Alternative vs Gradual Modification

 Watching movies is my alternative to sexual addiction.

I wonder if I can reverse engineer my capacity for sexual addiction into something good. The Blessed Virgin Mary's question is the gold standard of course as to what can be done here and now to counteract a build up of sexual addiction or even its prevention. Without it any kind of alternative or reverse engineering wouldn't work. We have to situate the alternative of watching of movies into the general moral life of the repentant sexual addict. No person can watch movies for, say, 8 hours everyday just to avoid relapsing into sexual addiction again. If I feel some recurrences of my sexual addiction and watching movies aren't appropriate at the moment, the Blessed Virgin Mary's question should be fulfilled.

That being said let's decipher further the alternative of, say, watching movies. I find myself watching porn before bedtime or at night. So I rather made the habit of thinking what movies do I like to watch or re-watch or review. So that night time comes, I am eager to use my spare time if there is more left for searching and watching online the movies I have in mind.

I find myself prone to giving in to temptations during siesta hours. With such short preparation time before a nap, a movie watch isn't really appropriate. However, I found some brain puzzles on Google Play Store quiet amusing that I really enjoy solving. Such a short time to solve the puzzle entertains me and prepares me better to take a nap.

It's not always recreation time or break time though. If my duty calls me to work and when unproductive time knocks on the door of temptations to impure thoughts, the Blessed Virgin Mary's question has to be fulfilled. Be it visiting your coworkers to see if they're ok, or doing extra work even our job doesn't require it, would be an easier alternative than entertaining that impure thoughts.

But why specially watching movies? The idea of reverse engineering has a lot of insights into it from the movies resolution to the anticipation-imagination of the high def Holywood scenes that replaces impure thingking and acting it out to orgasm. Though anything that you enjoy doing, be it a hobby or outdoor hiking, as long as it effectively catches your entire attention and participation, will be a welcome blessing than any immoral sexual pleasures.

Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us!

This article was made as a continuation of the article A Second Look at Gradual Modification

We Have to Go Back to the Saints

 The saints are the ones that know and been able to live the science of holiness.

Yes, we do have modern psychological findings we do use today like lessening our sugar intake to maintain better brain health. But that doesn't mean the science of the saints are now outmoded. The saints know better than we sinners do the perennial truths about how to be holy. Caritas in Veritate, art. 76, where Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that

   One aspect of the contemporary technological mindset is the tendency to consider the problems and emotions of the interior life from a purely psychological point of view, even to the point of neurological reductionism. In this way man's interiority is emptied of its meaning and gradually our awareness of the human soul's ontological depths, as probed by the saints, is lost. The question of development is closely bound up with our understanding of the human soul, insofar as we often reduce the self to the psyche and confuse the soul's health with emotional well-being. These over-simplifications stem from a profound failure to understand the spiritual life, and they obscure the fact that the development of individuals and peoples depends partly on the resolution of problems of a spiritual nature. Development must include not just material growth but also spiritual growth, since the human person is a “unity of body and soul”[156], born of God's creative love and destined for eternal life...

I've tackled spiritual readings before and there are lots of good sources of classical spiritual readings nowadays online one can download for free, aside from buying new writings.

Sin have been won against by these saint writers. They surely know something we sinners don't. Such a science of praxis gives us certainty against mere theories, knowledge, even unproven facts, and wrong scientific findings of scientists not specializing on the field of chaste living.

 

Why Struggle For Chastity Despite The Failure?

Even I have not achieved a 100% freedom from impure thoughts and masturbation, for example, as my specific favorite sexual addiction behaviour, why should I still continue to find ways and means to master chastity in myself? It seems there is no reason left after decades of struggle already.

Despite the failure, I find my Catholic faith my primary reason for continuing to struggle until death, hoping that someday somewhere if not here on earth I will find myself completely capable of controlling my sexual capacity for good.

Even my struggle is imperfect, that's fair enough. Am I just rationalizing again my sin? No, that's why I need to do my chastity works and continue to examine my conscience and receive forgiveness in the sacrament of confession. Stopping the work would mean the start of complete defeat. Raise your prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary to help you at least to achieve once a month relapse only if you are presently committing twice a week sin of masturbation. But if it fails to come by, learn to submit thyself to God's bidding.

Again, does it matter that you continue your chastity work? Yes, and it is your pledge of allegiance to God to do so, proving that despite your imperfect struggle, you still wait for that glorious days of complete holiness of life.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners!

Is Sexual Addiction A Mental Disorder?

Yes, and no!

Yes, it is a mental disorder, since as we've discussed here, it is correlated to ADHD, depression, etc.

And no, it isn't just a pure mental disorder that is why you see me posting things like prayers and theological discussions.

