Category Archives: For spouses & parents

Addiction, For spouses & parents, Recovery

How to Recognize SAFE People

Leave a comment

It’s great to have casual friends, like the relationships we might have with neighbors, work colleagues, and acquaintances in our community. But along with this, we need real friends: close friends, people we can be vulnerable with.

As recent research has shown, loneliness not only lowers the quality of our lives — it affects our health, and therefore, the duration of our lives. It is now commonly understood that loneliness is a key risk factor for early mortality, having the same impact as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and even more dangerous than obesity.

Here’s the thing: casual friends, neighbors, and work colleagues do not end our loneliness. It that were the case, people in urban environments wouldn’t be so lonely. For many people today, their lives are filled with people contact, but not friends. We need real friends, not just associates.

As a pastor of a church, I’m very aware that one of the great benefits of being part of a spiritual community is the depth of fellowship that people can experience there. It’s what I see so many unchurched people missing. At the same time, I also see that too often, relationships in church can be insincere and fraught with conflict and various kinds of dysfunction. Over the years, I’ve come to see that one of the most important tasks of people in church leadership is to guard the integrity and health of relationships among members.

Let’s be honest: even in churches, there are a lot of people who are NOT SAFE. By that I mean, we intuitively sense that if we told them the truth about our lives — the whole truth — they wouldn’t know how to deal with it. They would judge us, try to “fix” us, look down on us, and maybe even distance ourselves from us.

SAFE Acronym

How do you find SAFE people? First, let’s get clear about what we mean by “SAFE.” Let’s use the word as an acronym:

S – Sincere: SAFE people aren’t fake. They don’t try to present themselves as being different than they really are. You sense an honesty and openness about them.

A – Accepting: Around SAFE people, we feel a permission to be ourselves. They might not approve of everything we do or say. They might even — when it’s appropriate — express their concern about us and our behavior (see “forthright” below). But it’s always done with the awareness that our relationship is not at risk. They will love us and include us in their lives even if we struggle.

F – Forthright: We don’t have to guess what SAFE people are thinking and feeling. They will tell us. This means they might have to share a concern with us, but we know they’ll do it honestly, and in love.

E – Encouraging: SAFE people actively seek to build us up, not tear us down. They speak encouraging words to us, and we trust that they will not divulge anything we tell them to others. Continue reading How to Recognize SAFE People →

90 Days to Sexual Sanity, Addiction, For spouses & parents, Pornography, Recovery, Sex Addiction

Help for starting–or supporting–a program for recovery from sexual struggles

Leave a comment

In 2007, I developed a program to help people who were dealing with sexual struggles in their lives. Some felt comfortable calling these struggles an addiction, while others weren’t so sure about that label. It started out as followup, or “aftercare,” program for people who attended workshops I helped facilitate with Dr. Mark Laaser.

I think this program could help you, if you are wanting to start something — a group or ministry — to help others, or get more support for your own recovery.

When I created the Recovery Journey, I wanted to offer something different: I wanted to offer something that would work with — and help supplement — work people might already be doing with a therapist, or involvement with a 12-Step recovery group. I didn’t want to create something to compete against the many good programs already out there, or compete with therapists who do face-to-face work. I wanted to create something that would work with those other modalities.

And I wanted to offer something that helped facilitate a practice that I’ve come to believe is essential for long term sobriety:

Doing a little something every day
to support your recovery

As my sexualsanity.com website grew, I started to get people in the program who hadn’t gone to a workshop, and I found it worked just as well — if not better — for them.

Over the years I continued to tweak the program, and for some time now it’s been known as “The Recovery Journey,” and hundreds of participants have gone through it. I wish I had exact numbers. At this point, I think somewhere close to 400 people have gone through the program: about 300 sexual strugglers, and 100 partners of strugglers, who’ve gone through the companion program.

To find out more about the Recovery Journey, 

or sign up for it,

go to the website:

http://recoveryjourney.com

Here’s a little about the program, and a little about what I’ve learned:

1. Set a specific length of time. I decided to focus on a specific span of time, to make it something that people could dedicate themselves to going through as a transition time … even though we all know that recovery is a lifelong journey. With a nod to the recovery tradition of focusing intensively for 90 Days, I eventually set up the program to run for 90 Days.

I recommend this as a way of starting something with other people. Have a group meet for 3 months. Have everybody make a commitment to faithful attendance for that set amount of time. Then, if it goes well, you can decide towards the end of that time if you want to keep going.

