New Gentle Path Intensive Outpatient Program

Patients with sexual addiction issues require specially trained clinicians who understand their unique needs and challenges. And, many who are completing inpatient or residential treatment may need a lower level of care that still focuses on their particular issues. That’s why Gentle Path at The Meadows is happy to announce the opening of its own Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP).

The launch of the Gentle Path Intensive Outpatient Program offers graduates of the Gentle Path at The Meadows and other sex addiction programs the opportunity to step down from inpatient or residential treatment, to practice maintaining the structure and tools they have gained, and to focus on recovery in a real life environment helping to smooth the transition back into work, school, and other normal activities.

Since not everyone needs inpatient or residential treatment, there is also a track designed for individuals new to sex addiction treatment. It offers help to those who are just beginning their recovery and those for whom an inpatient or residential treatment program is not determined to be clinically appropriate.

Accountability and Relapse Prevention

The focus of the 8 to 12 week program is on increasing accountability and relapse prevention. For graduates of the Gentle Path at The Meadows program it is a continuation of Dr. Patrick Carnes’ 30 Task Model─the same model on which our program was built and which we have utilized successfully to treat sex addiction.

For sex addicts hoping to continue their recovery journey, we have designed a program that will both introduce individuals to the 30 Task Model in an Intensive Outpatient setting and help them understand how completing these tasks is essential to long term recovery.

Unlike Gentle Path at The Meadows, the Gentle Path Intensive Outpatient program will be open to both men and women. It will offer the same benefits as The Meadows IOP program─weekly access to a psychiatrist, cognitive behavioral therapy, somatic experiencing®, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) neurofeedback, and more─ to individuals of any gender suffering from sexual addiction. The program is facilitated by an experienced, CSAT trained therapist who is proficient in using Dr. Patrick Carnes’ 30 Task Model.

Patients in the program participate in group meetings four days a week for three hours a day with Individual counseling sessions and couple’s counseling sessions available as needed. Patients will also have the opportunity to attend 12-step meetings, work (if it doesn’t interfere with treatment), volunteer, and participate in healthy, recovery-based activities.

Continuing Care for the Whole Family

Patients and their families will also be invited to participate in Family Day every four weeks. Sex addicts and their loved ones all benefit from learning to communicate in a healthy manner that yields positive results.

Families are encouraged to attend sessions in person. If a family lives out-of-state and cannot make it to Family Day, the patient’s primary therapist will offer a supported therapeutic phone call between them and the patient to discuss communication issues and ongoing needs.

Stay on the Path

Completing a treatment program is hard work. Keep your momentum going and learn how to better apply the insights and skills you’ve gained by continuing or beginning your treatment with the Gentle Path at the Meadows Intensive Outpatient Program. For more information call us at 800-244-4949.

A Brief Screen for Sex Addiction

Amy Sohler, MPA, MA, LMHC, CDP, MHP, CSAT c, EMDR
 
Counselor, Gentle Path at The Meadows
Although it may be clinically hard to diagnose, sex addiction may affect up to three to seven percent of the population. Unfortunately, there is more of a stigma attached to sexually “acting out” than there is with the symptoms of other addictions. Many clinicians don’t have a well-defined criterion to diagnose the condition. Complicating matters even further is that sex addiction is often maintained and protected by a shield of dishonesty.

On a brighter note, we now have a reliable tool called PATHOS to use for diagnostic purposes. Based on research published in the American Society of Addiction Medicine by long-time sex researcher Dr. Patrick Carnes, PATHOS is a brief screening that takes only a few minutes to complete. PATHOS has a high reliability and validity, which was revealed in several studies that “support the use of PATHOS as a screening instrument to detect potential sexual addiction in clinical settings.”

As with all addictions, early intervention and assessment are critical to the recovery process. As a quick screener, PATHOS can be used by counselors, pastors, and doctors, along with other medical providers, as a quick and accurate assessment of potential problems with sex addiction.

The below six key questions can be used as a first assessment to help determine if a more in-depth assessment is necessary. If there is a positive (yes) response to three or more questions, a referral to a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) would potentially be the next step.

