Mutual Respect and The Power of Intimacy

By Dan Griffin, MA, Senior Fellow at The Meadows
Power is a very interesting phenomenon. I remember having numerous conversations about the complex intersection of power and relationships in graduate school. There was a lot of confusion as to what exactly power even is.

One of the most common misunderstandings about power is that it is a linear phenomenon. In fact, power comes at us from numerous sources all of the time.
The second most common misunderstanding is that power is a zero-sum game— either you have it or I have it. And whatever you have, I can’t have, and vice-versa. This fundamentally flawed way of thinking about power greatly impacts our experiences in relationships.

There are two main ways we experience power in our relationships: power with and power over (you have power over someone else or some else has power over you). The Man Rules say that real men have power and are never weak or powerless. Therefore, from a very early age, young boys are encouraged to find power over – power over others, power over their feelings, and power over themselves.

The Woman Rules say that women should be cooperative, passive, nurturing, selfless, and not too strong. Therefore, from a very early age, young girls are encouraged to find power with. Women are expected to share power with others even if it puts them at a disadvantage; even when it means they have to give up their own power.

And that is the rub in so many heterosexual relationships.

Making Peace with Power

You cannot have a relationship that doesn’t involve a complex interaction with power. What some people don’t often consider is that power can be healthy. In fact, it is an essential part of the day-to-day human experience.

To help us explore the complexity of power in relationships, we can look to the classic Karpman drama triangle which illustrates the shifting, and sometimes destructive, roles of persecutor, rescuer, and victim that people play in relational conflicts. In this “drama triangle” each person involved in a conflict experiences and acts out all of these roles at different times. The role we take on can determine how we perceive our partners, interpret their behavior, and interact with them.

The reason these triangles arise, and often endure, is that each person, regardless of their role, finds that they get their unspoken, and often unconscious, psychological needs met by playing these roles—roles which they most likely originally “perfected” through the power dynamic that played out within their family as a child.

Whether they play the victim or persecutor, or some combination of all three roles, in the end, each person feels justified in acting upon their needs. Feeling satisfied, they often conveniently fail to acknowledge the dysfunctional ways they tend to go about getting their needs met, or the harm that is being done as a result to themselves, their partners, or any third parties (like children) who may be directly or indirectly involved in their conflict.

When there are times of disconnection in the relationship and even if, for whatever reason, there is a loss of respect between partners, intimacy can only be restored in the space of mutuality. We have to move away from the desire to have power over our partners toward the experience of having power with them. When we are able to uncover how our emotional needs arise from our childhood trauma, and release some of that pain, we have the ability to break free from the drama triangle and build an intimate and nurturing environment of mutual respect. Is it easier to let our relationships fall into a series of power plays or to maintain a space of mutual respect? I would suggest the former. We have to build up our emotional and spiritual muscle in order to truly listen to our partners and maintain respect, especially when they are being their very human and imperfect selves and not doing what we want them to do or being who we want them to be.

Finding The Power to Choose

What is the greatest crucible for us working out all of our childhood “stuff”? Our most intimate relationships, of course.

It is like a divine joke where God says, “Okay, so you find this person you really care about and want to love? Great! Now here is all of this pain and suffering from your past that you get to sort through with them. You will often take it out on them, blame them for it, and project it onto them, which will cause all kind of intense, painful conflicts!” Wow, thanks a lot. All of those childhood experiences are deeply related to how we bring power into our relationships.

And, when you add in sex addiction and/or love addiction with trauma and drama triangles? I believe the clinical response is: Ay-yi-yi.

At the core of most sex and love addiction is a profound difficulty achieving healthy intimacy because of attachment-related trauma. Said simply, individuals who engage in addictive or compulsive behaviors related to sex and relationships have a very hard time forming attachments to others in healthy ways. No wonder then, that we are likely to see even more intensely destructive behaviors when addiction takes the stage among the three bedevilments in the Karpman triangle.

The most essential tool for any kind of personal change is awareness. With awareness, you can begin to learn how to make a choice about what you will do and how you will react at any given moment.

What we know from years of working with people at The Meadows is that choice is not always easy to access. The powerful strings of the past can pull us back to our childish and often desperate attempts to find emotional safety. And, what can offer us a feeling of safety (or at least the illusion of safety?) Power. And all of us are guilty, numerous times throughout the life of a relationship, of misusing power.

Your limbic brain—the unconscious part of your brain that’s screaming at you to find safety—doesn’t care if you use this power in a healthy and affirming way or not – it just wants the feeling of safety. That need can be satisfied, temporarily, by displaying overt and aggressive power (as men often do) or by displaying manipulative and passive power (as women often do). However—and this is the beauty of the Karpman Triangle—both of these examples are unhealthy and even abusive uses of power.

If you ask most people if they want their relationship to be based upon power plays or mutual respect, they will almost always choose the latter. Within every relationship is the constant ebb and flow of power and control between all parties. To build a truly healthy and deeply connected relationship, each person must choose, more often than not, “power with” instead of “power over,” and a healthy sense of control over a toxic need to control. The challenge is being honest enough with ourselves and our partners when we inevitably slip into those power plays and move back into a space of mutual respect. That is how we come to truly understand the power of intimacy.