2. Include some teaching to solidify a deeper understanding of addiction and recovery. I set up the program to include a short teaching segment, along with an action step to take each day (I’ll say more about the action step below). In my work with people in recovery, I came to see how essential it is to maintain focus on one’s recovery commitment. I came up with the principle that we need to do “a little something EVERY DAY” to remind us of our commitment, and help us move in the right direction. Continue reading Help for starting–or supporting–a program for recovery from sexual struggles →

For spouses & parents, Recovery, Sex Addiction

Sexual Harassment, Abuse, and Addiction, part 2

Leave a comment

The relationship between sexual abuse and addiction

The previous article in this series introduced the topic, clarified the terms, and focused on the relationship between sexual harassment and sexual addiction. This edition will focus on the relationship between sexual abuse and addiction.

First off, I want to acknowledge that this is a broad topic, and entire books are written about these themes by people who are experts in this subject. (One classic is The Betrayal Bond, by Patrick Carnes.) I’m writing here to share some of my observations, as a spiritual teacher, and as one who worked in the sex addiction field for a number of years, working with many hundreds of sex addicts.

Here’s my observation:

Many sex addicts have been victims of sexual abuse
(but of course, not all of them)
and only a small group of sex addicts become abusers.
Those who do become abusers have issues beyond addiction.

To be sure we’re clear about our terms, sexual abuse, as defined by the The American Psychological Associate (APA) is “unwanted sexual activity, with perpetrators using force, making threats or taking advantage of victims not able to give consent.” It is often used to refer to sexual activity with minors … those unable to give consent.

Many Sex Addicts Have Been Victims of Sexual Abuse

When kids are exposed to early sexual activity, they respond in two ways: They either shut down sexually, and withdraw from any kind of future sexual activity, or they shift the other way, seeking out sexual activity on a large, unhealthy scale. This creates the energy for sexual addiction, also sometimes referred to as “hypersexuality.”

Continue reading Sexual Harassment, Abuse, and Addiction, part 2 →

Addiction, For spouses & parents, Pornography

Advice for a woman whose boyfriend looks at porn and wants her to be his “accountability partner”

2 Comments

I got the following email from a woman who has been reading this blog. I thought it might be helpful to share her questions, and my responses (with her permission to share this). For those who might not be clear about the terminology, her boyfriend uses accountability software that creates a report about the web sites he looks at. She is his “accountability partner” in that she is the one who get the reports. Here’s her question, and my response  …

My boyfriend struggles with porn, and I’ve been his accountability partner (A.P.) for 6 months. I read his reports, which are sent as an email  every morning … and so I begin my day the moment I awake reviewing every word, site, text, you name it that’s in this report. It’s become part of my daily routine. Approximately 15 minutes a day I spend going over every detail, filled with anxiety I will catch him having done something. I’ve become addicted to monitoring him and I don’t trust him.

He’s told me he’s moved on from pictures and videos to gazing at real women in the world daily, and undressing them with his eyes. He said he is overwhelmed as they are everywhere and his problem is worse. He has no strong male support and I’m really the only one he can be held accountable to in his eyes.

It’s killing me. I can’t start my day without reviewing the previous day’s activity, and it doesn’t feel normal to track his every mood …  I finally told him last night I can’t do this. I begged him to let me off it. I cried, “Please…it’s killing me reading this daily. It seems you’ve been better, but I feel I’m the only one holding back your dam bursting. It’s wasting my days and I’m addicted to searching.” He began to cry.

(Later edit) Oh one more thing … he’s my ex boyfriend now. I broke it off a week ago from when this was written and he told me he’d still like me — his now ex-girlfriend — to be his A.P., regardless of my feelings. He knew I took being his A.P. seriously and that he absolutely would seek out bad stuff the minute I left the site, so I’m riddled with tremendous guilt over this. I haven’t left the site yet.

Ok, your thoughts….I’m sure you have an opinion here!

**********

My response:

Thanks for reaching out to me, and I’m sorry to hear about your painful story. As you suspected, yes I do have an opinion about this. Actually there are a few things that your email made me think of, so I hope you don’t mind if I share my thoughts in sort of a list form, more or less with some of my random thoughts and responses:

1. As a general rule, most sex addiction counselors (including me) do NOT recommend having the partner of a sex addict be the one to get the reports for Internet usage. I say “general rule” because there are probably always going to be some exceptions to any rule when it comes to relationships. But just so you know, I pretty much always discourage couples from doing what you guys have been doing … for the reasons you describe in your email. It creates additional suffering for the partner (you), because each day you’re reminded of this struggle, and you get triggered emotionally by reading through the reports.

