Changes

Welcome Back!

I know that it has been a while since my last blog post, so I wanted to take the time this evening to update everyone on where I am at in my life. Since my last post, I have seen a LOT of changes happen within my life, and these changes have come in every shape and size. I have undergone MASSIVE changes in regards to my sexual addiction, and how I interact/ view women; and I have undergone MANY smaller changes that impact my every day, day-to-day self. I have gone from hating change, and fighting it at every corner, to embracing it and craving it. It is kind of insane just how much different of a person I am now, as opposed to the person that I was just 4 months ago. So if you are willing, I would like to share with you just how I got to the place that I am at now. Let’s begin!

For those of you who have been following my blog for a while, you would know that in every single post I have, I include some kind of song that has really impacted me, and help spur me on to action in some way; and this post will be no different. The song that I want to highlight is actually a song that hit me at the perfect time, and it is a song called “Change” by NF. I first heard this song while I was at work, the week after I got back from the workshop in Minnesota, and when I say that this song stopped me in my tracks, I mean it LITERALLY stopped me in my tracks! I honestly had to stop what I was doing and focus on the song because it was that emotional for me. The song talks about how NF (Nate) constantly struggles with the fact that he knows he needs to make a change, but he just can’t seem to find the strength to make that change. For most of the song, Nate talks about how he doesn’t like where his life is at. He is always second guessing himself, and putting himself in harmful situations because those are the situations that he has become accustomed to. He knows that what he is doing is not healthy, but his is scared to take the risk of stepping out into the unknown in order to get the help that he needs. This is something that I can strongly relate to, because for years, I never saw my addiction as something that was killing me. I knew that it was bad, and I hated it, but I would rather have just continued on living in the shadow of my guilt and shame, than step out into the light and actually deal with the real problems at hand. Right before the main chorus comes in, Nate says “looking for something in my life to be inspired again, I like to walk around and act like I don’t know what it is, but I know what it is, I just never wanna commit.” What he is looking for is change, and he is trying to convince himself to commit to it and find it. Well that line really hit me, because that is EXACTLY where I was before my world sort of blew up earlier this year when Amber and I broke up. Thankfully, God used that hurt and brokenness to spur me on to ACTUALLY seek that change, which is what led me to attend the Faithful and True: Men of Valor workshop in Minnesota. And it was at this workshop that I was able to finally get that change that I have so desperately been needing.

To say that my weekend in Minnesota was anything other than life changing would be the biggest understatement of my lifetime. I arrived to Faithful and True on the first day feeling very hopeless, and with a lot of self-loathing. I had just acted out the day before I left to come here, and that came in response to some deep feelings of loneliness that I felt while on my family vacation in Europe. So I did not arrive in Eden Prairie feeling all that great about myself. Over the course of the first day, we got to know all the other men who were there that the workshop with us, and then we did something that I did not expect us to do.. we started to look back at our lives, and especially our childhoods, in order to try and find where there may be some lingering trauma. This exercise proved to be very easy for me to do, because I knew that I had a lot of lingering trauma from my childhood. For those of you who don’t know me, I had a very tough childhood because my father was an angry, abusive, alcoholic, and that made everyone in my families life a living hell. And then when I was in 4th grade, my parents got divorced, and it was a very messy divorce. So for me to say that I had some lingering trauma would be putting it lightly. However, I never thought too much about that trauma, because I always thought that I had beaten it. I figured that since I came out of that experience a good person, then I must have beaten it. Well as it turns out, I was VERY wrong. Day one of the workshop ended with a homework assignment, and that homework assignment was to go back and look at our lives, and create what was called a “Life Egg”. This assignment was probably the best thing that every happened to me.