Content Source

Internet Pornography Addiction Is a Growing Problem for Men, Women, and Children

Stefanie Carnes, Ph.D.recently sat down with Pat McMahon on Arizona Daily Mix to talk about the prevalence of sex and pornography addiction among men, women, and even children in our society. Dr. Carnes is a Senior Fellow at The Meadows and is the clinical architect of Willow House at The Meadows, our new love and sex addiction treatment program for women. Here are a few highlights from the conversation:

How do you diagnose someone with sex addiction?
Dr. Stefanie Carnes: It can sometimes be overdiagnosed. Some people will think that just because they are struggling a little bit with pornography or they had an affair that they are potentially a sex addict. We look for specific criteria, though, to determine if someone is a sex addict.
We’re looking to determine if the person:

• is continuing despite consequences,
• has destroyed their relationships,
• spends excessive amounts of time preoccupied with their behavior, and/or
• has tried to stop the behavior and failed.

Sex addicts can even have psychological withdrawal symptoms from not being able to access the behavior. And they can build up tolerance as well. You can have people who are compulsively viewing pornography who have to use more and more to get the same effect.

Is pornography addiction more common today?
Dr. Stefanie Carnes: Whenever you have the increased availability of something, you have more addiction. So, in places that have more bars, you have more problem drinking; where you have more casinos, you have more problem gambling; where you have meth labs, you see more meth addiction. So now that the internet is so prevalent and everywhere, we’re starting to see a lot more internet pornography addiction. For clinicians, it’s incredibly common to have that present in a patient in your office.

Are people exposed to pornography at younger ages these days?
Dr. Stefanie Carnes: The average age of first exposure to pornography is 11. We’re starting to see people have problems with it at ages as young as 9 and 10. Children are being exposed to very graphic material at an early age and they don’t know how to handle it.

If you find out that your child has seen pornography, take care not to shame them. It’s very common and we want to treat them with sensitivity. Normalize the experience. Explain that this happens to a lot of children, that anyone can be exposed to pornography. Teach them that it can be addictive and teach them about healthy sexuality. Because what they’re seeing might be violent, or perhaps unusual, or maybe even deviant sexuality depending on what kind of pornography they’re seeing. That can be difficult to understand for an 11-year-old.

Do women struggle with sex addiction too?
Dr. Stefanie Carnes: Absolutely. It’s a little bit different for women than it is for men. Women present with a little bit more love and relationship addiction as well as sex addiction, so their behaviors often involve things like multiple relationships at the same time, affairs, hooking up, falling in love over and over again, lots of sequential relationships. So, it usually presents with more of a relationship addiction feel. But, it’s also very common for women to struggle with pornography, hook-ups on online apps like Tinder, one night stands, and those kinds of things.

Does sex addiction treatment involve abstinence?
Dr. Stefanie Carnes: Recovery from sex addiction is more like recovery from an eating disorder. When you are recovering from an eating disorder, instead of abstaining, you have to learn how to have a healthy relationship with food.

What kind of treatment is available?
Dr. Stefanie Carnes: Sex Addiction is a lot more common that people think. Treatment is available on both an inpatient and outpatient basis. People tend to do very well in treatment. Sometimes they can start in outpatient treatment and get a lot of help and support there. They’ll want to get a trained therapist; someone who is a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist is most helpful in these instances.

Call 800-244-4949 for more information about The Meadows’ sex addiction treatment options or send us an email.

content source

Understanding the Neurobiology of Sex Addiction

Alexandra Katehakis, a Senior Fellow at The Meadows, recently talked with Tami Simon of Sounds True’s Insights at the Edge podcast on a wide range of topics, including…

• the roots of sexual dysfunction,
• "grownup sex,” (i.e. sexuality based in honest communication of needs, preferences, and desires for novelty),
• asexuality,
• sexuality without intimacy, and
• why orgasms are overrated.

Alexandra will also be presenting on sexual dysregulation during Sounds True's Neuroscience Training Summit 2017 on March 23.
Here are a few highlights from the podcast episode:

What’s the difference between having a sex addiction and just being someone who just likes to have a lot of sex?

Alexandra: “One of the differences, main differences, is that people who declare themselves "sex addicts" are in a profound amount of pain as a result of their sexual behaviors. So what may have started out as fun or being used as a way to sort of get out of one's head—or not deal with psychic pain that some people know or don't know they have—quickly turns into the proverbial albatross around their neck.

They'll have a high level of preoccupation with getting into the sexual experience, so sex becomes—there's a myopia, there's a shutting down of everything other than getting that experience. It becomes a collapsing of one's life, and people typically report messes—or what they call "unmanageability" in the 12-Step Program—as a result of having this kind of destructive, painful sex. Which is different from someone who likes to have sex, enjoys it, feels sensual, it feels enlivening to them, and what we think of as life-affirming.” Have you worked with people who aren't quite sure whether or not they have a sex addiction? How do you help them?

Alexandra: “The term gets thrown around quite a bit now and it doesn’t really fit the bill unless there’s a lot of assessment that’s done appropriately to look at whether there’s a long standing pattern of compulsivity and if this person has in effect created these adaptive strategies that become states over time so if for example you have a child who grows up in a very, very dangerous dysfunctional neglectful household and they start to learn through fantasy whether ti’s comic book fantasy or more commonly we see today kids getting on the internet and looking at internet pornography as early as six and eight years old, and that is there sole way of regulating themselves or feeling good what happens is that the brain starts to form around those patterned behaviors and so what is initially a coping strategy that helps that person manage difficult, lonely, sad, terrorized feelings over time becomes who they are, and they therefore can’t not do what they do. And so that’s the point where is “an addiction.” That these are tenacious neuronal networks that are wired together in the brain because they’ve been firing together for so long.”

