Everyone Is Addicted To Something

I learned in Celebrating Recovery that everyone is addicted to something. Notably, I am an addict of the news and specifically Yahoo News (since 1999).  I can, with will power, quit for a long time(once over a year). However, the desire to go back never leaves me. I end up going back.  I also bite my nails. More over, I continually try to prove my self and cannot overcome it fully. That is a different kind of addiction I guess.

If you cannot stop doing something, then you are addicted. Additionally, if when you do stop, you find yourself thinking about it and wanting to go back even years later.

What I also learned more completely is that the key step is to overcome denial. Bringing it into the light has a tendency to disempower it. I often fall to yahoo news (or other news), but I can live to win again and find better ways to face.

Knowing that I am an addict also helps me to see others and not look down on them. We are all humans and have our gaps. Only God is holy.

I found out in marriage counseling that I tend to withdraw in a marriage conflict. I had this pattern which is like an addiction. That is infuriating to my spouse. It was not easy to learn to move toward her when she was angry at me. Additionally, moving meant to take responsibility for getting her angry.

So here we are. Sinners in need of God’s power and love. The least we can do is be open with God and man.

Everybody is Addicted, But We Can Face

It is so freeing to be open and to be self aware. When I learned that Jo’s depressions were my fault, that was a pretty heavy fact. I needed to change 40 plus years of habits dating back to earliest childhood.

However, it was also freeing. I knew I could not change my spouse, but I could change myself.

Furthermore, to throw it on the table disempowers Satan who loves the darkness.

I once totally stopped biting my nails. Jo was massively fighting with me, and our small business was dying at the same time. Suddenly, I saw you could put something bitter on your fingers. I did and stopped biting my nails completely for perhaps half a year. When the crisis in marriage and business both passed, I found myself biting my nails again. Seems my sense of self needed some sense of achievement when all was going bad. Ah well. We are wonderfully complicated children of a loving Heavenly Father. Only He knows me completely and not me.

In the mean time, I will seek to be open about my humanity to give Satan less places to hide. My addictions will keep reminding me of my falleness.