life. I have noticed sometimes when I am being the boss at work that I am inside myself watching myself talk, its not really me, almost like I'm outside looking in. I know it doesnt make sense but its real to me. I want to cry but I either cant or wont does that make sense?

I want to make light of this but I dont know how. I want to let it out but I dont know how. I want to live but I dont know how. What do I do now?
 
Hello Beyond Abuse,

You wrote:

I had tears in my eyes but I refused to let them go, as if I didnt deserve to cry. I know it doesnt make sense.
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What you've written about here does make sense...at least, to me.

I can't explain it, but I have felt it before.

Hang in there with us. Coming here and writing about it is one way to let it go.

When I share with another person who understands what is going on with me, I have to let go of it, even just for a minute or two, in order to share it.

And somehow in that minute or so, there is just enough space between me and the pain that I am clutching so tightly that something else can come in and make a difference.

I'm sad to know that you are in so mcuh pain right now. But I am glad that you came here to share it. That way, at least I know that you are not totally alone with it, and neither am I.

Thanks for your honesty.

Regards,
 
I fight the same fight you have. (That's why I'm "ForeverFighting".) I don't think it's a sex addiction. It's an addiction to feeling loved, to feeling OK inside. I feel it when I'm feeling controlled by other people, worthless, unconnected to other people, unsafe. The man in the mirror loves me to my core, even when I show him all of me. It's about unconditional love, and the abuse and our families (who maybe refused to give it to us) made us find it in fantasies. It makes perfect sense. A boy cannot survive without love. We must be loved. And if no one will love us, we find it somewhere. I imagined that my uncle SA me because of the way I looked, so I've tried to maintain that "look" all of my life, so people will still want me. There's logic in there, it's just the logic of a child.

If I stay connected here, to my wife, to my friends, to people who do love me, when I talk openly to my therapist, the urge to find love and acceptance in sex lessens. I still have my triggers that I have to stay away from. The forest on a windy day makes me do crazy things. And like you, I hope I never get caught there. And when stress gets too high, I reinact the SA, trying to rewrite history so that I was loved, that he abused me because I was good, and I wasn't abandoned afterwards. I know none of that's true, but that's where I go inside.

You're doing the right there here. Write your feelings. Build trust, and tell your story as your able. See that people both here and around you will still accept and like you as you are, as having been SA. Feel that you aren't dirty, that you're good, and you aren't to blame for what happened to you. Slowly the addiction to fake love and self-acceptance will be replaced by the real thing.

Take care of yourself. OK?
 
Originally posted by ForeverFighting:
And when stress gets too high, I reinact the SA, trying to rewrite history so that I was loved, that he abused me because I was good,
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Triggers below (Maybe)

Good point FF.
I think that pretty much sums it up for me. It is not the sex...or whatever you are into. It is the love and acceptance that was denied or promised once we gave in or played that little game. I kind of knew this but it wasn't unitl the last week or two that I understood it. Right now, I am trying to process it. It helps me to understand that I can't fill that hole. That little boy that I was will never get to hear the kind words he deserved and the betrayal will always be there. But there is something I can do now. I can tell the child I was the things I/he should have heard. It isn't the same but it is my only recourse. Another thing I can do is not talk to myself in the manner of my abuser because he only told lies. If you think about it we were good kids and didn't ask for any of this shit. The good kids that we were hasn't really changed but we've forgotten or been tricked into believing our absuers. The fact is they hurt for their own selfish reasons and they didn't really know the first damn thing about our true character...a child abuser is not a good judge of character if you ask me. It wasn't that long ago, that if you told me I had to love myself, I would have said you were full of shit and that I didn't love me and nobody else could either. Well, that wasn't me talking...that was my abuser. I was actually a pretty good kid. I love the kid I was and all I can do is be strong for him now. I don't like all this psycho-babble and as goofy as it sounds, it is true. Until we love ourselves and until we give up those old messages we believe about ourselves we will always be trapped in the cycle trying to fill that void. We can't fill it but we can set up a detour and drive around it. Probably mixed metaphor...hope you get the idea. Sorry for the ramble but I am still processing these thoughts.
Beyond, hang in there.
 
Thanks for the replies. They certainly give me food for thought and I can actually see reason in all of them. I suppose the next step is to work out how this relates to my father. Simple as that should sound, it isn't.

Right here, right now I am the boss of a department of seven people supporting seven worldwide offices. If I can keep in this mode I can hold back the irrational and emotional responses. They are still there but this is not the time or the place. The person that wrote the original post is the "me" that is on his own. That is the "me" that can't cope. Does that make sense?

In relation to loving yourself, I have tried to set myself up for success. I still look in the mirror and see the kid that didn't have the strength to fight him and I have no value in myself. I am told that I am "attractive" etc. but I can't see that. I assume that is normal.

I know there is no fast track to healing and I have a therapist and, although I am a high ranking black belt, I still fear the night, I still lock my bedroom door. That's another story.

Thanks again for answering my post and for bearing with me when I go off at a tangent. I hope this is going to be a big learning experience for me.
 
Beyond'
Even when I dont want sex, I act out. I am getting more daring in my attempts to act out and I fear that I might get caught. Im scared that this is taking me over.
Click to expand...
That's where I was not so long ago, maybe 7 or 8 years. I was acting-out with strangers, and taking huge risks by doing it in very public places.

One thing I explored in therapy was the thought "did I actually WANT to get caught?"
That was a double edged question for me, the first thought was "what would have actually happened if I had got caught?"
In reality it might have meant the police being called, getting arrested for public indeceny, having to tell my wife, family, friends and workmates. Possibly a court appearance and a fine, then the local newspaper spreading the gossip around. Would my wife have thrown me out? I suspect so. I doubt that I would have been able to face anyone after all that. Maybe life as a bum on the streets was the reality? Maybe some disease as well?

But in therapy I also considered that I was actually thinking that if I got caught then 'someone' would ask me "why did you do that?" In my fantasies at the time I can actually remember thinking that, and in that fantasy it always ended with me admitting my sexual past ( I now know it was abuse ) and people understanding, and helping.

Neither of things actually happened to me though.
When I realised that my acting-out was out of control, and I was actually looking at a very scary future, I was forced to make a choice, carry on to an almost certain crisis; or get my f*****g act together. Not that I had a clue what that meant.
But when you're looking at the bottom of the pit the only way out is up, however difficult that is.
But I think you know that already.

Dave
 
Bobby,

You raise a very interesting point. Do I want to get caught? I've been nearly caught so many times and I still do it. But the idea of if I get caught being asked why is so deep in my mind that perhaps there is reason there.

Because of all this I am sadly single, and have been for a long, long time. Relationships end when I become sexually familiar with my partner ... I date both men and women by the way ... another issue huh!

Still, I will think about what you said. It makes some sense somewhere.
 
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