“So, just because someone has an affair or looks at internet pornography does not make them a sex addict, it requires a lot of scrupulous assessment to see if that’s really true for each person and then some people like that term, some people don’t. I don’t have bias about what people call it I’m more interested in helping people get out of the snarl they’re in and move towards a healthier, more life affirming sexuality.”

How do you help sex addicts find a way to heal?
Alexandra: “Well, first, I take a very extensive history, because oftentimes these patterns get set not only in childhood, but sometimes really in infancy, depending on the level to which the person is chronically dysregulated, meaning unable to soothe themselves—wherein they're always reaching for something outside of themselves to make themselves feel better.”

“Sometimes if somebody recalls or knows that their mother had a very difficult pregnancy or she was anxious or depressed at birth, that tells us that she was likely unable to attune to her infant so that she could bring his or her systems to fruition in the way they are meant to be optimally. So, if she's anxious, her infant's going to be anxious. If she's depressed, the infant will be depressed. These are functions that get set up early, early on—some of which can be changed, some of which cannot down the road.”

“Also, if that person suffered any kind of emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse as a young person, or was grossly neglected, then they're going to have a lot of trouble with regulating themselves. When a child is left alone or abused, he or she will find ways of coping. It's sort of a natural adaptive strategy for survival. So, whether it's fantasy or compulsive masturbation or, as I said before, disappearing into Internet pornography or even making up stories in one's own head, all of those things are set up to make the pain or the sadness or the loneliness go away.”

“Oftentimes, children like that are set up to become addicts, whether they're drug addicts or alcoholics or gamblers or eating—it's hard to say why people choose which behavior to be compulsive with. But when they do, it's helpful for clients to understand why what they're doing makes a lot of sense. So, rather than feeling shameful or like they're bad or damaged or broken, we look at why it makes good sense that they would be doing what they're doing today because they adapted this a long, long time ago to survive. But, now it's keeping them from having a healthy relationship or a healthy sex life, or being able to even be in a relationship, if that's what they desire. That would be the start of treatment.” Learn More

To listen to the Insights at The Edge podcast with Alexandra Katehakis in its entirety, or to read a transcript, visit the Sounds True website.
To learn more about sex addiction workshops, inpatient programs and outpatient programs offered at The Meadows call 800-244-4949 or go to www.themeadows.com.

Content Source

The Unconscious and Sexual Acting Out

The Use of Psychodrama in Treating Sexual Addiction
By Tian Dayton Ph.D., TEP
Note: This article originally appeared on The Huffington Post.

It is the body’s natural mandate to act; we are beings designed for movement and expression. It’s how we get around the world, communicate our feelings and thoughts, eat, sleep, cry, wail, kiss, dance and sing! We are conceived, carried, born and die all through our bodies. We feel our emotions physically; feeling, in fact, comes first. Before words enter the picture we are engaged in what Stanley Greenspan refers to as a “rich tapestry of gestures” and expressions that communicate our desires and feelings to others. Hopefully, there is a reciprocal response from another caring person so that we feel seen, heard and responded to. This is what lays down the fabric neurologically, emotionally and psychologically that maps our inner world and our capacity for intimacy, communication and connection.

These maps function both within and outside of our conscious awareness. They are part of how we learn to attach to another human being. One of the things that happen when we’re deeply distressed or frightened by less than satisfactory interactions with significant others is that we go numb inside. The child who reaches out for comfort and connection and receives instead of warmth and a friendly expression a sort of coldness, disinterest or rejection grows up feeling like a stranger in a strange land. It is as if their needs and desires are somehow invisible or inscrutable to those they depend on; or worse, that there is something wrong with having them at all.

The word “trauma” has a big ring to it. But in my own practice what I find is that the larger more visible traumas that everyone agrees are wrong or hurtful can actually be easier to treat than the constant drip, drip, drip of feeling alone in the presence of another. These emotional deficits or these empty spaces in our inner world, become a part of what we learn to expect when we look to fulfill our very human need to be intimate with another person.

Sexual Addiction As A Result of How We Learned to Connect

So when we talk of sexual addiction we need to go back into the root system of how we learned to connect and/or compensate for a feeling of disconnection— What we do to fill the empty/anxious hole inside of us.

Sexual acting out that is unconscious might be seen as both a way to self medicate unhealed, unconscious emotional and psychological pain and as a way of trying to finally get the closeness that we have longed for, for a lifetime. But as with any form of acting out, it keeps pain unconscious. Rather than feel the vulnerability and fear that accompany our desire to connect, to love and be loved, we use the excitation of the chase, the deliciousness of secrecy or the body chemicals themselves that are part of the sexual experience to override feelings of anxiety around intimacy.

One of the more poignant examples of how this gets set up is illustrated by a psychodrama— well, many psychodramas I have done with “Pete.” It is a “model scene” from his childhood home, one that incorporated the relational dynamics from childhood that are core to his acting out in adulthood. We have done many versions of this but here is one capsule. We begin with his walking home from school. As he comes down the sidewalk to his home he feels exited to see his mother after a long day away from her. His father has gotten him off to school again that morning; mom was “tired,” she was “sick.” I ask him to soliloquize as he walks, to narrate the goings on inside his mind:

“I am so excited to tell mom about my “A” on my science project. She’ll be so proud of me. Maybe we’ll go out for a walk together.”