Granted, some partners of sex addicts WANT to be reading the internet usage reports of the addict, if they’re struggling to trust the accountability process. They might need to see the reports themselves for their own peace of mind. Even in that case, it still is often damaging for them to be getting the reports, and they will often decide they don’t want to see them anymore.

2. Rather than have their partner reading thru his reports, a sex addict REALLY NEEDS to have a peer group, a sponsor, or some trusted person read them. This means that the addict needs to have another person he’s talking to about this, not just you. It puts too much pressure on you and your relationship for you to be both his partner and his sponsor. You are the beneficiary of his recovery, not the facilitator of it. Someone else needs to do that.

3. The fact that he doesn’t have another person helping him in his recovery is a big red flag. It’s going to be hard for him to recover without having other people to talk to. This is really really important.

Accountability software is a great tool, and is really helpful for people struggling with Internet porn, especially in the early stages of their recovery. So nothing I’m saying here is meant to disparage using this software … just that it needs to be seen as part of a larger set of commitments and actions that constitute “working one’s recovery.”

4. The fact that he feels such a strong pull to act out (“look at bad stuff online”), and struggles with sexually compulsive thoughts (undressing women mentally that he sees on the street) is a sign that he needs to do more work on the urges that are driving his recovery. In AA, they would talk about this as a “dry drunk” … someone who’s desperate to drink, and clinging to their sobriety by their fingernails. Once again this relates to the issue that there’s MORE things he needs to do for his recovery … OTHER THINGS than just having this accountability software.

By the way, I say this with no judgement. Pretty much every guy I’ve ever worked with has been in those same shoes. It’s just a sign that he needs to step up his work of recovery.

Here’s the important part for you to know: it’s NOT HEALTHY FOR YOU to be part of this. As you pointed out, it creates an unhealthy attachment for you to be digging into his history, turning you into a recovery policeman instead of a romantic partner … or as is the case now … an ex-romantic partner and friend.

5. I really don’t recommend that you continue getting these reports, even now as his ex-gf. Somebody else needs to get them. By continuing to do this role, you are hurting yourself, and you’re not really helping his recovery, because he needs to expand his “recovery team” to include a wider group of people.

So there you have it … I hope that’s helpful. Blessings to you as you work through your own sadness about this relationship, and try to set up healthy boundaries.

Addiction, For spouses & parents, Meditations Remixed, Recovery, Spirituality

Why being “normal” is a ticket to depression, disease, and addiction

1 Comment

Every day I am becoming more aware that our cultural environment is damaging to our well-being. “Going with the flow” — being “normal” — in our world today will take us to a place where we are physically unhealthy, massively stressed-out, spiritually cynical and disengaged, depressed, and addicted to something or other.

I was reminded of this when I came across an editorial in The Guardian (a UK Newspaper). Author George Monbiot takes a look at what’s happening in our world, and points to the system itself — our way of living — as the heart of the problem:

“What greater indictment of a system could there be than an epidemic of mental illness? Yet plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social phobia, eating disorders, self-harm and loneliness now strike people down all over the world…

“There are plenty of secondary reasons for this distress, but it seems to me that the underlying cause is everywhere the same: human beings, the ultrasocial mammals, whose brains are wired to respond to other people, are being peeled apart. Economic and technological change play a major role, but so does ideology. Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme individualism.”

This social isolation is built into the systems we’ve created. So many things in our society emphasize competition, rather than collaboration and community:

“The education system becomes more brutally competitive by the year. Employment is a fight to the near-death with a multitude of other desperate people chasing ever fewer jobs. The modern overseers of the poor ascribe individual blame to economic circumstance. Endless competitions on television feed impossible aspirations as real opportunities contract.

“Consumerism fills the social void. But far from curing the disease of isolation, it intensifies social comparison to the point at which, having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing, and to see that other people have more friends and followers than we do.”

We’ve heard this before: life in western society today is stressful and competitive. The word that keeps coming up, as a summary of the source of so much of what ails us, is isolation. Continue reading Why being “normal” is a ticket to depression, disease, and addiction →

Addiction, For spouses & parents, Recovery, Sex Addiction, Spirituality

Dealing With Emotions and Recovery from Sexual Addiction

Leave a comment

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)






Want more information? Get our new FREE 70-page ebook “Reclaiming Sexual Sanity” along with our recovery newsletter

We respect your email privacy

For spouses & parents, Recovery

The Skills of Lasting Relationships

Leave a comment

couple-eye-contactAny form of sexual infidelity — whether related to addictive behavior or not — will destroy the intimacy of a marriage relationship. I realize that in relationships where sexual struggles are bubbling over, there’s a crisis of trust and a sense of violation that needs to be worked through before other issues can be dealt with.

