Addict's Messy Marriage

Why is it always about me? It was about me during my addiction and some how I still making it about myself in recovery too. Walk with me as I explore this pattern and what I'm learning to combat this tendency.

What are you willing to give up to stay sober? What if you gave up something you never thought you would give up and found it not only helped you stay sober but be more engaged in life and connected to your family. Walk with me as I discuss changes in my life that have benefited me greatly.

After 18 years of marriage, I continue to find ways to take productive conversations down a triggering path. Walk with me as I explore using words to correct my faulty assumptions and be there for my wife.

What lies underneath everything? I found out recently for me that it was a feeling of worthlessness. Walk with me as I explore my feeling of worthlessness and the image I use to cover it up.

It is amazing how much of my life I have spent escaping reality. I will expand on some topics touched upon last time so, walk with me as I explore living consciously and how it is changing the way I live my life.

Sometimes as an addict I speed right by the things I do wrong and try to move directly to the fixing phase. Walk with me as I explore some new revelations about myself from a book I'm reading and some changes my wife and I have made. 

I have spent 20 years wanting to change and though I have made progress in some areas, wanting to change has held me back from actually changing. Walk with me as I explore I method I have started to use to help me change long entrenched behaviors.

Walk with me as I explore some research about the brain I discovered and how it is helping to change my life and the way I deal with difficult situations. 

Walk with me as I explore how my childhood contributed to me making unilateral decisions with my time and the lessons I'm learning.

What comes out of you when things get hard? Is it positive, negative or both? Walk with me as I examine what came out of me as things got tough the last couple of weeks.

Have you ever thought you knew a topic really well but learned something that made you realized you missed the most basic premise? That is how I felt this week coming to a realization about emotions and my choices. Walk with me as I explore these thoughts and apply them to my life. 

Have you lost someone close to you? Have you had to watch someone close to you grieve? Walk with me as I explore grieving and watching my wife and kids grieve when we recently lost my father-in-law. 

Walk with me as I walk through some childhood lessons I am learning right now. I have found it is important for me to recognize these childhood lessons, not to use as an excuse, but to help me recognize that these lessons are still achievable as an adult. I might have been taught as a child that it was easier to give up but as an adult I can choose to never give up and learn these lessons.

Even after I gain sobriety, selfishness continues to be a nagging issue. I also know the type of selfishness I do is not good for me either since it is helping no one. Walk with me as I explore selfishness in my life.

I realized after the last podcast on fear that something was missing, the consequences of giving into fear. The consequence of giving into fear is regret. Walk with me as I talk about past regrets that came from fear and the process of preventing future regret and overcoming fear.

There are legitimate fears and there are fake fears. How do we know when our fears are adult fears or when they are child fears? Walk with me as I tackle fears I've been working on and new fears I'm beginning to work on overcoming. Fears are a tricky thing as they are rooted in memories, but the memories were based on our skills and abilities to make decisions as a child and not based on the skill...

Have you noticed that the further into recovery you get the less motivation you have to become a better person? This has been the case for me. Walk with me as I explore this thought in my life.

Being Alone . It could probably be the title to the scariest movie I would ever watch. Why is being alone so scary? Walk with me as I explore this topic in my life.

It is amazing that it is already a year later. Walk with me as I review my old podcasts and the progress I have made in the last year. Let me know the stories and progress that you made in this last year. E-mail me at addictsmessymarriage@gmail.com.

Trauma is a tricky and complicated thing and even more so when we are talking about our spouse's trauma. Walk with me as I explore this topic and recent events that I reviewed as a result.

We use the term resilience a lot but I'm not sure I fully new what it meant until I studied it recently. Walk with me as I review the idea of resilience and how I'm learning to build the skill.

I have found there are a lot of similarities between recovering from addiction and improving my marriage. One of these concepts is the idea of being proactive vs. reactive. Listen as I walk through how this concept is helping me improve my marriage. 

Why do we continue to use the same techniques from childhood to deal with life as an adult. Walk with me as I review how self preservation helped me as a child but is hurting me as an adult. 

No time more than now are our spouses as maxed out as they have ever been. Between homeschooling and taking care of the house they are on the verge of breaking. Walk with me as I commit to not being the third child in my house and take responsibility to help my wife. 

They say we will see the biggest spike in divorces coming out of this quarantine, but what if we used this time to improve our marriage and family. What if we are able to look at and communicate about those areas that we have ignored for so long. Walk with me as I explore these thoughts in my own marriage and family.