The Great Irony
It often takes a lot of trying and failing before we are finally able to say in all honesty the first of the twelve steps- admitting "powerlessness". The reason the struggle is so hard for us - and the reason we keep failing at it, is because we are struggling with something much more powerful than us. However, once we admit powerlessness, we basically come to the realization that we can no longer "struggle" with acting out at all. We can't "work on this area" or try and "change the way we think". We can only "let go" of it completely and not even give acting out the time of day. If acting out comes into our head, instead of struggling with it, we just tell ourselves: "I can't struggle with this at all, I am an addict", and we just "let go of it" in our hearts completely.
How do we do that?
Well, if it's far too hard for us to focus on and struggle with "the problem", the only way to succeed is to live instead in the SOLUTION.
What does that mean?
My addiction is all "me centered". It's all about me. The "solution" is to start living for others and for God. We need to train our minds that when we feel lust, we just laugh and say "hey, what can you expect from an addict?" and then painlessly switch channels to a channel of "giving" and "gratitude" instead of being "Me focused". For example, if we feel like acting out, we switch channels to thinking what we can do instead of what we can take.
When we feel like acting out, we can switch modes in our mind and begin to think of all the blessings we have in life, to feel gratitude to God etc, which brings us to think about what can we do for God. And we can think also about what we can do for others, and how we can make ourselves more useful to others... We need to change our mode of thinking from the "me-centered-getting-mode" that breeds desire to act out, to a mode of "giving and gratitude" outside of ourselves.
And the miracle is, that by changing the way we think and the things we do over time, we find that the problem goes away by itself!! In other words, we can't fix the problem; forget it, it's way too strong. But when we live in the SOLUTION and focus on living "outside" of ourselves, the PROBLEM automatically goes away...
And it is only when we do this step - which is to recognize that we are addicts; that we are ill; that we cannot deal with acting out AT ALL, only at that point we can begin our journey to recovery and learn how to surrender it to God and GIVE IT UP COMPLETELY.
Ironically, it is only to admitting powerlessness that we are able to ultimately find true freedom!!
Our minds tell us that if we stop acting out and if we don't feed our addiction, life will be much less fun... But our mind is LYING to us. It is the exact OPPOSITE! It is ONLY when we finally GIVE UP on struggling with lust and LET GO of it, that we will finally be able to find true freedom and happiness.