By "self-regulation" we mean a variety of skills and capacities for managing negative and positive emotions, impulses, and basic bodily needs. By "addiction" we mean not only addiction to drugs or substances like alcohol, marijuana, or prescription drugs, but also to behaviors like watching porn, anonymous sex, or gambling.
A particularly important self-regulation skill is resisting unhealthy or destructive impulses, including addictive ones. Also central to self-regulation are healthy habits and behaviors related to eating, sleeping and other aspects of caring for oneself on a daily basis.
However good or bad our childhoods were, we all struggle with bad habits and problem behaviors, and self-regulation difficulties either cause or worsen those habits and behaviors.
Here are the current and future subtopics of this section of Answers, followed by a general introduction to this section.
Major difficulties with self-regulation are common for men with histories of unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood. They play a big role in addictions and other common problems like extreme anger and aggression, or self-harming behaviors.
Attempts to
avoid and cope
that backfire |
Why? First of all, as discussed under How Unwanted or Abusive Sexual Experiences Can Cause Problems, such experiences usually cause intense negative emotions (if not right away then later), and people naturally want to avoid and escape from them. This is especially true of emotions like fear, shame and guilt – which can feel overwhelming and intolerable.
Unfortunately, the ways people go about avoiding or attempting to cope with such emotions and other stresses often end up causing new and bigger problems. Angry and aggressive behavior, getting drunk or high, compulsively using porno or having sex – these are often attempts to avoid and escape feelings of helplessness, fears of rejection, and unfulfilled wishes to be loved. They all involve problems with self-regulation.
Other problems with self-regulation and addictions are attempts to deal with feeling nothing and with a sense of being disconnected from other people (and even from life itself). Being emotionally numb in this way – already a "dysregulated" response to chronic stress or trauma – can lead to other self-regulation problems. For example, many men drink lots of alcohol as a way to connect with other people. And some men cut or burn themselves to feel, as they put it, "something, anything" – or to stop feeling "dead inside."
Finally, the effects of unwanted or abusive sexual experiences on self-regulation capacities are best understood within the bigger picture of one's life and development. Often unwanted or abusive sexual experiences happen to children and teenagers who've faced lots of other challenges and problems in their lives, especially in important relationships.
For example, maybe your parent(s) or the adults who raised you didn't help you talk about you feelings and find positive ways of dealing with their causes. Instead they may have, through the example of their own behavior, taught you to "act out" angry impulses and "block out" negative emotions with addictions and other unhealthy escapes. They may have never provided the stable home and daily routines that children need to develop healthy eating, sleeping, and other self-care habits. (See Caution: It's Not All About the Sexual Abuse.)
Self-regulation problems can have a big impact on one's current relationships, especially with important people in one's life.
A central focus
of healing,
especially in
the beginning |
These problems with self-regulation and addictions are usually a big focus in the "first stage of recovery," as described by Herman's Stages of Recovery model. It really is best to start dealing with them as early as possible because, as you know better than anyone else, they can cause so many problems and lots of suffering for you and other people in your life.
Whatever self-regulation problems you have now, and however you came to have them, it is possible to overcome them. You can learn to manage unwanted emotions and destructive impulses. You can reduce or end addictions and other bad habits. You can develop new daily habits of being mentally and physically healthy.
It takes time to make such changes in your life, and goes in stages (with some inevitable backsliding from time to time). It will probably require help from others, including a therapist or other professionals. But it is possible, and many other men have overcome huge problems with self-regulation and addictions, and gone on to achieve great success and happiness.