Acting Out Is The Symptom
Acting out just is the symptom. The symptoms of a sick and wounded boy. Whose ego was shattered and told would never be great. Shown a porno magazine at age eight and told to go masturbate. What’s a boy to do who deep down inside feels broken? So he kept sticking his hand back in the cookie jar, time and time again. As he got older he tried to hide the pain and stand tall. He put up a front, a great big wall. But deep down inside the pain was too much to bear. So he kept reaching back in that jar. He reached and reached, year after year for that Tylenol jar, never confronting the true source of it all. Until one day he stoped reaching, but the pain still never went away. Until he realized that sober doesn’t mean game over. It was just the start. The real journey lie ahead. The inner work. So he worked and he worked, opening up every door, every chamber in that damaged heart. He felt, he cried, going back behind his inner child’s eyes. He relived, he rewired, and he rewrote the story. A new script, one filled with glory. On that journey he came to realize that a healthy self doesn’t act out. As a wise woman once said “when I don’t feel I act out, but when I feel I don’t act out.” So it’s ok, sit through the pain, it won’t kill you. I promise :) Remember sobriety without the inner work is just sobriety. Recovery is when you change from within. ✌️
Wow. Thank you so much for writing and sharing this. Very well written and so true a story for me and I’m sure many of us. We will overcome, and we’ve got to do that inner work. Quitting is only part of the battle. We must move below that surface to the source of why and what began these symptoms of acting out. So true.