To put it in the realm of pure mental disorder, we deny the capacity of human beings to sin.

To put it in the realm of pure spiritual problem, we deny man's composition of a body, who is not just a soul.

We are attacking both, and is pushing for an integrated approach here.

We cannot attack its psychological aspects alone separated from its theological aspects. Such lone attack, the former or the latter, invites failure even in its initial phase.

Compared to depression which isn't a sin per se, or to schizophrenia which has a physical or organic cause that needs psychiatric medication, sexual addiction is itself a sin which doesn't have an immediate physical cause like schizophrenia that is nearly 80% of risk down to genes.

If depression is due to one's becoming an alcoholic due to habitual drinking, then drinking is what is sinful not depression itself. It's not a sin to inherit a tendency to develop schizophrenia. We can't categorize easily sexual addiction like the two above, since it's already like drinking out of moderation and is a sin in itself. And yet we are attacking it like how we attack depression, etc. believing it to be of help and an ease in living chastity as correlational studies show. It goes on to say that a sin's primary solution is spiritual like confession, prayers, the grace of God, etc. And though the psychological solutions we propose here are secondary, they do have that sense of accountability if for instance a coffee drank at night caused one to stay awake unnecessarily that provoked watching porn that triggered the relapse.

If I am, as a sexual addict, mentally ill, why do I behave normally? We've pointed out before that it seems sexual addiction's bad effect comes after like how we've discussed self-injected delution. But you still maintain freedom through your continuous chastity works though not fully. It matters to us that spiritual graces are the ones to forgive and heal the sin(primarily) of sexual addiction. And yet confession isn't just a spiritual thing as there are so many psychological findings that the practice of confession confers psychological health. Though let us clarify that the sacrament of confession's effect goes beyond what is merely psychological up to the unseen graces it confers on it's practitioners.

Oh Blessed Virgin Mother, have mercy on us!

Freedom and The Little Act

We now call our corrected notion of powerpointing as the original little way of St. Therese as we’ve discussed. If I am worthy, you may call me a son of St. Therese. This little act is further helped by the Blessed Virgin Mary’s question due to addict’s incapacity or servitude. The question “What good can you easily do here and now?” seems to be bereft of freedom of choice. But a careful examination of the question reveals that the one who will answer it is free to answer whatever good comes out from his mind, his talent or tendency, and his choices among goods. Does it mean we are forced to do what is good? If that is what is bothering you, then you are far from the Kingdom of God. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. It is not the focus of this topic to help you desire what is good (to love). The focus of this topic is that we are free to choose from among the multitude good acts we can do.

It’s not just in the careful examination of the question that we see freedom from the one who will answer it. When the question has been answered, it will be acted out. The acting out itself is the little act that sets one free. Little freedom is acquired against the formidable addictions or vices we’ve set ourselves to overcome. St. Therese told that when we always stumble on the ladder to heaven, one day God may have mercy on us and carry the little crying child up the ladder Himself.

Pardon me as I need to give example to my repentant sexual addict readers. In all modesty, someone is delusioning for example that he be married to his first cousin, which is forbidden by the Canon Law’s fourth degree of consanguinity. Let us call him Gilbert. And Gilbert’s delusion is a worst kind of sexual addiction. Gilbert heard that a priest from his parish dispensed and wedded secretly two souls who are first cousins since they already have children. But the counsel and common sense tells us that there are too many good souls out there aside from Gilbert’s first cousin. That is the more perfect will of God, aside from what is good, what is pleasing in God’s eyes. An addict can’t understand that, more so do that. And so the Blessed Virgin Mary’s question helps sinners to master himself at every level until he can already even accept the more perfect will of God, the hard foods of adult. “What good can you easily do here and now?” can be answered with “I will marry my first cousin,” to “I will identify what I like with my cousin and look for someone with those characteristics,” up till “I want whatever God wants for my marriage,” which is the hardest. “The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes," according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. One day Gilbert will be able to say to himself after all the practicing of all the virtues the Blessed Virgin Mary is pointing him to practice that he can already embrace whatever God wants for his marriage. For now Gilbert needs to practice answering the Blessed Virgin Mary’s question and doing it even in the little moments of his life so that he may know afterwards what is pleasing and what is more perfect in God’s eyes.

In the Letter to the Bishops on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it is told that "...the emptiness which God requires is that of the renunciation of personal selfishness, not necessarily that of the renunciation of those created things which he has given us and among which he has placed us." I want to emphasize that it is wrong to think that God doesn't want a repentant sexual addict to marry for the maintenance of chastity (better to marry than to burn with passion 1 Cor. 7:9). But "...while he raises us up, God is free to 'empty' us of all that holds us back in this world..."

