Tim Arrigo works with John, who traces his addiction and infidelity to childhood sexual abuse and emotional detachment. Arrigo argues these behaviors are survival adaptations, not choices, and that forgiving himself requires understanding the causal chain from trauma to self-medication. The gap between loving his family and hurting them is the painful work ahead.
You didn't just wake up one day and decide to hurt your wife. You didn't just wake up one day and decide to engage in these addictive behaviors. There was a reason for this. So let me ask you this, and without making these things an excuse, but they're, they're not excuses, they're reasons, right? You had to have been vulnerable to those behaviors. So what occurred in your childhood or your life that left you vulnerable to these addictive patterns in the first place?
There's a lot of things that happened. There's just completely being— growing up, I thought I grew up in a healthy home, but it turned out that it was really a detached home. No emotion. There's a lot of things. I have an incident in my past where I was molested by a family member. I mean, there's a lot of things in my life that have caused me to like emotionally detach and shut down, I guess.
Number one, I want to thank you for sharing that, and Let's look at the fact that— have you connected the dots to that? Like, really connected the dots to that and forgave yourself for what you've done by understanding there was a reason for it? Is that it was John's relationship with himself. John, your relationship with yourself was fractured from a young age through the household dysfunction, through the sexual abuse, through being a victim of a crime like that, and the way that distorts your self-image, your self-perception, how you regulate your emotions. So I get molested and then my family is not even emotionally available for me to even talk about it. So what do I do? I shut down. I disconnect from myself. The disconnection from yourself is an adaptation to the pain. It's the way that you survived it. So of course, 40 years later, you're going to find yourself in these addictive patterns and addictive tendencies. Why? It's a way to escape. It's a way to self-medicate. It's a way to self-soothe. It's a way to self-regulate. And have you struggled with these addictive patterns most your life?
All my life. Yeah, since adolescence.
Okay, well, let's open up a door right now, right now. In the doorway, at the top of the doorway, it says, forgive John. That John has to forgive John for the way that John has treated John, because John didn't have a healthy relationship with John because of the imprint psychologically, neurologically from the traumas that you went through. And that's not an excuse, brother, but it's a reason. And that's not, that's not debatable. That, that's, that's called facts. When you go through something like that in your early life that impacts you emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, neurologically, physically, relationally, socially— when you go through something like that in your life, the correlation between sexual abuse and addiction is incredibly high, and there's tons of research data and literature to support it. But see, John, you got to see the through line on that, brother. You got to see that and understand that you didn't just wake up one day and decide to hurt your wife. You didn't just wake up one day and decide to have an affair. No, that it's, it's you in your own skin and the discomfort that that makes you feel, and that I'm not used to sharing what's going on with me. I'm not used to sharing how I'm feeling. See, that's the biggest problem with addiction. Is that our behavior is not congruent with how we really feel about people in our life. And that's the worst feeling ever, right? The agonizing pain of feeling love and care for people in my life, but yet my behaviors don't show it. And all my brothers, all the guys that are close to me, that's an agonizing pain. It's like guys that I've known that have done prison time behind that. And I'm in prison, I'm thinking about my kids, and it's like they don't know how much I love them. They don't know how much I love them. And I'm in this cell, and it's like My behaviors are saying everything other than how I really feel inside, and that hurts. And I didn't choose to hurt people when I decided to do these things, when I decided to self-destruct. I didn't make that choice. Hurting people is a byproduct of it. But the problem is that the people that are hurt can't see beyond the hurt. They can't see the reasons why. They think it's like, well, that you just did this because you don't care about me, or you just did this because you don't love me, or you just did this because you're just thinking about yourself. No, the reality is I did these things because I'm trying to not be in my own skin because, because I'm consumed by my own pain, by my own world, by my own— right, whatever is going on with me. And that's the biggest tragedy, man.
And that's exactly right, actually. That's how I feel. That's how I felt my whole life.
That's exactly how I felt. So you're not alone in that.
I mean, because I, I know I love— I know I love my wife. I know it, you know. But, but that's been brought up with her too. You're right, that's It's just like hitting the nail on the head. She's like, well, if you love me, why would you do these things? And the truth is, is because I don't love me. And I've been— you're right, I don't want— I'm trapped in this body. I've been trapped in this body that I wanted to escape from, basically. Yeah.