1. Preoccupation — Do you often find yourself preoccupied with sexual thoughts?
Sex addicts obsess about sex in ways most people do not. Everything becomes filtered through an erotic lens and in an effort to keep up the stimulation, the patient will find it difficult to focus on important social, occupational and family obligations. The ways preoccupation shows up may include:

• Fantasizing: Similar to daydreaming, but constant and sexual in nature
• Objectification: Sexualizing others
• Euphoric recall: Continued rumination about previous sexual encounters
• Shame: Hiding some of your sexual behavior from others?

2. Feelings of shame and fear often are at the core of sex addiction.
These feelings stem from beliefs of being unworthy and unlovable. Sexual behavior and habits are often hidden and kept secret. Shame and fear may show up as:

• Compartmentalizing secret parts of sexuality so no one else knows
• Anxiety-related disorders
• Hidden parts of life and elaborate ways to keep sexual behavior hidden
• Inability to be honest

3. Therapy — Have you ever sought therapy for sexual behavior you did not like?Although sex addicts have a history of seeking help for their problems, they either do not find knowledgeable help or leave therapy before they can get better. How this plays out is:

• The sex addict does not see a professional skilled and trained in sex addiction treatment such as a Certified Sex addiction Therapy (CSAT).
• Sex addiction and the dishonesty around the behaviors are not disclosed as a core issue, so progress cannot be made.
• As a dopaminergic disorder of the brain, abstinence is required to calm the hedonic set point down so that therapy can be effective; therapists untrained in sex addiction do not address this.

4. Hurt Others — Has anyone been hurt emotionally because of your sexual behavior?Infidelity, secrets, and betrayal are frequent allies of sex addiction. Often there are a number of people who have been harmed or will be harmed in the process. Hurting others includes:

• Emotional wreckage with partners, family members, friends and in the workplace
• Leaking out of incomplete parts and pieces of the sexual behavior, called a “staggered disclosure,” without therapeutic support from a trained sex addiction therapist, which further traumatizes others
• Emotional distancing by the sex addict from their loved ones

5. Out of Control — Do you feel controlled by your sexual desire?Many sex addicts find they are engaging in behaviors which they do more or for longer periods of time than they intended. The escalation of the addiction is seen through:

• Tolerance: the same activities no longer supply the same pleasure, so new and more extreme behaviors emerge.
• A majority of the addict’s inner and outer life is devoted to fantasy, euphoric recall and acting out behaviors and behaviors that support the increased time needed for the addiction.
• Important obligations start not being met, affecting work, family and friends. A house of cards of dishonesty may be holding up the addicts increasing secrets.

6. Sad — When you have sex, do you feel depressed afterwards?Sex addicts feel despair about their sexual activities. Often they report not even enjoying the sex when it is happening. Depression is common. Depression can be seen in”

• Increased hopelessness
• Increased negativity
• Lack of ability to feel pleasure over small things in life

Today, there are professional societies dedicated to sex addiction; a dedicated medical journal; significant research published in a wide variety of journals; and other clinically oriented journals. Furthermore, many facilities, such as The Meadows and Gentle Path at The Meadows, offer treatment and there is even a nationwide network of Certified Sex Addiction Therapists. You can access professional resources at the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals at http://www.sexhelp.com.

Contact Gentle Path at The Meadows Today

Every journey begins with a single step. Through an array of time-tested modalities, we’ll give you and your loved ones the tools to develop healthy relationships. These tools will remain with you for the rest of your life. We want to see you and your loved ones prosper and thrive. Visit our website here or call the Gentle Path at The Meadows Intake Team at 866-240-4931.

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Your Loved One is in Treatment for Sex Addiction. Now What?

Marie Woods, LMFT,CSATPrimary Therapist, Gentle Path at the Meadows
If you are reading this, you probably know the pain of discovering the once hidden, out of control sexual behaviors of someone you love. These discoveries are often what catapult sex addicts into treatment. Following the discovery, there was likely some sort of intervention, and expedient efforts to find help. That process likely took up a lot of your time, attention, and energy until they were finally admitted to treatment. At that point, you may have felt some temporary relief, like you could finally breathe again.

