Young MA, CSAT-C, EMDR

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Young

MA, CSAT-C, EMDR

Notice:

Trailhead Counseling and/or Alex Young reserves the right to make changes to this manual at any time without notice.

Copyright Notice:

This document is copyrighted. All rights are reserved. This document may not, in whole or in part, be copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated or reduced to any electronic medium or machine-readable form without prior consent, in writing, from Alex Young and/or Trailhead Counseling.

While reasonable efforts have been made in the preparation of this document to assure its accuracy, Trailhead Counseling and/or Alex Young assumes no liability resulting from any errors or omissions in this document or from the use of the information contained herein.

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Am I Sure I am an Addict?

It isn’t whether you can pass some online assessment that tells you “yes-or-no”, you have a sex addiction. Those are useful to bring issues to your attention. But the bottom line is the realization you have been experiencing negative consequences in your life as a result of your behaviors – and you still can’t stop them.

Negative consequences hit from all different directions. There are the big ones: divorce, loss of job, incarceration, and sexually transmitted diseases. There are littler ones too: functional depression – you still have a job and a family but just don’t experience any joy in life; overwhelming shame keeps the real you locked behind a public image you maintain, or the loss of loving, authentic relationships – with both men and women, and it is sapping the energy out of you.

Dr. Patrick Carnes describes four key beliefs that let you know you have a problem: a deep sense of shame – you are basically bad, knowing nobody could love you as you are, a driving desire for sex, and a lack of trust in anyone or anything to make it better. If any of those resonate with you, then read on – this book is for you.

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Is It Even Possible to Recover From a

Sex Addiction?

You might be reading this thinking recovery is hopeless – “How can I recover? I’ve been doing this so long – this is just my life.” Shame, denial, and negative thinking locks you into a deadly cycle of addiction.

It is important to realize your addiction gets a benefit every time it gets you to say “This is hopeless.” Learning you have the power to effect a positive change in your life is powerful – powerful enough to be scary. What if I can’t do this?

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Recovery definitely starts with a leap of faith and a sense of curiosity about what is truly possible. Lean into the process, learn from others, and keep asking the hard questions. Unlocking a healthier life begins with entertaining the possibility there is a better future possible.

The First Steps to Take:

Confide in Someone Safe

A sex addiction is born and reinforced in isolation. How can just talking about it help fix things? In the middle of our shame of the addiction, it is difficult to be vulnerable with somebody else. It may seem to you that if you let people know the ‘real’ you, the one who has these kinds of problems, they will reject you. But often it is not the case.

It seems like a paradox, but the more we are able to talk with someone, the less shame we inflict on ourselves about our behaviors. The doubts you might feel about opening up are part of your own shame talking to you – telling you not to risk being authentic. Finding the strength to tell just one person can be the start of healing.

Find someone you can trust and talk with honestly. The person needs to be non-judgmental. He or she needs to be supportive of your intention to move

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away from the addiction and towards health and recovery. For those who attend religious services, this can be a pastor, priest, or rabbi. It can be a good friend you can rely on, a school counselor, or a family member who has the experience and wisdom to not pass judgment. They have to be supportive of your intention to turn away from this disease. The addiction has been covered up with lies for long enough – begin by telling the truth. Learn to tell it faster. Learn what it is like to have to depend on somebody else instead of keeping everything locked up inside your head.

Attend 12 Step Programs

Alcoholics Anonymous was started decades ago on the belief that two alcoholics working together have a better chance to get sober and stay healthy than any one individual on his or her own efforts.

The same 12 steps are used in support groups for sex addicts, porn addicts, and love addicts. Sexaholics Anonymous (SA), Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA), and Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) have meetings all over the place, and just about every day of the week. For rural areas and times when going to a meeting just aren’t an option, there are even phone meetings. The magic of 12-step meetings is this: You are in a supportive environment with folks who have battled the same issues you are facing now. They can be the inspiration and education for you to learn to stay sober, make connections, and break the addictive cycle. They can hold you accountable for slips, and thinking errors without shaming you in the process.

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I recommend attending 30 meetings in 30 days for the specific purpose of changing your thinking. After all, consider how long you been acting out. Thirty days is small compared to that. To start a recovery effort off correctly, you’ll need to give your system a jolt of what living without your drug looks like.

Get a Sponsor

There is something both very ordinary and very special about sponsors. A sponsor is simply someone who has walked in addiction and recovery, and is just a little ways ahead of you on this journey. If it is helpful, think of a sponsor like a trusted mentor who can help guide you through the steps.

