Q&A – What does it mean to be powerless and making room for the miracle when we 'give up'

Narrator: This is Pathway to Recovery, an SA Lifeline Foundation podcast featuring hosts Tara McCausland, who is the SA Lifeline Executive Director, and Justin B., a sex addict living in long-term recovery. We have conversations with experts and individuals who understand the pathway to healing from sexual addiction and betrayal trauma because we believe that recovering individuals leads to the healing of families. Welcome to the Pathway to Recovery podcast.

Tara McCausland: I'm your host, Tara McCausland. And hey, Justin, thanks for being here with me.

Justin B.: Thank you, Tara. I'm happy to be here today.

Tara McCausland: Really grateful for Justin. If you don't know, Justin hosts 2 other podcasts, 3 podcasts. And I can't tell you how helpful it is to have an experienced podcaster on the other side of this conversation.

Justin B.: Yeah, but I'm quite disorganized in my podcasting. I'm grateful to have your organization in this, Tara?

Tara McCausland: Oh, loosely organized. But to our listeners, thank you so much for being here. And we have a Q&A for you today. The question we're answering today is, what does it mean to be powerless? And what does unmanageability look like? I'm not going to put this in the title, but how is it helpful to admit powerlessness and unmanageability? Because that, that can feel really, really scary on both the side of the addicted and on the side of the betrayed.

In fact, tell me, Justin, for you, what was that feeling like when you finally admitted to yourself, I can't kick this on my own? What did that feel like? And what did it take to get there?

Justin B.: It felt like garbage. I hated that feeling. In fact, that's what kept me out of the rooms for probably 10 years, 8 to 10 years before I finally came in was there was no way I was ever going to say I was powerless over anything. Because if I can believe it, I can achieve it. You know, all of these different phrases that, that, that I thought were absolutely true and were in many areas of my life. But when it came to this, it was not true.

No matter how much I tried, no matter how many affirmations and books and prayers and songs and whatever else I did, I couldn't do it. And I hated that feeling. No one comes into the rooms of recovery on wings of eagles. We come crawling in on our bellies. And I had to be in that place.

Tara McCausland: And for a betrayed partner, I think what's pretty typical is they will have tried for years to fix their addicted loved one. And all with the intent of doing good, right? But as we often talk about, sometimes we step in and act as if we are God in that place of— that helping place. And our lives, in an attempt to fix and correct, our lives have become— Yeah. crazy. We start taking the computer with us because we can't trust our child or our spouse with the computer.

Yeah. Right? And we become a policeman that stays awake at night wondering if our loved one is acting out in the darkness of the night. Right? Uh, and there's no peace there. And that is what unmanageability looks like, is we've tried to control and it didn't work.

Justin B.: It didn't work. Yeah, I was just going to say that is the very definition of unmanageability. Um, if I'm coming from it from a betrayed point of view, in fact, I think this has been said in this, my wife and I, when I first disclosed to her, her saying that she would say to me, I just wish I could put you in my pocket and protect you from everything forever and just basically control you so that nothing would ever happen again.

And unfortunately, That leads to insanity, not just of the spouse, the betrayed, but of the addict, of the addicted, being micromanaged and controlled. It leads to the unmanageability and powerlessness to both. Yeah.

Tara McCausland: So I wanted to just read this little snippet from our SAL book. This comes from page 314. And this is speaking specifically to the betrayed partner, but it says this, making this admission, which is that we admitted we were powerless. over sexual addiction that our lives have become unmanageable. That's step 1. Making this admission can be painful, even frightening. Our experience is that attempting to work recovery without acknowledging that we are dealing with the effects of sexual addiction and that our lives have become unmanageable will likely result in a continuation of the very behaviors we were wanting to change, bringing shame, despair, hopelessness.

And so the irony is, is that when we admit powerlessness and accept unmanageability, it is in that admittance, it is in that powerlessness that power comes, but capital P. What are your thoughts about that? You've talked so much about like firing the little g god and, and hiring the big G God. Yeah.

Justin B.: So often, like I mentioned, the powerlessness thing is just something that I could not And would not grasp for a long, long time. And yet I totally misunderstood everything. In nearly every faith tradition internationally, whether it's Christianity, Judaism, Islam, any of the Eastern religions, the core of those religions is the concept of surrender, is the concept of you can't do it on your own, the concept of Give it to your higher power and your higher power will take you through it.

And I refused to see that. I'm a red-blooded American. I can do anything I want to do as I set my mind to it. But that goes, it flies in the face of every moral religious teaching throughout thousands and thousands of years of history. And who am I to buck that tradition to say, nope, that's all bunk. That's not right. As I have come to that conclusion of my, my own powerlessness, In my addiction and in my life, honestly, the unmanageability of my entire life, and I'm powerless over so many things.

I actually have more power—the capital P power—as I say, "You know what, God? I don't have this." And we look in different scripture. We'll look in the New Testament. When I am weak, then am I strong. It's not because I'm strong; it's because my higher power steps in and makes me strong. I delight. In weakness, because then it comes in, the strength comes in. And when I can have that attitude change and, and shift of perception that, you know what, I'm an addict, I can't do this on my own, but I know something can.

And that's where we go from step 1 to step 2. I believe that something can. The power is out there. It has to be, or what's the point? And that's, that's my thought on that.

Tara McCausland: When we've done all that we can personally and we have not made progress, that can lead us to feeling hopeless, right? Like there is no solution. But in the admittance again of powerlessness and unmanageability, it truly does open that golden doorway of hope, believing that I never was responsible to fix this by myself in the first place, that there is a power greater than mine That has the ability to, to solve this unsolvable, impossible problem that's haunted me for maybe decades, my whole life.

If you're someone that's dealt with addiction for a long time, or as a betrayed spouse or loved one, that admittance really does open that, that doorway of hope and a feeling of, of freedom that I'm not shackled by my own ability. By my own intelligence, by my own genius, to find my way out of this mess.

Justin B.: One of our common readings, either to open or close SAL meetings for men, comes from the White Book of Sexaholics Anonymous. It's on page 202, where it's, it's entitled, What Is a Sexaholic and What Is Sexual Sobriety? One of the last phrases in here, it goes through and it defines sexual addiction, is it defines what it means to be powerlessness. But the last couple of sentences, until we had been driven to the point of despair, until we really wanted to stop but could not, we did not give ourselves to this program of recovery.

This program of recovery is for those who know they have no other option but to stop, and their own enlightened self-interest must tell them this. And I think until I am willing to go, I can't do it, no matter what my, my spouse says, no matter what my parents say, no matter what my ecclesiastical leaders say, no matter what a judge says if I'm being sentenced until I can finally admit it to myself, it's not gonna happen.

I have to embrace powerlessness. I have to embrace the unmanageability of what I have tried my whole life and look at what have I lost? What are the things that I've tried under my own power to do that have failed? And my list for each of these, my logs with the things that I've tried to do that have failed and the things that I've lost are just way too long. They, and, and I finally went, you know what?

The pain of the solution has to be less than what the problem I have built here is. And I'm gonna go try and find it. I'm gonna turn away from the corner in the darkness and gaze out and hopefully see just a beam of light of hope. And it will be there if I look. I, that's my experience.

Tara McCausland: Yeah. I'll end with this thought. One of my favorite scriptures talks about experimenting upon the word. And for some people, this concept of admitting powerlessness and unmanageability, while yes, that might sound terrifying, experiment upon the word. We here at SA Lifeline know the power in admitting powerlessness and unmanageability. As, as the daughter of a recovering addict and a recovering betrayed spouse, I see that power still in their lives as they, while they've been working at this for 20 years almost, they have learned to rely on a power greater than their own power.

And they've been able to do incredible things, even miraculous things because of it. So you start your own experiment and see what happens for you.

Justin B.: I'm going to take a popular phrase and twist it. One of the phrases in recovery is don't give up before the miracle happens. And I'm going to twist it. Give up so the miracle can happen.

Tara McCausland: Love it. Well, thank you, Justin. And thank you to our listeners for being here with us. We'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us.

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