Basically all of Day 2 was spent in our small groups discussing our eggs, and I think that it was during this time that I learned the most about myself, and learned the most about why I act out in the way that I do. Through the use of sharing my egg, I discovered that a lot of the trauma that I have experienced has never been dealt with. And in order to survive the environment that I was in as a child, I had to bury those feelings of hurt and abandonment. Well as it turns out, when you bury your emotions, then only come back up stronger somewhere later in your life. And that was the case for me. However, because I never really learned to deal with those strong emotions, I would just try to find more ways to mask them and bury them. And that is where my addiction to pornography comes into play. One of the biggest things that I learned from this workshop is that a person’s sexual addiction is almost never actually about the sex. It is almost always about dealing with some kind of pain or hurt that we don’t know how to deal with. The reason that we turn to sex in order to deal with those emotions is because when you have an orgasm, there are a bunch of neurochemicals that are released in the brain that are designed to make you feel good. This works in the EXACT same way as an drug addiction works, because both addictions are seeking a chemical response to deal with an emotional issue. So instead of addressing my strong negative feelings, I developed a habit of running to my “drug” in order to suppress those feelings and get rid of them. This then created a viscous cycle where my mind would create a link between any strong negative feeling with my conditioned response to that feeling, making it easier and easier for me to continue to choose my drug.. even if I didn’t want to choose it.

Learning all of that on day 2 was eye-opening for me, because for the first time in my life, I finally had an answer for WHY I acted out in the way that I acted out, but if you read that and immediately wondered “Well what do we do now?”, then you read my mind. Thankfully, that was what day 3 was all about. It was on day 3 that I was able to work together with the other men in my small group, and with the leaders at the workshop to come up with a “gameplan” for further action. The game plan started with continuing to seek professional help upon returning home. This is something that I have tried to do, but I am struggling in finding the right person. However I have been meeting with my pastor for counseling every week since I got back which has been VERY helpful. The second thing that they talked about was finding and army or “Team” of men to come near to you and help you through this. These men need to be people who see through your BS, and who want to help you in your recovery, and you have to be willing to let them in on EVERYTHING your are feeling/ going through. Thankfully, I have had a lot of success in finding this team of guys to help me. Right now, I probably have 15-20 men, of varying ages and walks of life, who I am in constant contact with both daily and weekly. The next thing was following the 12 step plan for addiction recovery that was made famous by AA. I have not started this officially, but I have been trying to get a start on it until I can join either an SA group or an AA group. After that they talked about getting in the habit of daily meditation or reflection through the use of a journal. Now I some of you might have read the idea of me keeping a journal and laughed, but I am being completely honest with you in saying that I have picked up journaling, and it has been great for me! It has really made it a lot easier for me to identify my emotions, and then deal with them in a healthy way. And finally, the last big thing that I took away from the game plan was the idea of adding something to my life in order to replace the thing that I am taking away. And since I am taking away this addiction, all that time that I spent focusing on bad things needs to be filled. And I am filling that time with two things. The first thing is that I am getting up every day at 4:30 to workout and have a time for personal/spiritual growth, and the second thing is that I have actually taken up cooking! So each week, I look up a new recipe, and then me and one of my buddies both make the recipe and share how it turned out.

There is still sooooo much more that I want to share, but I fear that this blog has already gone on for longer than I planned. This journey that I have been on over the last 4 months has not been an easy one, but it has been the journey that God planned for me to take. It has been amazing to be able to look back, even just at the last 4 months, and see all the ways that God has been at work in my life. The time I spent in Minnesota honestly was the most important and influencial weekend of my life, and it is because of that weekend that I now truly feel as though I have a relationship with Christ. Every day I wake up wanting to become more of the man that Christ wants me to be, and I chase after that is every way I can. I no longer fear change in my life, I chase after it. I longer hide from my strong negative feelings, I attack them. It is crazy to think that at one point, sharing this story would have scared me stiff, but now, sharing my story is LITERALLY my favorite thing to do! I seek after the difficult conversations now, because I know that is where true growth is, and that is where Christ wants me to be. So thank you for caring about my life enough to read this book to the end, and thank you for sharing in my story with me.

God Bless you, and have a wonderful day.

Sincerely,

Kenny Floyd