A good sponsor prods you with gentle advice, challenges your addictive thinking, and helps hold you to your plan of recovery. He or she will share their experience, strength, and hope of their own recovery. He or she will help you get familiar with the meetings and help introduce you to other members. But above all else, the primary task of a sponsor is to guide you in working the 12 steps.

While you are at these 12-step meetings, you will certainly share things about yourself, but you will also get to listen to others’ stories of recovery. As you listen, find someone who has some sobriety, someone who has what you

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want. Listen to them talk. If it seems he or she has some wisdom, pull them aside afterwards and ask if he or she can sponsor you, even temporarily. The important piece in this is you get advice from someone who has gone through what you are about to.

Talk With a Skilled Counselor

Counseling comes in all

shapes and sizes:

psychotherapists, marriage and family counselors, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, etc. Some therapists specialize in depression and anxiety, others work with drug and alcohol addiction. Not every counselor is an expert in every mental disorder.

The relationship between you and your therapist is critical to helping you heal. Studies have been conducted showing the rapport between client and therapist is one of the biggest factors in creating an effective treatment plan and realizing successful goals.

The counseling relationship fosters trust. Trust enables honesty and authenticity. When you feel safe to be open you can risk looking at the

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addiction in a new light. This is how the healing relationship works. You have got to feel comfortable with your counselor!

Find a counselor who specializes in the type of addiction you are trying to overcome. If he shares the same faith as you, all the better. For a pornography addiction or sex addiction, look for a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT). The International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals (IITAP) oversees the training and certification and is continually adding to the knowledge base on how to best treat sex addiction.

Cut Out the Triggers

When you have decided to quit an addiction, you will need to take a good, hard look at your current lifestyle. Are there temptations in your life which are too hard to resist? What people, places, and things are getting you into trouble on a consistent basis? Quitting a sex addiction entails an overhaul of the way of life you have been living which has enabled, encouraged, or supported the addiction. You’ll need to avoid old friends, places and things

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you associate with acting out. Don’t forget – you will also need to create a plan to deal with people, places and things that may trigger relapse.

Are your friends the sort of people who can help you to change your habits? Do you find yourself hanging out at certain peoples’ desks just to talk with them, flirt with them, or make passes at them? Take an inventory of who you associate with – which ones are healthy for your recovery, and which ones keep you locked in a cycle or relapse?

If adult bookstores, strip clubs, and the Friday happy-hour at your local bar are part of your acting out behaviors, now is the time to cut them out of your life. What other places are there in your life which just don’t help you quit the addiction? Some people report they are unable to hang out at the mall any longer because of all the visual stimulation.

The same can be said for the things in your life which are temptations. Do you have a subscription to online memberships to xxx sites, or is your smart phone a walking adult movie theater for you? Have you paired up acting out with getting drunk or high? Take an inventory of temptations and problem areas and start distancing yourself from them immediately.

Get Yourself Accountable

These days the internet is the major enabler for pornography addictions. Because online porn is 24/7 accessible, anonymous, and affordable (free), there are few, if any, speed bumps slowing your access down.

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In order to begin a journey of recovery, it is mandatory the triggers and temptations which lead you to relapse are handled. One of the best ways to cut yourself off of online issues is through accountability and filtering software. Filtering software is good – it blocks a lot of sites from even coming up on your screen.

But filtering alone is not enough. Find someone to be your accountability partner (NOT your wife) who can receive the weekly report of your

online life. Spouses are not recommended to be accountability partners because there is the potential for judgment, shaming and their own trauma from relapses. Your accountability partner has to be able to have the hard conversation with you on what you are looking at and encourage your better behaviors without inflicting shame into the conversation.

You install this software on your desktops, laptops, and smartphones. It provides a basic layer of protection. It can set times of day to allow internet access, shut off person-to-person file transfers, and monitor emails for questionable access.

A lot of folks will complain they can always get around the protection. While that may be the case, there is a bigger goal: As addicts grow in recovery and learn, they become more honest about their behaviors. They are able to report these sort of slips to their sponsors. If you have other devices which

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are internet capable (Televisions for instance), you can install filtering software at the router level.

Start Journaling

This isn’t the ‘Dear Diary’ type of journal. A recovery journal is specific to your progress through the addiction, working the steps, and finding healing in the process. There are two goals in having a journal while you are in recovery.

The first goal is learning what triggers your addiction. What situations are unbearable, and how you cope with them is a critical step in developing healthy coping skills. Think of the people, places, and things you find uncomfortable. Do you find your marriage unbearably boring and dull? Or do you see your spouse as a nag all the time? These are the red flags signaling ‘Stressful situations ahead!’ But you also need to include your inner thought life too – what emotions do you

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have the hardest time dealing with? The better you are able to identify problem areas, the easier it becomes to deal with them.