Unfortunately, though, the distraction of getting the addict into treatment is now gone, and you are left with your thoughts, worries, and anxieties over what is to come. You may start to feel alone, isolated, and even resentful that the addict is getting all of the help. You may find it difficult to sit with the knowledge of the discovery because you have so many thoughts and unanswered questions. What should you do?

Take Care of Yourself

Now that the addict is in a safe environment, utilize this time to engage (or re-engage) in your own self care. In the midst of the chaos of addiction your own physical and emotional care usually takes a big hit. So, utilize the time to reconnect with yourself. This might include engaging in a moderate amount of physical exercise, taking reflective walks, taking a long hot bath, meditating, leisure reading, or engaging in other hobbies that you enjoy.

Give Yourself Some Space

At some point, you may have a desire ─sometimes a very strong one─ to try to sort things out with the addict. You may think that if they could just answer your questions, then you could make sense of this whole situation, and order in your life could be restored. The truth, however, is that the behaviors that occurred as part of active addiction are irrational. They won’t ever make sense.

Furthermore, the addict engaging in treatment at the inpatient level is in no position to understand and convey the nature of his or her addiction yet either. By giving in to the urge to sort things out right now, you run the risk of increasing your anxiety and feeling more hurt and pain.

At most sex addiction treatment centers, including Gentle Path at the Meadows, patients are highly encouraged to limit their communication with the outside world. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is to help them stay focused and engaged in treatment in order to initiate their healing process as quickly as possible. The other is to prevent any further hurt and damage to their relationships with others. Sex addiction has often already caused a lot of pain, chaos, and turmoil. Although we cannot change that, we can help prevent future damage. So, it’s important for both you and the addict to take advantage of the built- in time away from communication that treatment provides.

Find Support

In addition to your loved one, you also deserve to be supported through this process. That’s why it’s a good idea for you to build your own support network. Family members are highly encouraged to seek out their own therapist to assist them in navigating through the emotional maze of sex addiction. It would be ideal to choose a therapist that is familiar with sex addiction; however, the most important thing is that you connect with, and feel supported by, your therapist.
Although the inpatient treatment team may reach out to you for collateral information or to coordinate Family Week, their role is to help connect you with more substantial ongoing support rather than serving as your primary support. You may also consider confiding in a few close friends and family members who you trust, and who understand your situation. Additionally, there are also a variety of support groups, both twelve-step and otherwise, that can be helpful as well.

Keep Sight of What’s Important

As you read them, these points may seem obvious, but in the midst of the chaos of addiction we often lose sight of what’s important. Gentle loving reminders such as these can help bring us back to reality. Shifting the focus from where it has often been (on the addict) can be hard because it slows you down, and often brings up emotions that have been buried for a long time. As you embark on this journey, it is important to be gentle with yourself. Changing and developing new patterns is not easy.

Keep in mind, though, the growth that will result for you and your family member may end up changing your relationship with them and your lives in ways that are far better than you could have hoped!

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Dr. Jon Caldwell on Attachment, Trauma, and Mindfulness

Dan Griffin, a Senior Fellow at The Meadows, recently sat down with Dr. Jon Caldwell, Medical Director for Meadows Behavioral Healthcare, for an in-depth conversation about early childhood trauma, attachment, triggers, reactivity and more.
The conversation was featured on Griffin’s new podcast, The Man Rules, in which he talks with guests about the challenges men face in finding success and happiness.

Dr. Caldwell talks at length about the various block and barriers that prevent men from being able to show up in their lives and relationships in the ways they really want to. He says, “We come into the world really dependent on other people for survival. We are social creatures and we are meant to develop in the context of other human beings. And yet we live in a world that is imperfect and our needs don’t always get met. Sometimes we even experience neglect, abuse, and trauma as children.