Having said that, it’s also vital for couples — once they’ve moved through the crisis stage of disclosure and early recovery — to work on building the health and vitality of their relationship in general. In other words, to learn how to build their emotional connection.

It’s amazing to think about how important these relationship-building skills are to our lives, and yet how little training and teaching we get in them. For most people, the only “training” they got about how to be a good husband or wife was through watching their parents as they were growing up. Unfortunately, too many of us had poor models, and thus learned the wrong lessons.

For this reason, developing skills of healthy intimate relationships is an essential part of long term recovery. Continue reading The Skills of Lasting Relationships →

For spouses & parents, Recovery

When someone you love is an addict

2 Comments

she knowsThe recovery work I do has expanded since moving to Chicago three years ago. In the past, I worked mostly with sexual strugglers and addicts. These days I’m working with a wider range of addictions, especially drugs and alcohol. But the biggest change is that now I’m working a lot more with spouses, parents, and children of addicts — both in my recovery work, and my role as a pastor.

It’s rewarding and important work, but it’s hard.

It’s always disheartening to see someone you love go down a self-destructive path. All our tendencies toward codependence kick in: we hurt and fear for them. We want to rescue them and alleviate their suffering.

We feel guilt for not doing things “right” in some way, which we mistakenly think makes us responsible somehow for their problems. We think, “If only I was a better wife, husband, father, mother, lover, friend, example, disciplinarian … then maybe they wouldn’t be having this trouble right now.”

If we’re not careful, we may start trying to do things to help that the addict should be doing for him or herself. That’s usually a sign that we’re over-stepping. When we do things for others that they can do for themselves, we’re getting in the way and disempowering them. Setting alarms, scheduling appointments, giving “reminders” … these are just a few of an almost limitless number of ways we try to be helpful.

At some point we find that we are putting more energy into someone’s recovery than they are. What do we do then?

We let go.

We don’t stop caring, but we stop pushing and prodding.

I won’t pretend that this is easy. It can only be done in a healthy way if it’s accompanied by the support of caring friends. Without friends to keep us balanced, it’s easy to get sucked into the roller coaster drama of the addicted person’s euphoria, resolutions, failures, and blame-shifting.

We also need a new way of holding the person mentally: a different way of thinking about them, of viewing them. For this, I suggest a new way of praying for them. I am adapting these from some ideas I got from Therese Stewart.

The Prayer of Releasing

What follows is a process to go through, which involves prayer, meditation, and intentional “letting go” of a person or situation that we are taking too much responsibility for. To do this, set aside some time (no less than 15 minutes), where you can concentrate.

(1) Begin by simply quieting yourself by sitting still, and breathing deeply. Whenever thoughts, worries, or “to dos” come into your mind, gently set them aside, and maintain your focus on your breathing, and “keeping a quite heart.”

(2) Call to mind the person who needs letting go. Hold this person in your attention as you breathe, and focus on “breathing in” the energy (or mindset) of compassion and love for this person, and “breathing out” any grief, pain, or anger you are carrying. Ask for God’s help to let those things go.

(3) While holding this person in your mind, softly recite some kind of reminder to yourself about the truth of God’s love for this person, and of their value to God.

(4) Next, as you continue to hold this person in your mind, “say” to them something like:

  • “[name of the person], I will care for you, but I cannot keep you from suffering.”
  • “[name of the person], I wish you happiness, but I cannot make your choices for you.”

(5) Next, release this person, and the entire situation surrounding them in your life, turning it over to God. Repeat a phrase, such as: “May the best outcome prevail” or “I turn this person over to your care” or “May Your will be done.” As you pray these phrases, you may want to open your hands, as a way of communicating with your body that you are releasing this person / situation into God’s care.

(6) End this time by praying the Serenity Prayer:  “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage the change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

While this is not a magical, instant fix, trust that it is powerful. It is the means by which we cut our unhealthy, codependent ties with someone. It is likely that, even after we go through this process, we will fall back into the old codependent patterns of thinking and relating. No worries. Just keep going back to the practice of praying and releasing, following the process above.

Things will change.