A repentant sexual addict not yet fully healed should be frightened to think that God doesn't want him to marry for chastity purpose. He need not fear though that every now and then God can lift him up and detach him from his attachment to sex in all its form. It doesn't mean though that God doesn't want one to marry. St. Augustine had lived with women and was converted before he renounced that failed marriage, and had been given by God even the capacity to devote himself to chaste celibate loving. If you still sin against chastity in whatever form, then you are still a sexual addict needing healing though repentant. The fact that you're still sinning is a fact that you're still repeatedly subscribing to the forbidden pleasures of sex outside marriage, and points to an addiction or vice. A fact that after years of struggle to master yourself, you have not been. It then points to a more suitable counsel which is to marry in love even you have that valid motive of maintaining your chastity. Telling yourself then that God doesn't want you to marry, is a very circumventing invention of your cycle to addiction not to subscribe to married sex. It's a rebellion indeed against God who created marriage for specific persons. A failed or unchecked healing of sexual addiction inside a formation house of future celibates can mean continuous toleration of abuse and scandal in the church. And so I pray that youth in such troubles might be enlightened unto their paths by proper authorities.

If in your heart you're still choosing marriage as your vocation, then it is God's will, and should no longer be questioned that further inhibits one's desire to marry. For those who are still struggling against a seeming contradiction between God's will and one's freedom of choice, I highly recommend reading Peter Kreeft's article. Remember the Blessed Virgin Mary fully respecting our freedom by asking us "What good can you easily do here and now?" and not tell us directly this is the exact and only will of God that you should be doing. Peter Kreeft clarified in the article how such situation of God directly telling individual his specific will is very limited in the bible and in the lives of the saints, illogical since all our moves should do God's specific will, nay it's the exeption to the general rule. A rule according to St. John Chrysostom that we shouldn't be hearing God's voice, suffice it that we have our conscience and reason.

St. Therese, teach us your little way!
St. Augustine, pray for our healing!
Mother Mary, refuge of sinners, have mercy on us!

How to have ADHD/Delusion and Worsen Your Addiction

The following is a sarcastic instruction to have it:
1. Sleep less than 5 hours.
2. Drink 5 or more 50mg caffeine a day.
3. Watch TV, use smart phone, do online things all day.
4. After having a headache, eat more sweets and chocolates.
5. Drink some more sugar laden juices, and avoid eating vegetables.
6. When sick already, drink supplements from herbs and fish you don't know contains higher than recommended limit of mercury.
7. Sip some more hot herb concoction that you don't know makes you strong and... unable to sleep.
8. Finally when wide awake, solve your personal problems, and think until you're stressed to burned out. Conclude it with a gym work out if your body fever isn't going down.
9. Repeat the cycle from number 1 to 8.

How To Be Dumb

I tried Bullet Journaling. Now I just need a 1/4 sheet of paper not the whole journal to put my checklist of what I will do that day which I toss like a scratch paper after they're done. But my mind can't really put on calendar anything and doing it. (Note taking I still do on my journal the long form as I've been accustomed way back in the seminary which is more of a spiritual journaling. I think I favor more the long form because I'm a writer.) It's better in my seminary days when others get to plan and calendar it for me where everything is done by the hour, it's better in the corporate world where I do tasks scheduled and deadlined by my company.

Matthew 6:34 in particular says, "Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil."

In this article it is written:

A religious who lived very close to St John Bosco was asked whether the Saint was ever worried in the midst of his countless works, in his sometimes tumultuous life. The religious replied in this manner: "Don Bosco never, not even a minute before, thought about what he was about to do a minute later." Don Bosco, who understood the action of grace, always sought to do the will of God in the present moment. And following this path he fulfilled his vocation.

Would I still be alive in the future to still do all those things I plan to do? No one knows.

St. Therese spirituality earlier taught me to trust blindly in Jesus' Divine Mercy.

I need to be dumb or to be atention deficit about the future stuffs which may not even happen. As David Allen taught above in the TEDx Youtube that our brain wasn't designed to hold on to more than 4 stuffs, and that we need to clear it of stuffs to make it work. Though he teaches how to do it in his books, I focused more on his insight.

Today's information age just made us very aware of these things unlike before.

But why am I still anxious--this isn't a psychological problem I think--it's a spiritual problem of needing to trust God's mercy blindly.

We've forgotten to pray this:

At dawn let me hear of your kindness, for in you I trust. Show me the path I should walk, for to you I entrust my life. Psalm 143:8

What good can you easily do here and now?

The Blessed Virgin Mary promises me that my day will become good and she will take care of my problems as long as I ask myself the whole day every now and then what good I can easily do here and now and then act on it.