Pete’s childlike grin betrays an innocence that belongs to childhood and an ability to hope against hope again and again and again.
“Mom, I’m home!”
“Mom, I’m home!”
“Mom, I’m…”

Pete goes up the stairs now again narrating his walk.
“I hope she’s home, where is she, was she sick this morning? Why is she always sick? I want to show her my paper with the “A” on it.

“Mom,” Pete knocks on the door, “Mom, I’m home, I’m here, open your door please.”
“Mom, open your door, Mom I got an “A”, Mom, come on open the door, come on, come on, come…..”

A look of confusion and hurt comes over Pete’s face, it is the look of a child on the face of a man. His shoulders slump and he draws his chin in.
P: “Well maybe it doesn’t really matter, maybe it’s not a very big deal. Maybe…”
Pete falls to his knees in front of her door.

“I might have fallen asleep, I don’t know, sometimes I did, I think I am crying, I am…” At this point, the pain Pete felt over and over again while collapsed in a heap in front of a door that would not open, became excruciatingly evident. He let it in in fits and starts, squinting, holding back tears then suddenly belching a little, crying, then nothing, dissociating. Keeping him engaged in the drama was challenging. Once he’d gotten some real emotion out, I decided to let him reverse roles with his mother, to enter the forbidden space and inhabit, for a moment this inaccessible world that he so longed for. I “interviewed” Pete in the role of his mother.

Tian: “Your son is crying, he wants to come in.”
Pete in the role of his mother: “What?”

T:“I said your son is crying outside your door, he desperately wants to come in.”
P:“Do you have a light, I can’t find my cigarettes.”
Pete describes that his mother was always sitting in a cloud of smoke, that she used one cigarette to light the other.

T: “Your son, are you drunk, can’t you hear me?”
P: “Oh there they are, no I never drink.”
T: “I don’t believe you.”
P: “I never drink, Pete is always ….is school out already?”
T: “He is home and wants to be with you.”
P: “Have you read this new National Geographic Magazine, it’s wonderful, all of these pictures of other countries.”
T: “Your son, he wants you to open your door.”
P: “Right here, look at this one…”
T: “Are you drunk?”
P: “No, I never drink, why do people say that? I never drink.”
At this point I knew that Pete was stuck forever in the reciprocal role with his mother, he was being true to his memories, true to his traumatized mind, to the truth he’d internalized as a boy.
T: “I think you may be drunk right now”.
P: “No, I told you, I don’t do that”.
T: “Where do you keep your bottle?”
P: “Right here, under the bed,” “mom” reached down under the bed and pulled out a bottle of gin.

Pete learned to fill his empty afternoons with a neighbor boy who initiated him into the secrets of sexual play. At the very most basic level, he found somewhere to go on these searingly lonely afternoons. He also began a life of using sex to medicate loneliness. As an adult, his trigger for sexual acting out remained loneliness and rejection, he could be sexually sober for a long time, but if he felt rejected by his wife, he acted out sexually to medicate the unconscious pain it triggered from his childhood.

Seeing Trauma in Three Dimensions Through Psychodrama

Putting this kind of confusion, this weird mix of love and lies out into the here and now through psychodrama, allows us to look at it in three dimensions. It brings what lies in our repeated past out into the present in concrete form where we can observe it and deal with it. To actually stand in the shoes of the hurting child that we were, and feel their loneliness and pain brings self compassion. Then to reverse roles with the parent and more often than not feel their pain, confusion, or inability to feel and focus because they were lost in a world of addiction, loosens up the memories that have laid petrified in the unconscious.
The relief and release involved in these simple role-plays is quite profound. Not only do we get to feel our own pain and finally make some sense of it, we feel our parents immaturity and confusion and often this serves to reveal to us that they too were lost, that their inability to give us what we needed was not personal. We were not in other words bad or undeserving, we were more or less just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We can gain compassion for ourselves and for the other and this compassion lights a path to awareness and emancipation from a past that has its grip on our throat.

Meadows Senior Fellow Bessel van der Kolk, while being interviewed by Tami Simon of Sounds True explained, “When you get traumatized you have a breakdown in your imagination that anything can ever be different than the way it was, that anyone will ever love you or care for you. …you don’t know what it feels like to be held and loved. In our field we tend to be very passive, we reflect. We focus on the bad things that happen, but we don’t focus on what is missing. But moving on with life, is to take new actions.”

In other words, traditional psychotherapy tends to reinforce the block. By focusing constantly on the past trauma, we strengthen the block against trying new things.

“A very powerful point in getting over trauma,” continues van der Kolk, “is to act in ways that are different from the way you have acted. We are a symbolic species and we live by our imagination…we continuously imagine in our minds what outcomes will be...if I do this, then this will happen. What you do in so many of these psychodramatic therapies is you explore…let’s see…what will happen if we do that….let’s see what it’s like to explore… what it feels like to try something else.”

Exploring new ways of being, is part of what heals us in psychodrama. I often invite protagonists to choose new parents, or their own parents the way they wished them to be, or to rearrange the family as they wish it had been; to experiment in other words, with different ways of relating, to experience getting what they didn’t get and giving what they felt too blocked to give. It is often in these moments of finally getting what they longed for that the pain of not having it emerges. Working through this pain is what gives them the ability to be vulnerable to new feeling.

