Category Archives: Sex Addiction

Dealing With Emotions and Recovery from Sexual Addiction

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emotionsOne core insight in my recovery — and spiritual renewal — was this: It’s essential to acknowledge and deal with our emotions. Denying them (by telling yourself “I shouldn’t feel that”) or stuffing them is a recipe for depression, hidden resentment, spiritual bypassing, and burnout. An important part of the recovery experience for me was developing a deeper awareness of what is happening in my heart, and acknowledging what I’m feeling, instead of trying to make myself feel something else.

In the past few years, I’ve come to view emotions with an added nuance. While still valuing them, and finding it important to deal with them, I have come to recognize how fleeting they are. They are like waves that wash over the shore, and then dissipate, only to be followed up by another wave. Like the writer of Psalms says: “Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). They are important, we must tend to them, but we are not at their mercy.

I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard people say — when struggling to come to terms with something painful — “I don’t want to think/talk about it (because) I’m afraid if I open up that door I’m going to start crying and never stop.” But doing this work — of looking within and dealing with what is there — is essential for their recovery and ongoing emotional and spiritual well-being. It can be done safely and helpfully with the guidance of a skilled counselor.

For most of us, the struggle with our emotions from day to day is more mundane. It has to do with anxiety, sadness, insecurity, shame, or fear that we don’t want to deal with. So instead, we distract ourselves with busyness and frenetic activity, or numb ourselves out with chemicals or addictive behaviors.

Jesus once said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). I often think that addictive substances and behaviors are ways we try to escape from having to mourn. And of course the problem is that if we don’t mourn, we don’t find comfort. We find distraction, and often, addiction.

One of the skills learned in long term recovery is the ability to ride the waves of emotion, and live with a sense of inner peace, even amidst the swirls of elation, fear, anger, sadness, etc. This takes time, and part of the spiritual journey is cooperating with God to bring healing, wisdom, and inner resources to enable me to do this.

The celebrated Sufi poet Rumi has a famous poem about the importance of welcoming this variety of experiences into our lives. There’s great wisdom in this, because often these emotions have something important to teach us. Even the negative ones. Listen to what Rumi has to say:

Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every day a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight. …

Be grateful for whatever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from Beyond.

– Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)






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Ending Denial and Facing the Grind of Addiction

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aa-wreckedlifeEveryone agrees that whatever addiction you have, it starts out fun. Whether it’s the great taste and comfort of food, the mellowness or rush from a drug, or the excitement and stimulation of something like gambling or sex … there’s a reason we turn to it, and come back to it again and again. It’s exciting, it satiates a desire, and it feels good.

But at some point — usually much earlier than we realize — it turns on us.

Instead of controlling it, it controls us. We find ourselves going back to it even though we promised ourselves we wouldn’t, and the limits we set keep getting violated.

One of my favorite books this year is “Out of the Wreck I Rise,” by Niel Steinberg and Sara Bader. It is essentially a compendium of quotations by literary figures about addiction and recovery. Some are long, some are short … almost all of them are really really good. Not only that, Steinberg and Bader’s writing — which comes in the form of extended introductions for each topical chapter — is interesting and helpful too. Listen to what they have to say about our denial in addiction, and the crucial step of realizing it’s out of control and no longer “fun”:

Fierce denial is common, and so a jarring incident, or, more likely a series of escalating incidents, is usually required before change is contemplated. Those confronting their addiction begin by addressing the crisis and, only then, are forced to understand the routine that led to it. The beginning of a new life is the gradual realization — the honesty emphasized in AA — that there is a sameness to addiction, a dreariness, a drudgery. It is the identical thing happening over and over again, every day, with only one avenue of escape, one possibility of change, an option that, viewed by a person sunk in the routine of dependence, at first seems incredible, unimaginable, ridiculous.

That first step — whether taken on your own or pushed to it by somebody else — is recognizing that you aren’t doing this of your own will. It’s a compulsion. You don’t think using your substance is fun because it’s fun to be constantly scourged with the need for drink or drugs (or sex). You think it’s fun because it’s what you do all the time and you’re secretly terrified at the thought of not doing it, of enduring the awful hunger you suffer when you stop even briefly. It’s like a bad job that you keep telling yourself you must like, because you go there every day and it’s all you’ve got.

Addiction is not a bad choice. It’s an obsession: grinding, dictatorial, relentless. The great thing about recovery is that you don’t have to succumb to your addiction every day. You don’t have to spend your life doing this.