I don’t know why but even the bestseller Atomic Habits is pointing on this psychological technique except that being open to God's will for the day is our Marian practice using ethics to answer the here and now question.

But boy did I started everything purely psychological and I’m still anxious.

But with a spiritual trust in God’s Divine mercy, I’m not anymore. You should thus be able to tell yourself that this is the only good thing I can easily do here and now. I don't know anything else for now. May God be merciful to me. 

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.

*recommended reading on the word "here and now" and how our dreams and visions are in the background

Marriage is a Sacrament of Salvation

Any sacrament is sanctified, by whom.

By Jesus, included in the seven sacraments.

It is not marriage that saves.

It is Jesus, without whom marriage won't even work any more than save.

To reiterate, St. Paul told us that it is better to be married than to be aflamed with passion. The salvific effect of marriage is Pauline, not mine. Reformed sexual addicts should benefit from the vocation to marriage, sanctified by Jesus Christ.

There is a clear teaching treasured by the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ about marriage. Consider an old practice of polygamy where romantic love can't really bloom. Consider aborting fetuses to be practiced by those who can't afford or aren't yet prepared lovers. It is the teaching of Jesus that made marriage sacramental and thus salvific. It is transformed by Jesus into something good and then salvific.

Jesus made clear what the good of marriage consist. It does not consist of adultery for example. Concupiscense is still present of course because we aren't angels or resurrected bodies to be transformed by Christ in parousia. We have a fallen body. And lust as called forth by St. Paul above as passion can be eased by marriage, the sacrament of marriage to be specific. The union in sexual intercourse isn't just merely bodily, but a sacral act, a reenactment of the romantic love solidified and blessed when the husband and wife said yes to each other in front of God. Yes it is carnal, but is transformed by Jesus as good interpreted as that longing of God for His people in Song of songs. When it is clear that almsgiving can be used to show people how good you are, then sexual intercourse can also be. The blog I have written is for reforming sexual addicts in particular, nor for normal people, please read carefully on my Pages section Letter to My Reader. If marriage can kill concupiscence, I would have jumped to marrying as it would surely save my soul. But I have written this blog to pinpoint what practices are there traditionally named chastity by the Catholic Church that can enable the effectivity of the sacrament of marriage. For non-addicts please note carefully that these points aren't clear for us in the first place. If these points have been clear to us, we would not have been sexual addicts. If you're struggling lately against one of the deadly 7 capital or deadly sins, lust, then this blog can still benefit you too.

There are the three vocations of single blessedness, consecrated life, and marriage. Evagrius won't allow those struggling against lust to enter the consecrated life. I advice that temporary singlehood can be used by those preparing for marriage even they are struggling against lust by reading and practicing what is written here in my blog for example. But it is marriage that such strong urge to sexual union can be disciplined and then sanctified. None on this earth can. However, former sexual addicts like St. Augustine made it to consecrated life. Evagrius though adviced to first learn and discipline oneself to chastity before entering consecrated life. We have a discussion for that in my book.

St. Augustine, St. Paul, pray for us reformed sexual addicts!

ADHD and Sexual Addiction

"ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is a highly comorbid disorder with hypersexuality: up to 67% of individuals with hypersexuality [or sexual addiction] reported some patterns of ADHD in prior studies." (https://www.psypost.org/2019/07/study-adult-adhd-symptoms-play-important-role-in-hypersexuality-and-problematic-pornography-use-53995)

The solution for the former can be the solution for the latter as well. "Tips for Managing Adult ADHD" will tell you things sexual addicts can benefit from.

How do you know if you have mild or moderate ADHD? This ADHD Test will tell you.

How on earth did I became aware? I wasn't until now.

I was looking to up my journaling offline when the Bullet Journaling of Ryder Carroll, who has ADHD, caught my attention. Can I really have some sort of even mild ADHD since I really can't calendar and plan, I asked myself. Well, the test told me I have moderate ADHD, worse than mild.

Let me tell my short story. As a child I use to bump my front head because it's too painful or I'm too anxious (now I know I have headache caused by neurological condition). I don't know why I do that. But ADHD causes gives me clues. I have a cigarette addict father. My mother drinks. Chemical playing could've exacerbated it. Now I find myself really incapable of planning/calendaring, has low frustration tolerance, can't easily organize, etc. But what I found out earlier was that sexual addicts have damaged prefrontal cortex, disabling my setting and achieving goals or executive functioning, a condition that is affirmed by my meandering career situation. Compared to my colleagues, I really feel that there's something wrong with me. I don't mean to point this to play the blame game to excuse myself, but to capacitate myself to add the ADHD's coping mechanism to enable myself. My sexual addiction could have not evolved this far if not for an unknown neurological damage in me.

Holy Mary, health of the sick, pray for us, sinners!