Roman Bravo

My life has been a struggle of trying to get out of a slimy pit. The slime involved a lot of pornography, cheating on my fiancee, hooking up, and not knowing how to stop. I thought that having a daughter would motivate me to stop, but it just got worse. I'd think to myself, "You're such a dirtbag." I didn't want to feel that way so what did I do? I did what I knew to make myself feel better - back to the slime that made me feel that way in the first place. With sexual addiction, it only gets worse, you'll never be satisfied. Hooking up with girls, I would see my daughter and think, what if someday my daughter lands with a guy like me? There was so much of that slime - my traumas, my triggers, my pain.

 

And don't get the wrong idea. That was all happening while I was in ministry, doing all the stuff leaders do. Going to church every Sunday, preparing Bible studies, teaching children's church. I never stopped to ask the question, "Is there a way out of this?" It just seemed like a pit I was doomed to live in forever, make the most of it. ​I knew it was my own brain causing the problem. So what could I do? Pray more? Fast more? Go to church more? I did it all. Nothing was helping.

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Then One Day someone reached down with a dry hand and offered it to me, and I took it. I was at the bus stop having a mental breakdown, holding my head and thinking, "my brain needs help," and Hannah, who I barely knew at the time, invited me to a young adults brain science conference. That was the dry hand - a hand without slime - something no one had ever offered me before. The simple, honest, common sense I needed someone to offer me was that what I was doing came from the stories and hurts my brain had learned - and the ways my brain had learned to survive. Hannah, Jim, Richard, Claudia, Ray, Ed, meeting all of these Life Model people gave me a hand I'd never been offered before.

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After a while of just being myself in the presence of people who actually enjoyed me for who I was, I was able to stop doing the things I was doing. In the religious way of fixing myself, I'd go for a few days, mess up, start back at round one. Once I understood my own brain and started working with what it needed (healing) I was able to stop being so hard on myself. This was not just an excuse to keep doing stuff, not at all - the slime was what I hated most. But the relief of knowing why I do these things helped me stop - I'm not just an awful person. This was me understanding me, the way God does, not just as a religion but as my Father. When you finally get to be yourself, the coping mechanisms are not necessarily going to stop right away, but it will lead to that eventually. It was a more gentle process than just waiting for the "magic" thing that was supposed to change me once and forever. 

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I no longer have loneliness or the need to fill the void with sexual activity - I know that void could never be filled by a woman no matter how hard I tried. I don't crave that anymore. I feel satisfied. I'm not sitting in the slime, and that feels really good.