Sometimes I beat myself up way too much. Sadly, quite often I don’t even realizing when I’m doing it either. And it always seems to stem out of an action that I’ve deemed I could have done better in.
I at least know where this pattern began. It started in my childhood with my many attempts at over pleasing my parents, especially my mother. Due to their alcoholism and mental imbalances, rarely were my sister and I given any unconditional praise for something we did. Instead “B’s” in school could have been “A’s”, silver medals from swim competitions could have been gold, chores done inside or outside our house could have been done better, etc. This constant striving to improve eventually became a pattern of constant efforts to reach perfection and each time I didn’t reach that, I’d beat myself up with an imaginary bat. Unfortunately, there are times I’m still doing this today, most of which seem to be occurring in my recovery from my sex and love addiction.
A good example is one that came a few weeks ago when I was on the computer with a friend of mine. We were having a friendly chat online when they suddenly sent a flirtatious sexual comment my way. And although that comment was harmless in itself, it immediately triggered me into old wants and desires to act out in my sex and love addiction. Ultimately, I then found myself throughout our remaining dialogue walking on the fringe of old behaviors that if kept up would have definitely landed me in a total relapse. Thankfully that didn’t happen, mostly because I shifted the topic of conversation to a much healthier level by the time it ended. But when my dreams that night became filled with sexual thoughts of this person, I woke up feeling guilty and immediately picked up that imaginary bat. I spent the majority of the morning that day beating myself up until my sponsor from that program of recovery gave me a gentle reminder that I needed to put the bat down and be more gentle with myself.
For someone that’s lived the bulk of their life constantly carrying their trusted bat, that’s been a very hard thing to do. In some cases, it’s almost become second nature for me to beat myself up when I haven’t navigated through a situation with the perfection my mind thinks should have been present. It appears that my brain still hasn’t come to acceptance that the perfection it’s constantly trying to obtain is actually totally unobtainable and always will be. That’s probably why it’s so hard for me to put the bat down once I’ve picked it up and started the pummeling of myself.
In reference to my online conversation with that friend, it took me having to shift my thoughts to ones that were more positive about what I did do versus what I didn’t to put the bat down. I had to remind myself I didn’t go even remotely close to engaging in my old cyber sex chatting I once did with voracious regularity. I had to remind myself that my dreams were just that, my dreams, and out of my control. And lastly, I had to remind myself that I’m human and have been trying my damnedest to stay healthy in recovery.
I understand that it’s going to take some more time to fully remove this pattern of picking up that imaginary bat and beating myself with it. I think the key is in reminding myself how far I’ve already come when I used to self-flagellate myself throughout much of every single day. I’m a lot healthier now than I ever used to be and I truly am doing my best to remain that way. So hopefully the next time when something like this happens, I can remind myself to put the bat down as soon as I pick it up. Because nothing good has ever or will ever come out of beating myself up…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson