Following Discovery or disclosure these questions will surely be on your mind. If you are anything like me, you have been living a life that has secrets buried underneath. Have you been allowing lust to run rampant in every aspect of your life.? So how to you start to heal?
Here is a list of 5 resources that you can start working on today to start your healing journey:
- Chat with a priest or pastor– This step was huge for me. Getting someone who is a lot closer connected to God than you are that can lay down some steps for help. They also should have good insight on the healing and recovery options available in your area. My priest who I still chat with today was a huge inspiration in helping me heal. He laid down the initial framework for the process of what it was going to take to heal.
- Desire to change– This is the first step, without this there is no healing or recovery. It’s natural to feel like you did nothing wrong at first. However, in order to heal and to recover you must recognize that you have a problem and that the solution you have been using to heal your pain has become unmanageable. You will only heal as much as you desire. A good friend in recovery said if you are 90% in then you are 100% out. Go all in embrace the change.
- Awareness- Start paying attention to everything that you are bringing into your ecosystem. From TV, social media, music, movies, friends, the environments that you find yourself in. Are they filled with lust or lustful thoughts? Are there movies that you need to skip now? What kind of music are you listening too? I was shocked once God woke me up and showed me how much crap I was feeding my system. I had to cut out funny tv shows because they referenced too much lustful content. The music that I was listening to was trash! It definitely did not show any respect for women. Social media was just one more step to pornography with all the lustful images on there. I had to stop hanging out with certain friends that wanted to keep partying and drinking. I also had to be very careful where I went and watch where my eyes would wander too. Now that I was paying attention and aware of what I took in, I could start to choose what was going to help me heal and what would set me back.
- Support groups- Check your local area to see which groups are available. When I first started, I had to do zoom because in person was shut down. However, once I was able to go in person it was a game changer. The connection that you build in those groups with other men who are struggling just like you is priceless. People who accept you for who you are. I would not recommend a group that allows you to choose your own sobriety. (or terms of your own). I’ve been to some groups where guys said that pornography was an activity that was okay and they considered it to be sober. I’d say that if it’s not acceptable to God, then it’s considered acting out. Our choices are what got us here in the first place. We need a higher law. A higher standard than ourselves. So, find a group that defines sobriety in line with Gods standards.
- Counseling- Personal and Marriage counseling is needed to help you heal. Prior to recovery there was a stigma about going to counseling, it meant that you were admitting that something was wrong with you! Counseling is for messed up people! Well, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. In anything in life when there is a problem you fix it. You don’t say well my car battery died, I’ll just pretend there is nothing wrong here. No, you fix it because you won’t be able to go anywhere until it gets fixed. Why is it that we fix all these material things right away, but we completely neglect the interior things and drive around with a dead battery inside our hearts? Going to a personal counselor helped me work on me, and the pain that I had from childhood. It gave me tools to work on empathy and patience. Prior to recovery those did not exist. Marriage therapy was a way to connect with my wife, and for her and I to get on the same page.
I’ll get into all these more in depth later with the details on things that we learned and how they have helped save our marriage. Thank God for our good priest friend, the grace to have the desire to change, the ability to be aware, support groups to connect with other recovering men, and counseling to help heal directly.
God Bless!