addicted *TRIGGER*

addicted *TRIGGER*

phoster

Registrant
okay, i am still dealing with stuff, and still expressing some disturbing stuff. please, make sure you are strong and safe before reading this...


I have come to believe that dealing with this is a cycle, a series of discoveries. The first thing that happens is that the fact of the abuse hits you. You finally break down, and admit you were abused. That throws you into a loop for a time, but you finally accept it. Then I began dealing with how it related to my life, both past and present. I guess I have finally grown up enough to step back, and deal with the emotions of the abuse.

When I faced the facts of the abuse, I thought I was dealing with the emotions of it as well. Let me tell you, being able to tell a good story, and describe the abuse, doesnt mean nothing. It is a small thing really. I managed to do that much without feeling much at all really. I mean on the surface I was distraught, and thought I was feeling it, but I still had a wall between me and it. I could come here, or go to my T, and tell everyone everything that happened, but I was still at arms length. I was playing the events, but I wasnt feeling them.

I thought I knew how I felt back then. I knew I was afraid, but I didnt know how much. When I came out of my trance, I knew fear, real fear. I knew what it felt like to be five again. I knew fear so deep that my heart felt like it would bust through my ribs, were I was near vomiting, where my mouth was so dry it hurt. I knew what it was like to be five, watching a man undress, knowing I was next, afraid of being caught, afraid of doing it, afraid of not doing it. I could feel the confusion racing inside, all the jumbled up stuff. I was afraid and excited all at once. It was intoxicating in a way. It felt like leaping from a cliff. You knew you were in serious trouble, yet there was a rush to it too. The thrill mixing together with fear was a powerful thing. No wonder I became hooked on it. It was more powerful than any drug could have induced.

In a strange way, I felt alive in those bushes that day in a way I keep trying to recapture. My body was so alert and on edge that everything seemed a little brighter, a little sharper. In those bushes I was high, as high as if on drugs. The combination of fear and discovery had my body in overdrive. I felt like superman in a weird kind of way. No wonder I kept trying to recapture that. As awful as it was on one level, it was fantastic on another. In that moment I felt alive like never before, and like I would never feel again. Ive come close a few times, but I have never recaptured those feelings, and I see now I wanted to; want to.

I acted out over and over, deepening my investment, as I searched for that rush. At first small things would give me a taste of it, but as the years past it took more and more. In the beginning perhaps showing some skin would give it too me, but by the end, it took being raped and hurt to tap into it. It took being with someone new, or trying a new thing to tap it. There always had to be an edge to it.

It wasnt just sex either. I raced bicycles as a semi-pro. I captured that rush in wild, on the edge rides down mountains, or in crushing an opponent, pushing myself just a little harder, and breaking him. Everything was about capturing that moment, that feeling.

I like to think of that day in the bushes as an evil day, but my body and deep down emotions dont agree. They see it as one of the greatest moments in life, and they continually drive me to try and capture it again. Just admitting that, I can see how screwed up it is, but I also know it is the truth. I say I hate abuse, and hate my abuser, but I have spent my entire life trying to crawl back into those bushes again, trying to feel alive like I did then and there. Mat was a pusher, and gave me a hit of an emotional drug, and like an addict, I have spent all I had to feel that high again. I can never capture it again, but I keep trying.

My name is Jeff. I am a survivor, and I am an abuse addict. My drug of choice is the rush of being abused. I will trade all and sell all to get it. Though I know it is bad for me, I cant stop myself. I am addicted to being abused.
 
Jeff,

Some people NEED to feel the emotions of the abuse in order to feel alive. Some people need to feel mental end emotional pain in order to feel alive. Some people need to acquire to the point of poverty in order to be alive.

That's me all over. I overspend, but I'm working on it. It IS an addiction, because it gives me an instant rush of pleasure and self-worth. It's nasty, but there we are.

I need to re-experience the abuse in my mind (a couple of times, subconsciously, with my body) in order to feel that it was real and it arouses me physically. It shouldn't, and I feel sick when I feel the arousal, but it is a part of who I am . Hopefully, with the work I'm doing, I'll replace the bad stuff with the good stuff. It's already happening.