Some recent statistics about internet pornography

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I’ve been working on a chapter for the second edition of the book “The Christian Handbook of Abuse, Addiction, and Difficult Behaviour.” This book was published in the UK by Mayhew Publishing, and unfortunately has had zero traction in the US or on amazon.com. Apparently it must be selling in the UK, because they want to release a second edition. Go figure! The first edition came out in 2008, and the publisher wanted updated statistics for each of the chapters.

So I did some checking. I don’t think it should be a surprise to anyone that Internet porn use continues to explode in growth. I confess that I was even a little surprised at how much it’s been growing. Obviously, porn use is growing along with the growth of the Internet, but did you know that porn now occupies a significantly larger percentage of web traffic than it did just 10 years ago?

Here’s some quotes from the chapter I’m sending:

Just how prevalent is Internet pornography use? Survey data and Internet use statistics show changing patterns in the past two decades, but high rates of pornography usage have continued. In fact, not only has porn use increased on par with the growth of the Internet, it has grown faster than the Internet and is now a larger part of internet traffic. The previous edition of this book cited data from internet service providers (ISPs) showing that 20% of web traffic was porn related. More recent data shows that currently that number has grown to 30% (source).

In 2013, Google research showed that porn sites get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter  combined (source). In the UK, as of 2013, porn websites were being accessed more than all social networks combined, and more than all shopping websites combined (source).

 

In the USA:
64% of American men view porn at least monthly, and the percentage of Christian men is nearly the same as the culture at large
79% of men ages 18-30 view porn at least monthly.
67% of men ages 31-49 view porn at least monthly.
55% of married men view porn at least monthly.
(Digital Journal, August 14, 2014)

 

In the UK:
70% of UK teens say porn is seen as normal by their peers at school.
46% of teens said sexting is a part of everyday life for teenagers.
2/3 of girls and nearly 50% of boys said growing up would be easier if porn was harder to access.
(DailyMail, UK, August 19, 2014)
75% of Christian men view porn at least monthly.
41% of Christian men admit to being addicted to pornography.
30% of church leaders view porn regularly
(The Way, UK, January 20, 2015)

In Ireland:
83% of men and 56% of women have viewed porn.
25% of these watch it weekly.
36% who are not in a relationship view porn weekly.
(Irish News, January 17, 2015)

 

In Australia:
70% of Australian men view porn online (according to research from University of Sydney, but other surveys show the number as high as 90%).
80% of 15 to 17 year olds have had multiple exposures to hard core porn.
(Newcastle Herald, September 12, 2014)

In South Africa:
67% of men view porn several times a week
(New24.com, South Africa, March 19, 2015)

In Trinidad:
79% of men watch porn
52% of women watch porn
Trinidad has one of the highest per capita rate of searches for porn on Google
(Trinidad Express, October 18, 2014)

Just fix this addiction, but leave the rest of my life alone!

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manpornPeople who want to recover from addiction often face the same roadblock that sabotages other kinds of emotional healing — and many kinds of physical healing:

wanting to fix one’s problem without changing one’s life

***

We want to “fix” what we see as an isolated issue without getting at the real problem, which is deeper, and encompasses many facets of our lives. Not realizing how deeply rooted addiction is, we seek solutions that don’t involve drastic and multifaceted change in our lives.

People often come into the recovery process essentially asking: “Help me fix my problem, but don’t ask me to change other parts of my life. Leave the bulk of my life alone, and just take care of this addiction.” As if addiction is an isolated thing, and can be changed by small, isolated interventions!

A medical analogy

To use a medical analogy, we want to fix our addiction problem like we imagine we can fix a medical problem: taking a pill or getting a shot — without changing how we live our lives. The reality is that even with many physical problems, this won’t work. The physical intervention of medication won’t last, and if the person continues their unhealthy lifestyle, the problem (disease) will come back.

This happens in recovery from addiction all the time. And unfortunately, it also happens in recovery from physical problems too.

Take the person who has a very unhealthy diet, gets no exercise, and lives with chronic overwork and stress. They have a heart attack, and have surgery to repair a bad heart valve. They’ve “fixed” the problem, right? But you know what happens next. They go home from the hospital, continue with the same diet, no-exercise, and high-stress lifestyle, and in a matter of months they have more heart trouble.

Healing childhood trauma and heart surgery

This is the concern I have when people come to recovery who over-focus on healing from childhood trauma as the magic fix. They see the diagnosis and “healing” of this early life trauma as the equivalent to heart surgery that will fix their problem.