When this happens we typically have to find ways to survive and we develop certain patterns of behavior that help us. Those survival skills we develop are not necessarily meant to be long term—they are supposed to be short-term quick fixes to surviving what you’re struggling with in those early childhood years, but we often end up holding on to them for a long, long time and carry them into adulthood. Sometimes, they end up getting in the way of meaningful, lasting relationships and cause a lot of reactivity because we get triggered, based on that old stuff.”

So part of what I like to do is help people deal with those moments when they get triggered out of past experiences that were less than optimal. So that they can connect with other people, they can receive love and offer love to others better and they can accept themselves more wholly and fully. That is the overview of what I hope people will gain from the kind of work that I like doing with people.”

He also talks about the reasons men get “triggered” and how they can choose, moment by moment, to respond and conscious and empathic ways, rather than damaging and reactive ways:

“What happens is that later on in life we might encounter a situation that brings up an old, painful scenario somehow. Maybe we encounter an angry man. Maybe we encounter a woman who is threatening to leave. Maybe we encounter somebody in the workspace who says they are dissatisfied with something that we’ve done. Those kinds of experiences would be challenging for anybody, but if they hit on our early template it can be an experience that goes all the way back to the very reactive, emotional survival parts of our brain and triggers a biological and physiological response pertaining to fight, flight, or freeze.
And when the survival brain gets triggered we have a hard time recognizing that we have options and that we can make choices. Our body is taking over and saying, ‘We’re going to use this old pattern that’s worked in the past. Even though it may not fit right now, this is what we know, so this is what we’re going to do.’

We can get very angry and reactive. We get fearful and want to avoid, numb, check out, or escape. Or we go into a freeze state where we’re disconnected with what’s going on around us. We may look okay on the outside but feel very differently on the inside.

These triggered state takes us out of the present moment and makes us more vulnerable to using an addictive process or a drug or alcohol in order to deal with the reactivity that we’re feeling because it’s a very uncomfortable and we’ll do just about anything to not feel what we’re feeling.”

Learn More

You can subscribe to The Man Rules podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or your favorite podcasting app. In addition to hosting the podcast, Dan Griffin also offers a workshop for clinical professionals at The Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows called “A Man’s Way.” The next one is coming up in August.
Dr. Caldwell also hosts a workshop at The Meadows called “Mind & Heart: A Mindful Path to Wholehearted Living.” The next session is in October.
To register for either workshop call 800-244-4949.

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Spilling It All May Be More Harmful Than Not

By Marie Woods, LMFT, CSAT, Primary Therapist, Gentle Path at the Meadows In light of some of the recent public disclosures of millions of individuals’ personal indiscretions online, one question many people may be asking is, “Would I really want to know?”

Based on the overwhelming amount of media coverage, it seems that people do want to know—although, of course, most would prefer that there isn’t anything to know, and that their partner doesn’t have any secrets or unknown sexual behaviors.

What if your partner actually does have secrets, though? How much would you really like to know?

At Gentle Path at the Meadows, we are flooded with questions from addicts and their partners about this. Addicts ask how much detail they should share, and partners often don’t know whether having all the details would be helpful or harmful.

The idea that a partner should know everything may seem obvious, but considering the depth of betrayal that accompanies sex addiction, the answer is not necessarily that clear. On the one hand, a partner needs to know the truth in order to make an informed decision about how to move forward with his or her life and the relationship. On the other hand, knowing all of the details can sometimes create more traumas for partners rather than assist in their healing.

Five Ways to Uncover the Truth and Begin Healing

Here are some of the guidelines that we use in helping addicts and partners share the truth while promoting healing:

1. Share information in the presence of professionals.In the initial stages of recovery, most couples are too volatile to process the discovery together. Couples should make their best effort to seek professional guidance before “dumping” information on to their partner. The disclosure sessions can include the addict sharing their behaviors as well as the partner sharing their anger and frustration. A professional therapist can create a safe container for information to be appropriately shared.

2. Avoid disclosing new information without consulting with a therapist first.

As times goes on, more and more questions develop for both the addict and the partner, and the answers to these questions can be complex. When both individuals are so emotionally volatile (and often exhausted) having a therapist to navigate the situation alongside the couple can be helpful.