I need to hurt myself emotionally in order to control the pain of being emotionally abused, both as a child an adult. It makes me feel that I at least can control the source of pain, and it gives me power. It also brings about feeling when I feel numb. I call it "emotional cutting" becuase, I think, it does the same things as hurting yourself physically.

There's no shame in knowing you have a problem. You're doing the right things to overcome it, and that's a noble, powerful thing. I'm so proud of you, and I think everyone here is proud of you.

My name is Scot, and I am a spending addict and an emotional self-injurer. I have no power over it, save the decision to NOT do the behavior today.

Peace and love, Jeff.

Scot
 
Jeff You said:

My name is Jeff. I am a survivor, and I am an abuse addict. My drug of choice is the rush of being abused. I will trade all and sell all to get it. Though I know it is bad for me, I cant stop myself. I am addicted to being abused.
PLease read my story. I fell in love with it too. I fell in love with the pain. Montainbiking, inline sktating with no protection, snowboarding (and I am 63 for gods sake). As a small child I thought beatings were an indcation of love and attention.

You can break the circle. I did it by working on my inner self, my self respect and my sense of worth. I can feel pretty good about myself now and I channel that seeking of rush or high to something that will not destroy my self worth.

Actually when I was a male prostitute I would search for the client who was the meanest and roughest. I was looking for a surrogate me to kill me. The closer I came to death or intense pain the greater the rush. I can tell you quite frankly now that I recognize it as self destructive behavior.
 
I am a recovering alcoholic.

I have recognized the symptoms of s-x addiction in myself for some time.

I'm maybe just beginning the first step with it, admitting/accepting that there is a higher power.

Alcohol/drug addiction for me was all about re-capturing, reliving the original high. It seems to me, for me to be the same thing with my s-x addiction.

I don't know if it is an advantage or not but the nature of my role in reliving the experience is such that I cannot seek it out with others--they have to impose it on me. So, instead of seeking out guys to do it with, I use p-rn and I use it extensively and the only, only thing about it that works is using it to relive the original experience/experiences.

Maybe I should start going to s-x anonymous meetings or whatever they are called. That would be a big step and one I am not prepared for right now. I do not believe that I would be understood and supported there and I do not want to deal with or cannot yet deal with my partner's response to my attending those meetings.

Whatever the source of it, an addiction is an addiction. I was told long ago that many addicts are adrenaline addicts also, prone to taking risks. What a combo! Its hard to deal with and I am sure cannot be handled in isolation. I have to have a support network to engage in recovery and addiction recoveryt is, I believe, the only way out for me.
 
in my city it is SLAA (sex and love addicts anon.) in women the addiction often takes the form of needing to be in a relationship all the time, more than actual sex that is where the love thing comes from. i went for a while, but i didnt feel i met the definition of a sex addict. i have control over my sexuality. i mean i can choose to be sexual or not, and when and how i am sexual. on the surface i have symptoms of being addictive, but i have control where an addict wouldnt. in my mind there is a difference between wanting to and having to. an addict has to, and cannot stop no matter how much he wants to. in my case, yes i liked being abused, but i didnt have to. i could be sexual when and how i chose to be.

that said, i did go to enough meetings to see value there even if you arent technically a sex addict. the support and fellowship, and being able to discuss sexual issues would be worth a lot to me. since i have no specific support groups for survivors here, perhaps one that is almost and kind of applies is better than none. i dont know.
 
Okay obviously there is someting going on that is bothering you...maybe you can concentrate on dealing with the behaviors and feelings that bother you and worry about the labels later on.

Hope you are feeling better.
 
Just wanted to send a note of encouragement to think about going back to SLAA (or SAA, if there one in your area). I recommend SLAA because it has been so helpful for me, going hand in hand with my recovery from sexual abuse. I used porn addictively, as an escape from feeling, and until I committed to not acting out, and to being accountable for not acting out on my bottom lines (which includes not fantasizing about being sexually abused), I couldn't really break through into much hope. So much of the time I was in the fog of despair, feeling trapped in the cycle of acting out, then feeling like the worst piece of shit in the world and therefore deserving of being abused, then acting out again to escape the pain I was giving myself.

