The wall in the anorexia entity is designed to protect you. People can see your image in this glass wall but can't really touch you. It looks really good until someone tries to get to you and it's almost impossible.
Over time, the wall doesn't tell you this but it slowly closes you inside, so you find it increasingly more difficult to get out even when you truly want to come out. Eventually, you feel hopeless to come out, which of course makes it really easier for you to stay inside the wall and the image.
Like all the other pieces to this anorexia entity, this wall must be torn down. The following is my thank you and goodbye letter to this wall.
I don't know if there's anything I can say in this letter that was not addressed in my first "letter to intimacy anorexia." As I understand Dr. Weiss, "the wall" is just a way of visualizing intimacy anorexia. However, I feel like I really picked on God in my last letter, so I would like to take this opportunity to praise Him for getting me pointed in the right direction. I've mentioned Dr. Weiss, as he is the one who came up with the idea for these letters, but I have never thanked God for leading me to the counselor who introduced me to him!
When I met my Gerry Pettyjohn (a professional counselor who introduced me to the concept of intimacy anorexia and recommended Dr. Weiss' recovery material), I was pretty hopeless. I had admitted to my wife three times that I had failed in the area of sexual purity, and the last time there was an online tryst involved. I had heard of sex addiction before, but that sounded more glamorous than what I was going through! Gerry helped me realize that sex addiction was exactly what I was dealing with. It amazed me that as soon as I had identified the problem, I began to have hope. Reading recovery material really helped in that area, as I began to see what kind of life I could have on the road to being recovered. I wouldn't have to suppress all the images I had filled my mind with throughout the day that threatened to incriminate me. I wouldn't have to look at other women and think that maybe they would make a better lover than my wife. I could even talk with and learn from people who were on a different faith level without fear of being discovered as a fraud.
But it's like Dr. Weiss says, once you've allowed "the wall" to form around you, it's easier to stay inside than break out. I longed to see the blessings in my marriage grow exponentially, but it turns out I actually have to work at making improvements if I ever want to see them do so. I found that not doing destructive things was a heck of a lot easier than finding positive actions to replace those things. That's definitely been the greatest challenge for me. With the addiction gone, I see the need to fill that void. The problem is that I can't find anything inside the wall. You think the wall is keeping the evil from going out or being seen, but it's actually keeping good things from coming in.
I guess the bottom line is God delivered me from my addiction, and He wants to see me obey Him to completion in response. As long as I'm in a relationship with "the wall," this is impossible. Once this wall comes down and I begin to let encouraging people in, God can heal me from my anorexia as well.
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