Always Carry a Rubber Chicken
Boredom often triggers sexual acting out. Actually, boredom allows junky
feelings about self to come to the surface. Those junky feelings trigger acting
out as a way to alter the junky mood. Of course, in the long run one of the
goals of therapy, 12-step work, and reforming your relationship with yourself is
to reduce those junky feelings and improved your relationship with yourself. In
the meantime, it is also useful to have a repertoire of safe, effective tools
for altering your mood. The two - improving your relationship with yourself and
having a set of tools for altering your mood - are not antithetical. They are
companions on the path of recovery and maintaining sobriety. When you have a
toothache, you make an appointment with a dentist. But in the intervening time,
you also take a pain reliever. A rubber chicken is like a pain reliever.
Sex addicts have used sexual experiences as all-purpose mood altering
medications. To some extent, they need to replace sexual acting out with other
activities. Play and humor are good, healthy, portable, replacements.
Avoid a slip by keeping things around that allow you to enter a psychological
play zone. This, of course, depends on your taste and circumstances. Such things
might include rubber chickens, sock monkeys, Groucho glasses, joke books,
cartoon books, whoopee cushions, and other silly, playful things. I do exercises
in classes that involve big, colorful balloons. It is remarkable how quickly a
few balloons will transform the mood of a room filled with otherwise apparently
serious adults. So, make a decision about what will work for you and acquire
some useful, mood altering toys for yourself.
Consider these reasons to buy a rubber chicken. First, play and humor alter
mood, lift boredom, and can help you to avoid a slip. Second, laughing and
playing are good for you. Fun and play are natural, self-rewarding processes
that should occupy a place in any healthy and growthful life. Third, sex addicts
take themselves, their addiction, and life too seriously. Shifting over into the
zone of play and pleasure in a here and now, healthy, fun, way is a good remedy
for excessive seriousness. And finally, there is an element of rebelliousness in
silliness and play, just as there is an element of rebelliousness in sexual
acting out. A psychologist named Apter called this motivation the "Offense
Mechanism". Finding safe, healthy, harmless ways to express this Offense
Mechanism is a good tool to put into your recovery tool box.
So, always carry a rubber chicken.