Role-play allows us to practice new behaviors, to “role train.” Trauma tends to lock us into behaviors that become repetitive and rigid. J.L. Moreno, the father of psychodrama, put it this way in a brief conversation with Freud:
He was attempting to explain the difference between psychoanalysis and psychodrama; “Dr. Freud, you analyze their dreams, I give them courage to dream again.”

References

Greenspan, Stanley, 2000, Building Healthy Minds, De Capo Press, Boston, Mass.
Moreno, JL, 1973 Psychodrama Volume One, Beacon Press, New York, New York.
Simon, Tami, Sounds True, An interview with Bessel van der Kolk

content source

Partners of Sex Addicts Struggle with Loneliness and Isolation

By Dr. Georgia Fourlas, LCSW, LISAC, CSAT, Clinical Director of Rio Retreat Center Workshops

Partners of sex addicts often find themselves feeling alone and isolated. First, the feelings of loneliness come when the addicted partner is acting out. Although the partner of the sex addict is not always able to identify what is wrong, they often sense the addict’s distance and are aware of a shift in the addict or in the relationship.

Trying to figure out what is wrong in the relationship can be exhausting. Many times partners end up feeling like they are going crazy. They know something isn’t right, but they are not able to put their finger on it. When the partner tries to confront the addicted person, he or she often denies everything and accuses the partner of acting crazy, imagining things or being overly jealous and controlling.

Partners may begin to doubt their own sense of reality. They may recognize that they are attempting to control something, but they are not even sure what that something is! When partners attempt to explain to family and friends what they are experiencing, it is hard to describe. How are they supposed to describe what they do not understand? They begin to feel shame, and they are not even sure what that shame is about.

There are other times when the partner knows exactly what is going on. The addict has not admitted it yet and has not considered recovery so the partner hesitates to share anything with their family and friends. They may feel embarrassed and wonder if there is something wrong with them that caused the addicted person to act out.

The partner may not want to hear the opinions of family and friends who may give them advice on whether to stay or leave. They may not want to risk sharing their pain with those who may judge their decisions about the relationship. There is also sometimes the fear that others have known all along, and that they view the partner as a fool. This belief can deepen the shame they already feel over the addict’s behaviors.

The Pain Doesn’t End When The Addicted Partner Enters Recovery

Even after the addicted partner stops acting out and enters recovery, loneliness and isolation can continue. While it is great to have the addict in recovery, it can be frustrating to have the time and energy still focused outside of the home as the addict enters treatment, commits to regular therapy, and begins involvement in 12 step meeting attendance and activities. Partners can become resentful of the time spent away from the family and can feel as though they continue to carry the family and parenting responsibilities alone. All of the time spent covering family and household duties while supporting the addict can lead a partner to further isolation. Another isolating factor can be the reactions of family and friends to the partner when they discover the addict’s behaviors. Well-meaning family and friends can react in ways that are not helpful and can be extremely shaming and disempowering of the partner. Some reactions can lead to the partner feeling guilty for wanting to leave.
Those reactions might include statements like…

• “Why would you leave when he just went for help?”
• “You can’t leave, what would you tell the children?”
• “How could you leave her at her most vulnerable? She needs your help.”

Other reactions can lead to the partner feeling guilty for wanting to stay. These include reactions such as…

• “You need to leave that cheater right now!”
• “You can’t possibly stay with her after she has been with so many other people.”
• “What will you be teaching your kids if you allow this kind of thing?”

These well-intended messages can be perceived by the partner as shaming and controlling. It can feel like no one understands what the partner is going through. It can begin to feel like there is no help or support available.

Partners of Sex Addicts Deserve Help Too

It is important that partners know that the addict is not the only one who deserves help. Partners deserve and need help and support too. Loneliness and isolation are not a life sentence that partners of sex addicts must endure. It is okay for partners to insist that their own healing is also a priority.

It is important for partners to connect with others who have been through similar situations, who can lend a non-judgmental listening ear and who can offer support regardless of whether the partner decides to stay in the relationship or leave. There are others individuals out there dealing with the same things and even some who have already survived it.

There are also a variety of options for partners who are seeking help and healing. Partners can go to inpatient treatment, they can participate in intensive workshops designed specifically for partners, they can enroll in outpatient therapy, and/or participate in the numerous 12 step recovery groups that are just for partners of sex addicts.

Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows offers 5-day intensive workshops designed specifically for partners of sex addicts. The Healing Intimate Treason workshop, designed by Dr. Claudia Black, has been very successful in helping partners heal and connect with others who are struggling with the same feelings and issues.

To enroll in a workshop, or discuss any of our inpatient and outpatient treatment options, please call our intake department at 800-244-4949. Our experts are happy to answer any questions you may have, and help you find the best options for getting you on the path to healing and happiness.

content source

Is My Porn Use Normal?

The question of whether any amount of porn use is acceptable is a divisive topic in our culture. It’s difficult to answer with any level of certainty. How much porn use is “safe” or “healthy” depends largely on a person’s individual circumstances, beliefs, and choices. 

 

A question that we can answer with some certainty, however, is whether people - generally speaking- watch a lot of pornography. The answer is a resounding, “Yes.” In 2016, people spent more than 4 billion hours watching porn on just one website alone.

A group of researchers in Canada recently set out to determine how often all of this porn-viewing proved to be problematic. They found that there are basically three different types of porn users: recreational, compulsive, and distressed.
According to an article about the study published in New York Magazine’s “Science of Us” blog:

“After doing cluster analysis — where participants are, true to the term, clustered into groups — the researchers found some interesting breakdowns. A full 75 percent of participants fell under the recreational grouping, with low scores on all porn use dimensions, an average of 24 minutes of viewing per week. Women and people in relationships were overrepresented in this group.
The “highly distressed non-compulsive” profile (12.7 percent of the sample) had low compulsivity and intensity scores, but lots of emotional distress, and watched for an average of 17 minutes a week.

The “compulsive” profile fit 11.8 percent of participants, marked by high scores on intensity and compulsivity, and moderate scores on distress. They averaged 110 minutes a week.”

If you feel that your use of pornography falls within either the “highly distressed non-compulsive” profile or the “compulsive” profile, you should consider talking to a counselor or Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (C-SAT) about it. In fact, if you find that you are regularly engaging in any sexual behaviors that cause you shame or distress, or have brought on some adverse consequences in your life, it’s important that you reach out for help. There’s no reason why you couldn’t or shouldn’t be able to discover and define a healthy, nurturing, and relational sex life for yourself.

Help is Available

At The Meadows, we offer several opportunities for interested individuals to explore the root cause of their problematic sexual behaviors and make a positive change in their lives.

Sexual Recovery Workshops

For individuals seeking personal growth and understanding of their sexuality, we have two 5-day workshops available. Men’s Sexual Recovery helps men address sexual obsession and compulsive sexuality, and to learn how to build a sex life that is fun, fulfilling, and deeply meaningful.
Journey of a Woman’s Heart: Finding True Intimacy helps women explore unhealthy sexual patterns that interfere with their ability to form truly intimate relationships.

Inpatient and Outpatient Sexual Recovery

For those who need more intensive, long-term care The Meadows offers two gender-specific inpatient treatment programs for sex addiction as well as a comprehensive outpatient program.
Gentle Path at The Meadows provides an intensive, experientially-based 45-day treatment program for men struggling with sexual addiction, love addiction, intimacy disorders, or sexual anorexia and concurrently addresses complex addiction, disordered attachment, and trauma.
Similarly, Willow House at The Meadows offers to help women with relationship and intimacy disorders, including sex and love addiction, in a nurturing environment where they can rebuild their confidence and develop relationships that will empower their recovery.
The Gentle Path Outpatient Program offers the same high quality of care that exists on our main campuses in a comprehensive outpatient program setting where individuals can start or continue their recovery from sexual addiction and intimacy conditions with a flexible schedule that accommodates work and school whenever possible.
All of our workshops and treatment programs are located in Arizona. For more information about our sexual addiction workshops and treatment options, please call 866-240-4931 or send us an email.

Content Source

Yoga on One Leg: Recovery for Partners of Sex Addicts

By Nancy Greenlee, MAPC, LCPC
“I am hurt and I’m devastated. Being married to my husband is like doing yoga on one leg,” said a recent workshop participant. “I’m trying to hold things together, but I keep crashing down.”

She made an excellent analogy of what sexual betrayal, relapse, and lack of recovery can be like for the partner of a sex addict. She is holding the pose (the relationship) as best as she can in her codependent state, but in yoga, two functioning legs, i.e., two healthy partners, are needed to balance, steady and solidify the pose.

The partner who has an active sex addiction cannot be that supportive leg. And, the codependent could use some recovery muscle as well. In fact, at times, it may seem as if neither partner has a leg to stand on!

Our workshop, Healing Intimate Treason for Partners of Sex Addicts, doesn’t teach yoga at all. However, through a number of therapeutic modalities, we do strive to meet balanced objectives such as providing steady support and encouragement for releasing grief, shame, and fear.

We also provide an opportunity for partners to connect the dots between childhood experiences and possible reactions to betrayal trauma. In addition, we guide activities that invite the participants to see their relationship in a new light.

At the end of the week, participants are usually feeling much different about themselves and about their partners. With a new-found awareness of healthier boundaries and a sense of direction for the next phase of their recovery, our participants often report that they feel emotionally stronger, clearer about their intentions, and prepared to continue their recovery with a new, healthy game plan.

Healing Intimate Treason workshop isn’t yoga, but attending the workshop can provide similar benefits: balance, renewal, and affirmative self-awareness.
For more information about the workshop call us at 866-856-1279 or send us an email. Our friendly workshop specialists are happy to answer any questions you may

Content Source 

Stefanie Carnes to Lead Willow House as Meadows Senior Fellow

We are proud to announce the addition of Stefanie Carnes, Ph.D., to our team of Senior Fellows. Dr. Carnes will serve as the clinical architect for Willow House at The Meadows, a new program for women struggling with sex, love, and intimacy disorders that is set to open in March of 2017. 

 

Dr. Carnes will work closely with the staff of Willow House, and at Gentle Path at The Meadows, to bring her unique expertise to the programs and to aid the clients who suffer with intimacy and relationship disorders. Her area of expertise includes working with patients and families struggling with multiple addictions such as sexual addiction, eating disorders and chemical dependency.

“We are thrilled to have Stefanie Carnes join our team to help us treat the women we are privileged to work with,” said Allan Benham, Executive Director of the Willow House and Gentle Path programs. “She is highly respected for her knowledge and commitment to expanding our understanding of addiction and intimacy disorders, and helping those in recovery to build better relationships and live happier lives. We are fortunate to have such a trusted and thoughtful professional with such an impressive range of experiences lend her insights to our programs.”

Dr. Carnes is also a licensed marriage and family therapist, an AAMFT approved supervisor and a certified sex addiction therapist and supervisor, specializing in therapy for couples and families struggling with sexual addiction. She presents regularly at conferences at both the state and national levels. She has also written numerous publications including her books, Mending a Shattered Heart: A Guide for Partners of Sex Addicts, Facing Heartbreak: Steps to Recovery for Partners of Sex Addicts, and Facing Addiction: Starting Recovery from Alcohol and Drugs.

Willow House at The Meadows is to be the home of a 45-day inpatient program designed specifically for women who are struggling with love addiction, sex addiction, and intimacy disorders. In the heart of the beautiful, serene, Sonoran Desert, an expert team of multi-faceted professionals will provide specialized mental health and addiction treatment for women. The program is designed to help women begin to heal their core emotional trauma and change their self-destructive behaviors, whether they manifest as love addiction, sex addiction, unhealthy relationship patterns or co-occurring issues such as drug and alcohol addiction, depression, anxiety, mood disorders, and other behavioral problems. The program has begun accepting patients now. For more information call 800-244-4949.

Content Source 

Sex and Love Addiction: Help for Family Members

By Jerry Law D.Min, MDAAC, CIP, Program Director of Family Education and Leadership Training for Meadows Behavioral Healthcare

Dave and Sue were immediately hit with that sinking feeling in the gut having received a call that their son was arrested for solicitation of a sex worker.

Tammy found a suspicious e-mail that led her on a search of the family laptop only to find evidence of thousands of porn downloads for which her husband was responsible.

Sarah woke up and found herself in the bed of a man she barely knew and had just met at a sales conference last night and was terrified that her fiancé would find out.

Tom was just fired from a job he has held for the past ten years due to his use of a company credit card to hire an escort while on a business trip and now faced the dread of breaking the news to his family.

These and thousands of other stories are all too familiar for family members lost in a cloud of confusion over the deception and betrayal they experience when the truth of sex and love addictions come to light. What are family members to do when confronted by such realities?

The good news is that effective treatment is available for individuals whose lives have become entangled in these damaging and debilitating disorders. All too often, however, they are unwilling to reach out for help.

The purpose of this article is to offer guidance to family members who want their loved one to accept help, but truly don’t know where to begin.

One of the realities of addictive behaviors is that those affected quickly master "the art of deception." They become good at hiding their behavior, masked behind denial, half-truths, and covering their tracks. They preserve the false assumptions others have about them. Honesty and integrity are the first casualties of an addiction. From a neurological perspective, the addict is impaired. The ability, to be honest, has been hijacked by the desires inherent in the disorder.

Therefore, attempts to have a rational, reasonable, logical conversation are greatly diminished and the ensuing arguments lead to great frustration on the part of the family members and often also lead to more acting out behaviors on the part of the addict.

Let’s take a look at just a few of the do’s and don’ts of dealing with someone caught up in love addiction or sex addiction.

The Do’s Of Supporting An Addicted Loved One 

Do support recovery.
This must be your primary task. While that may have little meaning to you early on, it truly is the foundation upon which everything else must be built. The message you need to send to your addicted loved one, as well as the other members of your family and close friends impacted by this news, is that you will support recovery no matter what it takes.

Do educate yourself.
The amount of education on addiction available to you is remarkable. A simple Google Search of the phrase “addiction” brings up more than forty-nine million sites, and that number is growing every day. Unfortunately, not all of the information is consistent and some are downright bad. As a discerning consumer of education, you will need to be diligent in determining what information is sound and what is speculation or personal opinion.

Do ask your addicted loved one what you can do to help.
You may be surprised at what he or she will tell you.

Do listen with an open heart and mind.
This may be very difficult, especially when everything inside you wants to scream, “Have you lost your mind?”

Do be patient and practice non-judgmental communication.
Remember that well over 90 percent of all communication is non-verbal. Your body language, posture, and tone of voice speak at a much higher volume than does your voice. Remember, these behaviors are not only impairing your loved one’s judgment, it is likely that his or her cognitive abilities are impacted as well. In other words, your loved one may not be able to process information as quickly or thoroughly as in times past.

Do listen, but don’t fix. 
Be patient, be open, but be honest.

Do recommend professional help.
Be discerning in how you suggest such help. Accusatory statements such as, “Man, you need help! Don’t you see it?” are likely to be met with great resistance. Your addicted loved one is living in two diametrically opposed worlds simultaneously. The person is desperate for help and at the same time will do whatever it takes to protect the disease. No, it does not make sense, but you are not dealing with a rational disease. If your loved one is willing to get help, offer to go along for support. If your addicted loved one refuses to get help, by all means, consider a professionally facilitated Intervention.

Do show love, care, and concern.
Your addicted loved one is living a world that is largely based on lies, deceit, and manipulation. As terrible is it may be, you have been deceived. The loved one you thought you knew so well has lied to you and perhaps stolen your trust as well as your possessions in order to support their habit. Be honest with your loved one. Practice rigorous honesty that takes into consideration the well-being of your loved one rather than brutal honesty that is based in “what’s best for me” or worse yet a desire to punish.

Do understand that recovery takes time.
The recovering individual most likely did not become an addict overnight. The associated behaviors may be deeply ingrained. Just because he or she is sober does not mean the problems go away easily.

Do recognize that recovery work must be done by the addict.
While the family surely has a role and each member may need to work their own program, you cannot work a program of recovery for someone else. Codependency is a disorder that can be as damaging as addiction.

The Don’ts Of Supporting An Addicted Loved One

The list of what to do in supporting an addicted loved one began with the simple recommendation to support recovery. In a similar manner, the don’ts of supporting your addicted loved one must begin with…

Don’t support the disease.
A significant number of the behaviors displayed by those closest to the addict are based on attempts to protect the addict from the consequences of his or her own choices. While such actions are generally rooted in love, they seldom lead to recovery and nearly always support the disease. The rotten truth is that anything you do to protect your loved one from the impact of his or her own choices is a form of support for the disease.

Don’t enable your loved one.
Enabling behaviors allow your loved one to continue in his or her disease. You are not helping when you do these things. You are enabling your loved one to continue down this destructive path. You are simply delaying the inevitable. Don’t enable!

Don’t lay guilt or shame on your loved one.
As much as you believe you are justified in pointing out how wrong your loved one may be or how he or she has been raised to know better, don’t give in to the temptation to blame. You will hand your loved one the very ammunition he or she is looking for to rationalize the continuation of the behavior.

Don’t make threats.
Remember, you are not dealing with a rational disease.

Don’t make promises that you cannot keep.
This goes both ways. Don’t promise to enforce consequences that you will not honor and don’t promise to support recovery in ways that are beyond your control.

Don’t use scare tactics, as they are generally futile.

Don’t offer more help than you are qualified to give.
Call on professionals in the treatment field. You will find them quite willing to help.

Don’t take it personally.
You may be called names or blamed for things you have nothing to do with. It is the disease talking, and you will need to remind yourself of this fact often. No, it is not fair that you have to deal with all of the issues that are inherent in addiction. This is the reality you are facing, however, and the sooner you recognize that the disease has a life of its own and the enemy is the disorder, not your loved one, the better.

Get Help For Yourself Too
You are in for some difficult times ahead. Accept that fact. Acceptance is not approval—it is acknowledgment. The sooner you accept what lies ahead of you the sooner you will be able to reach out for the help needed. Recovery from addiction rarely, if ever, just happens. It is the result of the consistent, daily application of the tools of recovery. Recovery is real, available, and wonderful!
Good sex addiction and love addiction treatment programs, like those at Gentle Path at The Meadows for men, and the new Willow House at The Meadows program for women, include a Family Week component. This provides families who have loved ones undergoing treatment, an opportunity to obtain cutting edge information on recovery and to interact with the treatment professionals working there.

If you have any questions at all about The Meadows’ Family Week programs, getting help for a loved one, or getting help for yourself, please don’t hesitate to call us at 800-244-4949 or send us an email.

Content Source 

The Meadows Launches Relationship Healing Center for Women

It is often said that one can become addicted to anything that can be used to numb emotional pain. Drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, and sex are all widely recognized for their addictive potential. Addiction to love and relationships, however, tends to be less well-recognized and understood.

Women who struggle with love, relationship, and intimacy disorders tend to seek the quick physical or emotional fix of “falling in love.” They tend to repeatedly find themselves in inappropriate relationships with toxic or unavailable people, suffer severe withdrawal symptoms when a relationship ends, and find themselves in states of constant turmoil. Because these toxic behavioral patterns aren’t as commonly recognized as a mental health disorder, many women don’t know where to turn once their lives have become completely unmanageable. It can be difficult to find a program that recognizes the unique needs of women with intimacy and relationship disorders and has the specialized expertise needed to effectively treat them.

Help for Women with Love Addiction

To help meet this need, Meadows Behavioral Healthcare has launched Willow House at The Meadows, a 45-day inpatient program for women struggling with sex, love, and intimacy disorders, and other co-occurring conditions.
In the heart of the beautiful Sonoran Desert, women at Willow House will begin to resolve core emotional trauma and change their self-destructive behaviors, whether they manifest as love addiction, sex addiction, unhealthy relationship patterns or as co-occurring disorders such as drug and alcohol addiction, depression, anxiety, mood disorders, or other behavioral problems.
Over the course of their stay at Willow House at The Meadows, clients will work to gain a better understanding of the emotional legacies of their childhood upbringing, family systems, belief systems, body image issues, sexuality, gender roles, trauma, and grief. Through this work, they will build the skills they need to develop and maintain real, deeply intimate, connections with partners and spouses. They will also begin to cultivate more resiliency and empowerment and will create a vision for starting life anew with more self-compassion, joy, and purpose.
An expert team of multi-faceted professionals will lead women through a variety of therapies designed to heal the mind, body, and spirit. Each client will begin her treatment process with a thorough psychiatric assessment and a plan customized with her particular needs and goals in mind. From there, she will participate in small group and individual therapy sessions; neurologically-based treatments designed to help regulate the brain and nervous system functioning, and experiential therapies, including equine therapy, expressive arts therapy, yoga, acupuncture, music, and dance.

Find Your Voice

The clinical architect of the program is Dr. Stefanie Carnes, a well-regarded expert in helping patients with sex addiction, eating disorders, intimacy disorders, relationship disorders, and chemical dependency. In addition to helping women begin the process of recovery, she hopes that the Willow House at The Meadows program will help them to find their authentic selves. “We help our clients let go of beliefs and behaviors that no longer serve them learn forgiveness for themselves and others, begin to trust their inner voice, and accept their innate value and worth,” she said. “Women will leave Willow House with the self-knowledge and skills they need to build better relationships and live their best lives.”

The Willow House at The Meadows program has begun accepting clients now. For more information please call 800-244-4949.

Content Source