You also want to journal about what you have learned in recovery. Writing in your journal will provide clarity to your values, emotions, and goals. Writing down the life lessons you hear helps them to stick. These will include wisdom you hear in 12 step meetings, your own reading, and conversations with others in groups or with your sponsor. It is helpful to keep the journal with you – your counselor may want to explore with you what you have processed and how you are integrating all the different parts of your recovery effort.

Read Up on Addiction Literature

Getting a deeper understanding of addiction equips you to know where you are at in the disease, and provides you with the tools to fight back. Through reading you can get smarter about addiction: what are the causes, what the addictive cycle is, how shame keeps a person locked in the cycle, and how to recover. Reading is for your partner’s benefit as well. The betrayal of the relationship is traumatic for partners. Excellent books to start with are: Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction by Dr. Patrick Carnes, and also Untangling the Web by Rob Weiss (on internet pornography). For partners of an addict, I would recommend Mending a

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Shattered Heartby Dr. Stephanie Carnes. And there’s always my newsletter, where I share concepts and practical advice on how to recover.

Decide – Commit – Act

Deciding you want to quit the addiction may seem like a simple process – just say the words and start walking in a different direction. But deciding is a daily proposition. You must intentionally decide to keep walking in recovery every single day. Often a person pretends to decides to pursue recovery, but really is just in it until it gets too tough. This is a tough

addiction to beat, and requires your 100% decision.

When we commit, we apply our resources to one goal at the expense of any other. Where we focus, our energy follows. If you focus on the negatives in your life that justified why you should act out, you’ll find many more reasons to act out. By committing your mental energy to recovery principles and connecting to others in healthy ways, healing is faster, deeper, and longer lasting.

There is the old story of Hernán Cortés in 1599 landing in South America with 600 Spaniards, intent on finding gold and riches. Cortés’ commanded

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his men to “Burn the boats.” It left them with no exit strategy. They had to move forward. Leave yourself no exit strategy, commit to this journey no matter the cost, and find the riches recovery can provide you.

Acting in recovery, once your intention to heal and commitment of your scarce resources is set, is the active working of your recovery program. It is a regular regimen – a practical program for daily living. These are the ingredients of a solid recovery, needed every day, that equal success.

Stay Focused

It has been said fear and worry are only about the future. Guilt and shame are centered on the past. Getting stuck in either won’t help you in the moment. Don’t ruminate on the past mistakes you’ve made. It only leads you into a shame cycle where you are bound to relapse as a way of escaping the pain you are feeling. Worrying about how the future may unfold doesn’t provide you any strength to keep sober right now. Stay in the present moment, focused only on what the next right step is for you.

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There are likely going to be setbacks along the way. Failure is not relapse – failure is giving up on the promise of recovery. Keep a vision of what you really want and practice ‘patient persistence’ in your recovery.

BONUS – the 11th Step to the 10 Steps

of a Recovery Effort

No recovery effort succeeds if you can’t take care of your essential needs. A solid self-care program is essential. It doesn’t mean entering an Iron Man

triathlon is you are not an athlete. Instead, make sure you are getting the right amount of sleep, exercise, and a good diet each day. Sleep is the body’s mechanism of recharging and processing all the day’s events. Exercise helps

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reduce stress. And diet keeps you in the best mental state – prepared to tackle the harder parts of life.

Good self-care isn’t only these three activities though. Consider: What spiritual practices do you enjoy? Where is meditation in your daily life? How well are you connecting with others? Even if it means just reading a book for fun – you need to include this in your life. Addiction recovery cannot be 24/7 drudgery of working the program – it is intended to help you enjoy life again. You are learning how to enjoy life in healthier ways. If you don’t start now, you never will.

These 10 steps don’t make up a whole recovery effort. But they get you started on the right road. If you have other steps you feel are mandatory when starting up a recovery effort, please add them to this list with a comment to me. I’d love to hear from you.

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If you feel like you are ready to take the next step – to really commit to a life of recovery and back to a life of integrity – I can help. I specialize in helping men overcome the addiction. I focus on helping spouses heal from the pain of the betrayal. The center of my counseling practice is helping couples to redeem their most important relationships.

If you want to find something infinitely more satisfying in life, now is the time to call me at (720) 248-8163. At Trailhead Counseling, I offer a free in-office 30 minute consultation on how we can set up your individual goals and accomplish them.