Addict's Messy Marriage podcast

Please walk with me as I reflect on my priorities and if the way I spend my time matches my priorities.

Please walk with me as I explore the positive and negative of work disappointments and the balance in life to be content with where I am but patient with what God has for the future.  Thanks for listening!

I am excited to talk about and share with you our experiences after 20 years of marriage. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Walk with me as we explore the path that has brought us to 20 years of marriage and how our marriage is far better now than we ever thought possible. 

I'm glad to be back recording podcasts again. Thank you to my wife who has encouraged me to keep going.    Walk with me as I talk about a book called How to Live the Victorious Life by an Unknown Christian and how it has impacted my life. Listen as I talk about my pride and how an unwillingness to die to myself has prevented me from stepping into the promises God has for me. 

It took me a long time in life to recognize when to fight my battles, and it is not in the moment but long before that in the preparation. I would much rather fight battles around spiritual, physical and emotional disciplines than fight battles in the moment by trying to say the right thing, not respond selfishly, and not throw in the towel and relapse. Walk with me as I explore the progress I have made and still need to make in preparing for life. 

After the last episode on fear versus authenticity, it felt like more was here to unpack. I started to realize these fears that were covering up my authenticity were causing me to feel pride and to seek external validation. Walk with me as I explore the dangers of external validation.

I have noticed that my fear and insecurities steal my authenticity. Instead of coming across humble and authentic, often times I come across as having something to prove. Walk with me as I explore fear vs authenticity in my life. 

Have you ever wondered what happened to the day? Why did it end badly? Why are the days not getting better? Walk with me as I explore the power of thoughts and beliefs and how I'm looking to change this into a positive for me. Resources mentioned in the podcast: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End by David Gibson 208. PERSPECTIVE, HAPPINESS & SOCIAL FRICTION WITH DR. RANGAN CHATTERJEE (REPLAY) https://gregmckeown.com/podcast/episode/2perspective-happiness-social-friction-with-dr-rangan-chatterjee/

Have you wondered why we do not do the things that will benefit our future selves now? Why do we not exercise or eat right or do something for others? Listen as I walk through a recent learning and how that has shown up in my life. Here is the link to the TED radio hour podcast: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1182387784 

Passivity can seem like such a benign character defect in the short term but it turns into a big one over time. Walk with me as I explore passivity in my life and in a recent example involving my neighbors. 

Often circumstances are outside of my control, and people's actions are always outside my control. How I respond to circumstances and people's actions dictates my quality of life. Walk with me as I explore the concept of in spite of my circumstances as I look at recent circumstances in my life. 

Have you ever realized that you think of things that could be positive or negative in life in a negative way? I'm learning to reframe things into positive realities. Walk with me as I explore humility, rejection, and failure to reframe these into positive realities that work for me. 

I feel so honored to have my wife join me on this podcast. She is such a wonderful and insightful person, and I am so glad that you will get to meet her. I hope this will be the beginning of many podcasts that we do together. We share a bit of our story and some things we learned along the way. Please join us and see if you relate to our struggles in this journey. 

I spoke at a retreat this past weekend and have been thinking about all of the information I have learned about the brain. The brain is so amazing. It is also amazing how we have the power to strengthen our brain through activities and techniques. Walk with me as I connect the dots between what I have learned about my brain and what I can do to improve my brain. 

Have you ever wondered why you do the things you do? Walk with me as I explore dopamine and how it causes my brain to desire things that are ultimately detrimental to the people around me and me. 

I have spent so much of my life running and escaping from struggles at the expense of myself and those around me. Walk with me as I explore the balance in life between struggles and enjoyable times. The pressures of life can lead to amazing things if I let them.

I just went to the funeral of a neighbor who died at the age of 47 which is only five years older than me. What if I was in her shoes? How would I live differently now? Walk with me as I explore what is important in life.

Have you noticed that when you make a mistake or receive feedback from someone, the first response is being angry or defensive? Walk with me as I describe my learnings and our choices in these situations. Am I going to choose humility or humiliation?

Loss happens to us all the time and grieving loss is an essential part of life. This is not just loss of a love one, but loss of a childhood, loss of a relationship or loss due to failing to be the parent I should have been. Walk with me as I continue to learn the power of grieving well to live well.

Why do I neglect to think about or plan for the drop off after a stressful or enjoyable situation? How many times have I been blind sided by what happens after those experiences? Walk with me as I explore the drop off and what I can do better in the future.

Self-reflection can be a powerful tool in recovery and life. Walk with me as I reflect on the good and bad of the last three weeks. Remembering it is always progress over perfection.

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 skills and abilities we have as adults. I hope you get as much out of this topic as I have gotten out of sharing. Thanks for joining me on this life long journey of recovery. 

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.

I recently read an article that has a great definition of humility. Listen as I work through this in my life.  Article mentioned in podcast: https://12stepphilosophy.org/2018/01/29/humility-defense-mechanisms-and-the-false-self/