WALKING AWAY FROM PORN originalPreview
Open in TheBrain

Learning from Relapse

The move is this:

  1. Redefine relapse as inevitable (remove agency).
  2. Redefine inevitability as wisdom (“be realistic”).
  3. Redefine repetition as progress (“you’re learning”).
  4. Redefine harm to others as part of the process (“growth isn’t linear”).

Once that move is made, nothing decisive is ever required—only management, reflection, and patience from those being harmed.

So “learning” becomes a non-operative virtue. It doesn’t change the outcome; it only changes how the outcome is narrated. Understanding why the poison kills doesn’t make drinking it safer.

Calling the poisoning “part of the learning curve” doesn’t make it medicine. That’s like in aviation every crash is used to make flying safer in the future...but the pilots in THAT crash didn’t learn; they died. OTHERS learned.

It often serves less to free the addict than to pacify the betrayed spouse:

It is like the pilots survived to kill another plane full of passengers.

Process language is a redefinition of moral responsibility that hides behind therapeutic optimism. The irony is that this optimism reinforces the idea that there is no stopping point for these patterns. They are not “breaking” the addictive and addictive mindset, they are “normalizing” it. Fighting instead of escaping does not loosen the noose, it just makes you feel better as it tightens.

Once the behavior is expected:

Hope, in that framework, becomes sedative, not fuel. It soothes the conscience while the structure remains intact.

the psychological truth is that exertion can feel virtuous even as it’s counterproductive. The tightening isn’t felt because effort itself is interpreted as progress. The ‘process’ is actually an engine of pepetuation. There is serial harm under the theraputic hood. That harm is not always dramatic — but it is cumulative:

"If perpetually working on it suffices, fixing it is not your goal...which means you are not working on it."

The 'managing' (also I would call it 'coping') method to me echoes those who have inoperable cancer. They say they are "not dying of" cancer, but "living with" cancer. In their case, biology gives them no better option so their frame of mind is constructive. But with sex addiction, "living with addiction" is NOT a good thing UNLESS you believe that you can never be free from it. And that belief itself is the biggest noose of all.

For a group that says "we are the only ones who know how to fix your problem" they have more "you can't get free" statements than I have every heard. "You can't get free unless:" You understand neurobiology. You get in a group for support. You understand and practice psychodynamics. You don't let yourself get "emotionally depleted" and on and on. The WORST OF THEM ALL is "you can never get free until you deal with your wounds" because NOBODY in the world walks around wound-free or every will. You might as well say "you will never get free until you can fly" and then they sing the song "I believe I can fly." No, the statement resolves unto just: "You will never get free." At least as long as you keep following those guys, that is. I say "you can never get free until you get out of the s.c.a.m "process." Their whole thing is to "trust the process" and "submit to the process." Rather than a Person.

Processes don’t declare “it is finished.” So when a group says:

Processes hate expiration dates. they are asking for allegiance to continuity itself, not to permanent transformation. Yes, there are some who have gone beyond mere “resilience” and actually have achieved lengthy ‘sobriety.’ But every one is constantly MANAGING that sobriety with one eye over their shoulder

the belief that freedom is always deferred—one more insight, one more group, one more excavation—until freedom quietly stops beingThat harm is not always dramatic — but it is cumulative: expected at all.

I’m not rejecting care, support, or growth.

I’m rejecting a framework whose theology offers no liberation, no matter how much care you receive.

I’m not being pessimistic—they are.

I’m simply refusing to normalize captivity under a supposed “hope” that amounts to this:

“Managing and coping are the best possible outcome. That is all you have available.”

The dead giveaway is how the sneer at the idea of final resolution. They call the hope of being totally free once and for all a false hope because God you can’t hope that God will “heal” the disease of addiction. You can’t cast it out like a demon. It takes work. Thus, the means becomes the ends.

No, God doesn’t “heal” it, and that is not a failure...He never promised that. Working on it is a failure. It is not “magical” thinking, it is defeatist thinking. Which is good if it is taken where God wants it to go. Where He took Paul: “I give up! No amount of working on it offers hope. Who will DELIVER me?” Whatever Paul meant by “deliver,” don’t you DARE accuse Paul of “magical thinking”, of making a mistake. “Wrong question Paul. God doesn’t work that way.” No, Paul, if only you could have waited 2,000 year for us to come up with our “tools” and “resources,” you wouldn’t have been relegated to faith in a PERSON, relegated to the mere “resources” of the Holy Spirit that might have worked for you as a super spiritual person, but have never worked for the rest of us.” In other words, all their “knowledge” has done is to cannonize confusion by retroactively correcting Scripture by a recently developed view of the nature of man.

Faith in a Person is portrayed as childish or “magical” (i.e., a childish fantasy) while faith in tools, insights, and processes is portrayed as sober and adult. Paul’s defeat did not lead to a better strategy; it led to deliverance outside himself.The reason they recoil at a truly faith-based approach is the loss of control over the narrative of improvement.

The parallel is: