A new study suggests that feelings of loneliness can spread through social networks like the common cold.

“People on the edge of the network spread their loneliness to others and then cut their ties,” says Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School in Boston, a coauthor of the new study in the December Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “It’s like the edge of a sweater: You start pulling at it and it unravels the network.”

Christakis and Fowler examined data from a long-term health study based in Framingham, Mass., a small town where many of the study’s participants knew each other. The Framingham study followed thousands of people over 60 years, keeping track of physical and mental heath, habits and diet.

Click here for a full article about this study on the lastingleaders.com website.

Tweet This Post 

I recently led a teleseminar on cross addictions. It was interesting and helpful for me to do the research for it, and deal with the many helpful and insightful comments and questions.

Few people are addicted to just one thing. The achilles heel of recovery is often that by putting out the fire of addiction in one area, we simply ignite a bigger fire in another area. So the person who gets into recovery for alcoholism gets sober from alcohol, but gets deeper into his or her sex addiction. Or the person in recovery from sex addiction gains 20 pounds because his or her food addiction starts getting out of control.

In her wonderful book “Desire,” Susan Cheever quotes Pat Carnes as saying that “the mono drug user in our society is a vanishing species.” Carnes refers to cross addictions as a form of “bargaining with chaos.” That’s where we tell ourselves that we’re going to stop sexually acting out, but give ourselves permission to smoke/drink/eat more instead.

Here are some statistics, from a speech by Stephanie Carnes, a leading addiction expert in her own right, on cross addictions:

• Continue Reading »

  Tweet This Post 

We all have tendencies to self pity. We will never be perfectly free from it. In fact, in some ways, self-pity is normal and may even be helpful as part of the process of grieving our losses, and coming to terms with unresolved childhood wounds.

Pete Walker, in “Recovering: The Adventure of Life Beyond Addiction,” has this to say about self-pity: “Everyone needs to occasionally feel sorry for themselves. Tears for the self are some of the most potently healing experiences of recovery. Self-pity, in balance and moderation, is extremely healing. Recovery, in fact, is often very limited until there are profound experiences of feeling sorry for the self.”

But there is a limit. Indulging too much in self pity is destructive, sucking the joy and energy out of life. Self pity is often characterized by a drained, apathetic, low-energy bearing. Self-pitying people seem tired, and also sometimes resentful. When someone exhibits a low energy or apathetic bearing, and seems resentful at the same time, you can assume that self-pity is eating them up inside.

The danger of indulging in self-pity is that it can serve to prevent our moving forward in recovery (if we stay stuck in it). Self-pity can even lead to re- lapse. This makes sense if you realize that self-pity was often an important ingredient in our thinking that justified our acting out when we were active in our addiction.

As long as we could feel sorry for ourselves and blame someone else for our problems, we didn’t have to accept things that happened to us as consequences for our actions. Self-pity is also part of the despair that is part of the addiction cycle. After we have acted out, we feel a terrible sense of despair, that nothing is ever going to change about our addiction … that we are beyond help. As long as we believe this, we don’t have to go through the hard work of change. We can just stay stuck.

The antidote for destructive self-pity is gratitude. We can be aware of the ways in which we have been hurt, and not minimize the suffering in our lives … and yet all the while also live with gratitude. It doesn’t have to be either/or. We can grieve our losses, and also be grateful for our blessings. That is the road to authenticity … and recovery.

Tweet This Post 

Today’s post is an update of an article I wrote several years ago. I’m republishing it here because it’s a really important topic, and isn’t getting the attention it deserves. At issue is sexual anorexia, the unhealthy fixation on avoiding sex out of fear and shame. It can appear on the surface like a commitment to sexual purity (just as food anorexia can appear on the surface to be healthy self-discipline around eating). But under the surface sexual anorexia is very different than it appears. It’s not about healthy self-control, it’s about fear, self-hatred, and (very often) unresolved trauma from sexual abuse.

Just like sex addiction, sexual anorexia is often misunderstood. It’s not simply a matter of having a low sex drive. It has to do with anxiety and repulsion towards sex. Wikipedia describes it as: “A loss of ‘appetite’ for romantic-sexual interaction. However, the term is used broadly and can be better defined as a fear of intimacy to the point that the person has severe anxiety surrounding sex with emotional content i.e. in an intimate relationship.”

Patrick Carnes has written the book on this topic, with the title “Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred.” Here are a few quotes from an article which features a reprint of the introduction to the book:

Sexual anorexia is an obsessive state in which the physical, mental, and emotional task of avoiding sex dominates one’s life. Like self-starvation with food or compulsive dieting or hoarding with money, deprivation with sex can make one feel powerful and defended against all hurts.
…
When referring to food appetite, anorexia means the obsessive state of food avoidance that translates into self-starvation. Weight concerns and fear of fat transform into a hatred of food and a hatred of the body because the body demands the nurturance of food. food anorexics perceive bodily cravings for sustenance as a failure of self-discipline. The refusal to eat also becomes a way for food anorexics to reassert power against others, particularly those who may be perceived as trying to control the anorexic, trying in some manner to prevent the anorexic from being his or her “true” self.
Continue Reading »

Tweet This Post 

People in recovery struggle to establish honesty in their relationships. One of the consequences of addiction is lack of trust, stemming from the history of half truths and outright lies that were employed to cover up the addictive behavior. This is especially the case with sex addiction, because when violations of marital vows are involved, there is even more pressure for secrecy.

The obvious antidote to the all this lying would seem to be simple: just tell the truth. But how do we do that in a loving way. Does “ruthless honesty” mean telling the “whole truth” all the time?

Tian Dayton has this to say in her book Forgiving and Moving On: “Honesty in my relationships does not mean that I share all the thoughts in my mind or feelings in my heart. Honesty is the place I come from and the person I most need to be square with is myself. There are times when it is destructive to a relationship to talk too much or to share each and every detail.”

Just to be clear, it is important for sex addicts to have full disclosure with their spouses about their addictve behavior. I’ve written about this in previous posts on this blog. But note that even in the context of “full disclosure” of addictive behavior, most addiction experts warn against sharing all the “dirty details.” Such “honesty” can actually do more harm than good.

But there is more to living in honesty in relationships than just dealing with the issue of disclosing sobriety violations. What about lustful thoughts or fantasies? what about resentful thoughts or fantasies of leaving the relationship? What about critical thoughts, or angry thoughts that rise up in the midst of a conflict? It seems clear that there are some thoughts best kept to oneself.

Just because a thought or fantasy pops into my head doesn’t mean that I need to share it. There is a fine line here, because I know some addicts still struggle with keeping too much inside, and lying to their spouses and friends. I am writing this for the benefit of those who swing too far the other way on the pendulum in their recovery. Some couples - in their desire for honesty and openness - lose their sense of boundaries.

We practice “ruthless honesty” with ourselves, and with our sponsor in matters pertaining to our recovery. With spouses, family, and friends we practice honesty, but hopefully it is more compassionate than ruthless. We also maintain compassion for ourselves. In some ways the pressure of feeling that I need to share everything I’m thinking or feeling - even if it’s hard or reflects badly on me - can stem from feelings of shame.

Living in an ongoing relationship requires honesty, but honesty doesn’t mean saying everything you think.

Tweet This Post 

There’s a great article on our companion blog for pastors (lastingleaders.org) about a recent report with even more bad news for Catholics. A comprehensive study done for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops found that between 1950 and 2002, 4 percent of Catholic priests were accused of sexually abusing minors (4,450 of the 110,000 priests active during that period). Previous estimates by church officials had been much lower. Read the article for more.

Tweet This Post 

I am increasingly convinced that spiritual inauthenticity is a major roadblock for many Christians in recovery. When we try to convince ourselves to believe something we don’t really believe, or when we struggle with thoughts and feelings about God that “we shouldn’t have,” we get stuck. There are no easy answers here, but I believe it is essential to face our questions, doubts, and jumble of feelings about God in an honest way if our recovery is going to be sustainable.

To that end, I want to share an article written by Sallie Culbreth, Founder of Committed to Freedom, an organization that helps “provide people with spiritual tools to move beyond abuse.” This article was sent in a newsletter, and I’m quoting it in its entirety, because I don’t know where I can link to. It’s worth reading.

This is an article about honesty . . . and honestly, I have a love/hate relationship with God. I’ve been on the up and down roller coaster of belief and doubt, righteousness and debauchery, faithfulness and apostasy. I know that’s disturbing to a lot of people, but God gets that completely . . . gets me completely. Gets you completely too.

Let me be the first to admit that I don’t have many answers, especially when it comes to God. Honestly, the ministry of Committed to Freedom began because of my own spiritual search for answers to questions that really have no good answers. The dilemma for anyone who has experienced trauma or suffering is to have co-existing contradictions. God is love. Suffering is real. God has the capacity to create. Trauma has the capacity to destroy. The idea of God being powerful and one who intervenes in the circumstances of our lives held up in contrast to unanswered prayer, vulnerable people being abused and exploited, or diseases that progress, ravage, and destroy. Like I said: love/hate.

Continue Reading »

Tweet This Post 

“Every parent wants to protect his or her children from emotional, psychological and physical harm. That’s why parents are so disturbed by programs like Dateline NBC’s ‘To Catch a Predator’ and news stories that portray the Internet as a breeding ground for sexual stalkers.

“The truth, according to a recent report by David Finkelhor — director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center — is that the Internet hasn’t created a new kind of child predator. Instead, the Internet has provided a new medium for an old phenomenon: adults looking for underage sexual partners.

“The study finds that in the vast majority of ‘online predator’ cases, the adult perpetrator clearly identified himself online as an adult looking for sex with minors [source: Wolak et al]. Most predator crimes are statutory rape, not sexual assault, meaning that sexual relations between the parties involved weren’t forced.

“This is an uncomfortable subject, but an important distinction, says mother and Daily Beast columnist Lenore Skenazy. Instead of banning a child from using Facebook, for example, parents can focus on teaching their children about healthy relationships [source: Skenazy]. And teachers and authorities can focus on the danger signs — abuse at home, drug use, isolation from peer groups — that would lead a young person to engage in risky online behavior.”

I found this in an article about Internet Myths on the “How Stuff Works” website. I thought it was important enough to include here. I have long said that sexual compulsion is the real danger for our kids on the Internet, and the online predator issue is statistically insignificant compared to what is going on for most kids online.

Tweet This Post 

People in Bangladesh don’t need Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers. They don’t get enough food. Calories are scarce there. But not here in the US. Here we have an over-abundance of food, and face an onslaught of temptations to over-indulge. If we’re going to be healthy, we have to be wise about our food choices and diligent about exercise. The overabundance of food creates a situation that forces most of us to make physical health a conscious priority.

(Of course, there are some people who can eat whatever they want and don’t have to worry about food and nutrition. But we hate those people and will not speak of them again.)

In a similar way, we are now in a unique historical situation: an over-abundance of sexual stimulation. If I am unsatisfied with the sexual experiences in my life, I don’t need to go to a cave somewhere and look at drawings of stick figures for sexual gratification. I don’t need to go to a museum and look at paintings of nudes. I can look at photographs, even video. And I don’t have to go to a cave - or even to a store - to do this. I can just turn on my computer, or open up my cell phone. The mechanics of finding sex partners have also gotten simpler and easier, given today’s technologies.

These technologies make sexual stimulation easily accessible and create a temptation factor that is enormously higher than it was in previous generations. We have to deal with it. Just as we have to be conscious about food and exercise choices if we want to avoid being fat and unhealthy, we now need to make conscious choices about the sexual stimulation we fill our lives with, and the sexual experiences we have. And just as some people truggle to control their weight more than others, some people struggle controlling sexual behavior more than others.

Tweet This Post 

Noryne Mascarella has written the best summary of sex addiction for spouses that I have read. She works with spouses, and her essay is written to help them understand sex addiction, and answer some of their questions. I think this is a great article for anyone to read, including addicts themselves. If nothing else, her discussion about how to rebuild trust should put addicts on notice about continuing the path of recovery. Here are the questions she addresses, which form the outline of the essay:

• Why am I not to blame or responsible for his use of pornography or sexual addiction?
• How could he do this if he says he loves me?
• Will I ever be able to trust him again?
• Is there any hope for us?
• How will I be able to tell if he is getting help and getting better?
• What do I need to know about his problem?
• Continue Reading »

  Tweet This Post