Please don’t misunderstand me here: I’m not trying to dismiss this important aspect of recovery. Do I believe that healing from early life trauma is essential for recovery from addiction (and also for happy living)? Absolutely. Do I think it’s sufficient for lasting recovery? Absolutely not.

Danger-Warning-1If our lives aren’t working — if we have unresolved spiritual/existential issues, if we’re in jobs that are overly stressful and/or unfulfilling, if we’re isolated and lonely, if our intimate relationships are filled with hatred, abuse, apathy, or neglect, if we’re living in perpetual financial crisis, etc., etc, — we will not find lasting recovery. I guarantee it. We will be like the guy who gets heart surgery and goes back to his old life and terrible habits. The problem will come back.

Then who can recover?

Maybe at this point you’re thinking: “Well then, I guess I can’t recover. My marriage and family life are in shambles. My spouse hates me because of the things I’ve done.” or maybe: “I can’t recover then, because I lost my job and now I’m working in a crummy job that I hate.” or “I can’t recover, because my spouse divorced me and now I’m living in a little apartment, and I’m super lonely.”

Addiction will bring all kinds of chaos and pain into our lives. Much of this chaos and pain comes into our lives as direct consequences from our behaviors. Some of this chaos and pain comes into our lives for no discernable reason other than that we live in a fallen world. Bad things will happen. We will face aspects of our lives that aren’t working.

But here is the point: Our recovery has to involve facing all these areas our lives, and working to fix the ones that aren’t working. Recovery has to involve dealing with the variety of aspects of our lives … because if we are addicted to something, it is certain that there are a variety of things in our lives that are not working. Often we don’t realize this in early recovery, because our addiction is distracting us and numbing our pain.

Gerhard Adler on magical thinking in therapy

Listen to what psychologist Gerhard Adler says about this in his book “Studies in Analytical Psychology”:

It happens only too often that the patient expects at the beginning of an analysis that the psychotherapist will, by some magical means, simply rid him of his symptoms without ever touching the rest of the structure of his life, with which he is quite satisfied. The analyst is only too often supposed to be a kind of ‘medicine man’ who will make the symptoms disappear from the outside.

The truth is that nobody can be cured unless he is prepared to accept the need for a more or less complete reorientation of his life. To put it in a nutshell: the healed person is not the original person minus a symptom, but a newly oriented person in whom, through the new orientation, the necessity for the symptom itself has disappeared.

I’ve often said in workshops and talks I give about recovery that if we are in full-blown addiction, we will not find lasting recovery unless we are willing to do a major overhaul on all the aspects of our lives. Work, church, friendships, hobbies, things we read, how we parent, what we read, where we live … everything needs to be looked at.

People hate to hear that.

I’m not saying that it all needs to be jettisoned or blown up — the “change” might be in how we function in that setting, or relationship. We may not change our job (although we might), but we will change how we think about it, and how we do it. We may not sell our home and move to a new community (although we might), but we will change aspects of our home and community life. And so on.

Are you willing to do that? Not right away. Not all at once. But to apply “rigorous honesty” (a term from the Big Book of AA) to all your life, not just your addiction?

What do I need to change?

I was speaking at a recovery conference not long ago, and one of the other speakers was a woman who had decades of sobriety from alcoholism, and now runs a treatment center for women. She put it this way:

What do we need to change if we want recovery?

Just one thing:

Everything.

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If you are struggling with sexual addiction … I invite you to take the Recovery Journey with me for the next 90 Days. The recovery journey is a 90 Day Home Study course designed to give you a deeper understanding of the inner dynamics and spiritual issues of the path towards recovery.  (There’s also a program for the partners/spouses of sexual strugglers.) Just click on the link below:

CLICK TO LEARN ABOUT THE RECOVERY JOURNEY PROGRAM

Three Great Articles to Read

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A Man Reads A NewspaperI’ve come across several articles lately that I think are so good, I’m encouraging everybody I know to read them. Here they are, with a bit of commentary by me

🙂

10 Things I’d Say About Sex if I Had No Filter

I really like Sheila Gregoire. She’s a Christian, and writes very openly and honestly about sexual issues from a female standpoint. (She’s also a writing and media powerhouse! She’s got a very active blog that every female partner of an addict who reads my blog should be reading.) She encourages women to experience healthy intimacy … in other words, she’s no prude … but at the same time, she’s written quite a bit about the struggles of women whose husbands have been unfaithful and/or sexually addicted. I like this article for its honesty and realism about the joys and challenges of establishing and maintaining a joyful sex life over time in a marriage.

http://tolovehonorandvacuum.com/2015/03/top-10-things-id-say-about-sex-if-i-had-no-filter/