3. Recognize that knowing all of the details will not justify the behavior.Addiction involves irrational behavior. The decisions that were made in the midst of active addiction do not make sense in a rational state of mind. It is likely that even when the partner has all of the details, it still will not make sense. Rather than focusing on the details, partners should focus instead on leaning into their feelings and taking care of themselves.

4. Focus on themes rather than specifics.Partners have a right to know the nature of the addict’s behavior in an effort to ensure their physical and emotional safety. This includes things like the potential for sexually transmitted diseases, anything that may have occurred in the home with knowledge of the family, or financial impact. This does not typically include things like names, graphic details of pornography or sexual acts, or specific places where acting out may have occurred. Those details create a mental picture in the partner’s mind that cannot be erased, and could continue to leave them feeling unnecessary pain.

5. Recognize that this is a slow process.It is human nature to want to avoid pain and guilt. Partners want to stop feeling pain as quickly as they can; Addicts want to get out of their guilt and shame as quickly as they can. People often want to skip over this part of the healing, but it is essential. Partners will need to move through the stages of grief, including anger and pain, in order to heal. Addicts will need to experience healthy levels of guilt and shame to get into recovery. So while it may seem easier to “get it all out on the table” right now, true growth and change is an evolving process.

Get the Support You Need

So, as a partner, before you go digging for more information to help you understand “why they would do this,” and, as an addict, before you decide that “if I just tell them everything then I won’t feel so bad, and they will feel better” – think again. If you are the partner of an addict, find some support: someone who, initially, can just hear you vent. Take a step back, knowing that you are taking care of yourself by not exposing yourself to more pain at a time when you are already struggling. If you are an addict, know that you will need to share and accept appropriate accountability for your behaviors when you are in a mature place with healthy remorse. To prevent any further hurt and pain, it is essential to do this in a very measured way, as described above. The ultimate goal of this process is honesty and healing.

Gentle Path at The Meadows Can Help

In early 2016, Gentle Path at The Meadows will begin offering the Discovery to Recovery: An Intensive Series for Couples Healing from Sex Addiction at The Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows. It is designed to help couples whose relationships have been shattered by sex addiction to begin to pick up the pieces and reconnect. It offers a full spectrum of services to help guide the pair from the early stages of discovery to a life of recovery and renewed hope. For more information call us at 800-244-4949.

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We’re Paying it Forward with a Special Offer

Human beings make about 35,000 conscious decisions every day. Each one of those decisions, no matter how small, is likely to have an impact on someone, somewhere, in some way. But, we typically have no idea what kind of impact our choices have made on the world around us. 

If you decide to have lunch at the local deli, you’ve made an impact on the success of the deli owner’s business. And, the way you interacted with the staff may have played a role in shaping their outlook on their work that day. If you were gracious, they may have felt a sense of pride in helping others, which may have had a ripple effect on the level of kindness and care they showed to other customers after you.

If you are struggling with addiction and unresolved trauma and you decide not to seek treatment, your decision will likely impact others in much more negative ways. If your relationships seem to be falling apart in the face of your drinking, drug use, depression and/or anxiety, today may be the day for you to make the most important decision of your daily 35,000.

Are you going to choose to continue on this way, holding on to your pain and acting out in ways that can have devastating effects on the people you love?
Or are you going to get treatment, and start a ripple effect of happiness and healing in your world?

Those of us at Meadows Behavioral Healthcare want to help you start the right ripple effect. In honor of Pay it Forward Day—an international initiative to create a huge ripple effect of kindness around the world—we’re reducing the cost for our 45-day inpatient treatment programs by thousands of A LIMITED TIME. Call 866-531-8912 and mention the Pay It Forward offer for more information.

We hope that by giving more people access to our high-quality, scientifically-tested, and individualized treatment methods, we can help start the powerful ripple effect of recovery throughout the world. Our internationally renowned experts in trauma and addiction can not only help you overcome your trauma-related issues and/or addiction, they can also show you how to treat yourself the love and kindness in a way that will ripple and flow through your life and relationships.

Please call 866-531-8912 today to take advantage of this special offer. When you change yourself, you change the world.

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