You said that you would do anything to be sexually abused and that you can't stop. That sounds very different from your statement that you can control yourself sexually.

Not trying to overanalyze anything you expressed, just encouraging seeking more help and hope.

Jeff
 
to Phoster and the rest:

today marks 126 weeks since i last rented pornographic movies. i am not sure why i stopped using them. i miss them very much and the 'rush' i got from using them.

i have asked myself if i am a sex addict. i truly do not know the answer.

a psychologist i saw for a year, i told him i went to a 12 step sex meeting and he said that i did not belong there.

so i do not know what to think. i do not know when i will rent again.

that is all men. may our Gods bless us all. sincerely,


bec
 
Hey Jeff... it is so powerful for me to hear your experiences with the after-effects of trance work. It is intense, powerful work and I have been doing it for a few years now, and it still amazes me. Everything you describe is damn similar to what I have experienced with it.

Yes, there is a HUGE difference between the telling of your story and actually going back and re-feeling the event. You are very brave to acknowledge that the abuse had a powerful effect on you - both good and bad.

When I was reading your thoughts about the abuse as an addiction, I know how powerful acting out can be and that the rush of it does feel similar to other addictions. However, and I do truly believe this, I think that it is not quite accurate to label it an addiction or that you were just trying to find that adrenaline rush again. In many ways, I think that when abuse happens - violent or coercive, it doesn't matter - our brain gets locked there... and if we haven't returned to the true subconscious effect it had on us, our brain, for some reason, keeps searching to recreate the abuse to make sense of it.

I sometimes think that there is a part of every brain that (mistakenly) makes the connection that if I recreate this feeling (through acting out) then we will understand what happened to us and make sense of it. When that doesn't happen, and if we continue to let our subconscious continue to do this, then we just continue the cycle. Our rational brain knows that it is not the way to go about it, but there is some well-meaning, but backwards part of the human psyche that seeks to make sense of trauma by recreating trauma.

That, of course, is the point of regression work. To bring you back to the trauma, so that you can deal with it with adult parts of yourself instead of just as a little kid.

It sounds like you are making a lot of connections and really feeling what happened - possibly for the first time in your life. You are brave and have all my respect. PM me if you need to.

-Sean
 
i dont consider myself an addict, because i dont have to have those things to enjoy sex. i can enjoy sex outside of the abuse, outside of fantasies and pornography. there was a point i was acting out with porn a lot, but that was long ago. if i was truly addicted, i wouldnt have been able to do that.

i like to be dominated, or to use rape fantasies in relation to having sex, but i dont have to. that is why i dont consider myself addicted. i can have normal, vanilla sex with my wife perfectly fine. i just enjoy tweaking it with the other at times to break the routine.

no, i am certain i am not addicted.

i also have been thinking really deeply, really intently on what is driving all of this. one thing causes me problems more than anything else. i liked being sexual, and that conflicts with my morality that says i shouldnt have liked being abused. that conflict caused me more pain than anything.

we all experience painful events. for example, i broke my collar bone in a wreck. it hurt, i needed surgery, and it took time to recover, but in the end, the pain didnt affect my whole life. any pain or fear i felt at the hands of my abuser, didnt affect my whole life. i decided somethng else was doing that. i discovered that the conflict over enjoying aspects of it, and over acting out to keep feeling it were what was driving my pain. the insight came on me as i updated my journal. i suddenly realized that i was upset mostly because my life didnt measure up to what i wanted it to be. i am not saying that is the case for everyone here, but i hope it helps some to step back and ask, what is driving all of this? what is driving your self-hate, your depression and sexual issues? is it really you, or just how you are looking at something? i cannot even begin to tell how deeply peaceful i feel this morning, like i have finally seen a light i have never seen before. it wasnt my fault, is no longer just something i say, it is something i know.
 
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