Quote | | nursethesoul

Getting in your car late at night to find a way to satisfy your urges. Planning how you will use behaviors after you leave a social function. Not being able to focus on the person in front of you because your urges are so high. Feeling incredibly guilty for doing something so ‘gross’.

Hiding the evidence of your behaviors. Promising you will never do it again.

Those who struggle with bulimia and binge-eating know these experiences first-hand, and so do people who struggle with sexual addiction. Sometimes these difficult struggles can go hand-in-hand, and both can follow a similar pattern of thoughts and behaviors.

Rituals are the ‘preparation’ stage of using behaviors. This may involve driving to a grocery store for the binger or beginning to surf the web for the sexual addict.

It can also involve beginning the day in a certain way, picking a fight with a spouse or wearing certain clothes. Rituals serve to enhance the anticipated behavior as well as induce a kind of trance or feeling of being on auto-pilot.

The actual use of the behavior can last only minutes or extend through an entire day. Either way, the ultimate goal is the same—to experience the relief from pain, anxiety and ultimately the feeling of shame.

One one-hand the behaviors are the high-point of the experience and on the other hand they ‘break the spell” of the trance which began with the rituals. What follows can feel devastating.

“I’ll never change” | “I’m disgusting” | “I can’t believe I did that”

These are all common thoughts which quickly rush into the brain following the use of behavior. The feeling of hopelessness is closely accompanied by more feeling of shame.

This can sometimes immediately lead to another cycle of rituals and behaviors but often results in moving on to the next stage of the cycle.

This stage is characterized by the all-too-familiar statement, “I’ll never do that again” and can produce it’s own sort of ‘high’ and desire to ‘get clean.’ In fact, it, like the bulimia, binge-eating, or sexually compulsive behaviors, it may be another way of running from the feelings of shame, and it is just as ineffective.

This resolve fails to effectively deliver someone from this vicious cycle for two reasons:

First, is that it only attempts to deal with the behavior, not the experience of being wounded which created the distorted thinking in the first place. In fact, it reinforces the thinking and feeling of being flawed. Secondly, it does little to rewire the neuropathways in the brain which are so strongly associated with the habitual behaviors.