Saturday, August 29th
August 29th – Hope Replaces Fear
I felt destined to be always anxious and desperate; I couldn’t imagine a way out.
Many of us compulsively used sex to escape feelings such as anxiety and shame. However, we found that sex couldn’t address the underlying conditions that often troubled us: insecurity, trauma, pain, and fear. We may have felt defective and unlovable, and our fear seemed justified.
For most of us, fears didn’t suddenly vanish after we entered recovery. We may have identified many of our specific fears and their underlying origins when we took our inventory. Perhaps we brought our fear of “not being enough” into the rooms, where we thought we were falling behind — that our recovery was stuck.
As we recover, we may begin to realize that there is hope. We accept that trusting in a power greater than ourselves may enable us to let go of our compulsion and replace it with positive, affirming actions that widen our tunnel vision.
These actions help build our faith by trusting our Higher Power to care for us. Our fears do not vanish. We simply develop a faith more powerful than our fears. Self-will fades and is replaced by a willingness to work our recovery, ask for help, and help others. With hope, we move forward.
We will lose our fear of other people and lose the fear of our sexuality.