An Overview of the ACE Test

I have often talked about the roots of addiction being about unresolved early life trauma. Anything as complex as addiction can never be reduced to a single issue, but certainly, this is important! When I talk about this topic, people often fixate on abuse … especially sexual abuse. I like this approach better than just talking about abuse. ACE is an acronym for “adverse childhood experiences.” The problem isn’t just abuse in its various forms, it’s also often neglect in its various forms. And beyond that, the challenges of early life are not always just things that happen in the home. What’s so interesting about the ACE test, and study that is being done about it, is the evidence that is piling up that ACE’s lead not just to psychological challenges (like addiction and depression) but also physical illness.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean

Having a “Sex Positive” Mindset While Also Recognizing Sex Can be an Addiction

This is not a lengthy discussion, but at least it raises the issue. Alexandra Katehakis, whose work I appreciate, writes this article on the Psychology Today blog, addressing the critique that people who suggest treating sex addiction are just puritanical moralists on a crusade.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-lies-trauma/201411/sex-addiction-sex-positive-concept

Is Sex a Struggle but not an Addiction? Here’s what to do

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strugglingOver the years in my work with sexual strugglers, it became clear that there is a spectrum of struggle … some people simply fight a battle with sexual temptation (and periodically lose), and others would fall into the category of sexual addicts. The line between the two is not always clear — it’s more like a spectrum, not a simple either/or — and many people struggle to honestly face the extent of their problem.

I have come to call this group of people — who fall repeatedly into sexual temptation, but don’t fit the diagnostic criteria for addiction — “sexual strugglers.” Often people in this category don’t have the patterns of emotional and sexual trauma from early life, and they don’t give evidence of other problematic addictive behaviors. But for some reason, they still struggle with behaviors around sex — often related to Internet pornography.

I believe that sexual strugglers need to focus on four things. If they keep these four things in place, they will do well. Also, at the end of this article I will give you an easy, sure-fire way to tell where you fall on this spectrum. So here we go … the four things strugglers need in order to deal with their struggle:

1. Vigilance

Sexual strugglers need to maintain an awareness of their vulnerability to sexual temptation, and realize that this will be an ongoing challenge area for them. Many people who are dealing with sexual temptation at this level try to downplay its importance, or view it as a temporary thing. They may tend to blame other people — especially their spouse — but the problem is internal, not external. If they were in a relationship with someone different, they would likely still struggle sexually.

Often sexual strugglers downplay the problem in their lives, because they are able to go for certain periods of time without falling into behaviors. But inevitably, if left unchecked, their sexual struggles will come back, and they will get into some kind of problematic behavior again if and when the circumstances allow. In other words, they can stop, but they can’t stay stopped.

The solution is a bitter pill for some people to swallow: recognize that this is an ongoing issue, and it won’t go away. We need to keep vigilant. How? Read on …

2. Boundaries

The sexual struggler needs to establish new guidelines or safeguards around his or her behavior. This is the flip side of the first principle, the need for vigilance. Sexual strugglers need to be aware of their vulnerabilities — and do something about them. They need to put filters on their computer, establish guidelines around safe conversations with members of the opposite sex, establish plans for business travel, and for time spent alone (like when their spouse goes away on a trip and they are home alone).

An important step for sexual strugglers is to look back on the times they have fallen into inappropriate sexual behaviors and pinpoint the areas of vulnerability that were in place that led up to his behavior. Then they need to decide what kind of limitations or boundaries need to be put in place. People often resist this because it creates limitations and hassles. But the alternative is more acting out, and further movement on the continuum of sexual health towards addiction.

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What is the Difference Between a “Slip” and a “Relapse” in Recovery

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relapseI was recently asked this question: What is the Difference Between a “Slip” and a “Relapse”? by the concerned spouse of a sex addict.

This question is important for any addiction, but it’s fraught with heavy emotion in relationships where there is sex addiction, because sobriety is so important for the restoration of the relationship. Here’s what I said (with some slight editing):

  Thanks for writing. I define a slip as a short duration, one time drift into addictive behavior that the addict puts a stop to by reaching out to get help and get back on the recovery path. It’s not about what the specific behavior was (porn, masturbation, looking at a woman lustfully, engaging in sex, etc.), because different people are struggling with different behaviors to begin with.

  

A slip is different from a relapse in that a relapse indicates a shift back into the addictive pattern. Instead of seeking help after a brush with addictive behavior, the addict stays isolated and acts out again (and often multiple times, over a period of time). This person has taken him or herself off the recovery path, and is now “in relapse.”