D 261
Divide et impera
“No, I won’t do that. I can’t control it.”
“Yes you can. You didn’t before, but you do now. If you believe you can’t gain control of yourself, that’s a problem.”
A conversation from my recent therapy session. My therapist challenged my thinking on the spot. It felt controversial at first. I’m an ADDICT, I’m supposed to ABSTAIN bc my life became unmanageable…
Addiction is like a beast. I think of the Shadow Monster in Stranger Things 3, or David, who kicked Goliath’s ass. I have no luck with my sling gun against the beast. Unless I take it apart.
Divide and conquer, in politics and sociology, is gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into pieces that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy. What does this mean in sobriety?
There are certainly many ways and tools, like the 12 steps. I attend weekly therapy. Main goal is the same tho: you are made to face yourself. That is finding root causes of one’s addiction, addressing emotional pain, tackling toxic thought patterns and behaviours, taking care of physical health, daily rhythm, relationships, making amends etc. Here we have the beast divided into pieces. It’s definitely more manageable that way, don’t you think?
I can abstain from certain sexual behaviours but I can not block out sexuality from myself, nor do I need to. It is scary tho, to learn to manage parts of myself that have been unmanageable up until now.
