Process Addiction and the Full Focus Planner

This is an email that I sent in to the Full Focus Planner Team outlining how I use their planner and how it has positively impacted me on my recovery journey. I hope you find some helpful tips!

Hello Full Focus Team and Community,

I’ve been listening to your podcast and following the community for some time now and have been a planner user for about 4 years. I felt lead to reach out to you and share a bit of my story and how the FFP has helped me in my recovery from process addiction. As Dr. Patrick Carnes states, “Process addictions are the most difficult to overcome. If it’s a substance, then a person can just avoid the substance. But you can’t just avoid something that’s essential to living, i.e. food, sex, work etc.” At the age of 13, I developed a sex addiction. 25 years later by God’s grace and the loving support of some friends, I now have 15 months of sobriety. I wanted to share with you how I use the FFP and how it has helped me in my recovery.

My purpose in using the full focus planner is to remain grounded in the present and be aware of how I am processing reality. I have learned that the whole point of my addiction is to avoid the present reality. I accomplished this through different behaviors and mindsets that have been incredibly damaging to myself and my loved ones. In my addiction, my goal has always been to not feel, to forget, to disassociate from what is happening in the here and now. To numb out and ignore reality. It’s how I learned to survive a painful dysfunctional reality.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy in his book, “Be Your Future Self Now” talks about the importance of defining your contextual purpose. This is really important to me because as an addict, it’s really easy for me to disassociate and fantasize about some future grand vision, and totally miss the present reality. He challenges us to define our contextual purpose into three categories and then break them down into risky yet manageable yearly goals. Using this framework, I have defined my contextual purpose as, recover the man I am intended to be, help my wife heal from the damage of my addiction, and find happiness. Tim Jennings, M.D. says “Happiness is a byproduct of healthiness.” Essentially the only way to achieve happiness is to be committed to becoming healthy in all domains. I love that this idea is built into the FFP.

Recovery is a commitment to reality at all costs. I have spent 25 years avoiding and ignoring reality. I had to in order to maintain the addiction. As a result, some specific steps are needed to help heal the brain. Dr. Jennings has this great metaphor. He describes an individual that has been trapped in a cave for a long time, in total darkness. Now imagine they are rescued and suddenly brought to the surface at high noon with the sun fully blazing. It would be excruciatingly painful. But what would happen if that person was rescued in the early morning hours before sunrise? Then we just let them sit there and slowly get used to the ever-increasing brightness as the sun rose? Recovery is like that. It is slowly waking up and acclimating to the ever-increasing brightness of truth and reality.

One of the tools that I have developed to help this process is a journal prompt called the P.U.L.S.E. It is an awareness tool designed to track how I am processing reality. P.U.L.S.E is an acronym for Physical, Unions, Lessons, Struggles, and Emotions.

1. Physical-What am I feeling in my body? Why?

2. Unions-What is the reality of my significant relationships? What is my contribution?

3. Lessons-What did I learn today? Why?

4. Struggles-What did I struggle with today? Why?

5. Emotions-What am I feeling? Why?

In addition I also have a concept that I call A Different Picture (ADP) that I use during my weekly preview. It’s the practice of reviewing the notes and journal entries from the previous week and reframing them into a positive or growth step. I ask myself the question, How can I reframe this situation or belief to make it look good? I use red ink for this part so as I’m going through my quarterly previews or monthly review, it’s really easy for me to see areas that put me in a negative process and how I reframed it to a positive one. This is also a great time to review my P.U.L.S.E.’s and see if I’m stuck in any area.

My morning ritual is simple. The focus is to set myself up for success. In my addiction, I have avoided anything hard or uncomfortable. So, I do the hard thing first. I start my day with a cold shower. Then after letting the dogs out and making coffee I get into my gratitude’s and devotions.

I use the daily pages to inventory what I’m already doing. I usually write 3 gratitude’s from the previous day at the top of the notes section as well as a verse or devotional thought during my morning ritual. I use the Big 3 to keep forward movement in my Contextual Purpose Goals, but the rest of the space is really for journaling my P.U.L.S.E. and any other significant things that happen. I also schedule events on the daily pages as recommended so I don’t forget. Fun fact, sex addiction also produces one of the highest levels of dopamine. One aspect of recovery is discovering healthy activities that produce healthy dopamine hits to replace the unhealthy ones. Checking off the Big 3 is an amazing healthy form of dopamine release!

Structuring the planner in this way has really paid dividends for my recovery. I love your podcast, products, and Michael Hyatt’s books. Keep up the great work. Thank you all for the amazing work you do.