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Some advice from my journey. As I have been looking into myself to find my why. I have come to many crossroads. At first my why revolved around alcohol and influences around me. So why did they play a part? As I dug deeper I saw the FOO issues which played into my why. So why did FOO affect me so? From there I had to accept that "i wanted to" so I kept digging. Why did I want to? Because I was extremely selfish. So why was I so selfish? Because for me I wanted freedom from responsibility. Now to continue the search. Why did I want that? Where does it stop?

To my fellow waywards. I emplore you to keep digging. Find your root. Don't just accept until you find no further pebbles down your trail. You owe it to yourself. Find your broken. All of it and fix it. For you.

Have you gotten to the end of your road? For me it's pretty dark in there.

This is where I am at. Still trying to figure out the why. Its hard to accept that this was a choice I made, with no thought of consequence to myself and those that I care about.

I worry now that the door has opened, will I continue to walk through it? This is my motivation to find my why, to keep that door closed.

I want to go to IC to help figure out why and to get some guidance in how to fix it.

After a lot of introspection, I'm not quite at the root yet, but I do know there's a lot of lying in my FOO, thus making it easier to lie to cover up my actions. There are self esteem issues, and boundary, assertiveness issues that colored my every decision and movement. I don't want to use these as an excuse to justify anything I did, but at the same time I recognize that fundamentally there's something not right in me that would allow me to get sucked into that path.

FOO issues definitely played a huge role in my low self-esteem, unworthiness, mistrust, etc. The A was a self-destructive act but it could just as easily have been alcholol or drugs. I find the language of addiction a handy way to describe the feelings I got out of the A.

That I've identified my FOO issues through IC is not nearly enough. I put my finger on these issues years before and swept them under the rug, not dealing with them honestly. I've got to learn constructive ways to deal with my pain and insecurities so I don't have another A or do anything else destructive ever again.

My ADHD compounds my problems and complicates my recovery, but none of the above is a valid excuse to do what I did.

Hi DrKekyll - good post. I will thank you again for your advice last week it has served for some sort of awakening/realization.

Have you gotten to the end of your road? For me it's pretty dark in there.

I have realized that it is a very tangled, dark web of whys. They play off eachother and are connected. In writing this I think mind mapping might be helpful to sort through it all. Self esteem issues added fuel to the fire, but self awareness and being able to deal with emotions and feeling secure and significant in my identity is the root or part of it anyway. Being bullied just eroded the protection and then escaping either through isolation or fantasy just reinforced the lack of ownership over the feelings and responsibility to myself to really be aware and own my feelings.

I don't know if that made any sense re-reading it now, but thanks for posting - great food for thought and encouragement to keep searching.

I am trying the why exercises, too. I keep getting stuck and don't know which way to go. It's a journey we have to work through. Peace-