• Respond. Let the partner know that the sex addict’s actions and attitude are not the victimized partner’s fault. The partner did not cause it and it has nothing to do with the person’s value. Let the partner know you will stand with the person and, if open to it, so will others on your staff or in your congregation.
• Assess. Ask open-ended questions to assess how the person is doing emotionally, as well as in the practical areas of his or her life, such as at work and in caring for children if they are not grown. Ask about how he or she is responding to this knowledge. Is the partner depressed? Anxious? Fearful? Is there emotional, verbal or physical abuse within the relationship? Does the partner have a backup plan, should one be needed?
• Offer assistance. Communicate how you can help. You may aid the partner in confronting the offending spouse and offer support and accountability. Partners need to know that it is not their jobs to fix or heal addicted partners, nor to keep these secrets to protect spouses. Help the partner sort out who can and cannot be turned to for support and help.
• Refer. A partner’s needs will often surpass your time and ability to meet them, and in actuality, most needs of female partners are better met by female staff members. Ideally, your house of worship will have trained male and female staff members (whether paid or volunteer) available to minister to partners of addicted spouses as they surface in your midst. In addition, know which counselors and other mental health professionals in your community are trained in sex addiction and the treatment of trauma, but who will also show honor and respect to people of faith. A counselor who respects not only emotional and practical needs, but also a person’s faith, can offer partners of faith the best help.
• Be careful what you say! Unfortunately, some of the deepest, most profound wounds (besides those inflicted by the addict) a partner receives come from those in the faith community. Uninformed pastors, staff members and members of the congregation often create tremendous damage and compound the pain and shame experienced by a partner.
We are happy to serve as consultants to any professional who desires to work with partners. This is very challenging and rewarding work. Please join us in helping partners heal.
Our continued desire and passion is to increase awareness about sex addiction’s broad social impact on partners, families, congregations, workplaces and on addicts themselves and to facilitate conversation to address the significant trauma partners experience through their relationships with addicts.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank and acknowledge those women who participated in support groups where we began to realize and fully comprehend the trauma experienced by partners of sex addicts. These brave women shared their stories and experiences and encouraged me to give voice to their journeys. These women want therapists, clergy and medical professionals to recognize and validate the reality of trauma in partners of sex addicts. They also want other partners to know they are not alone and that there is hope. All those who were ever in “Barb’s group”—you are my heroes. I also thank my clients who also shared their stories to encourage others on the journey of healing.
I also want to thank those therapists who “get it” and encouraged the writing of this book. I especially want to thank therapists Valerie Arnette, Sue King, Kent Ernsting, Doug Reed and Mark Laaser for their encouragement, support and training. Your work with sex addicts and partners has helped many and has encouraged me to continue this work through the years. I also want to thank Omar Minwalla and Silvia Jason—we are like-minded in our call to witness, voice and validate trauma experienced by partners of sex addicts. I also thank the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health (SASH)—this organization exists to educate professionals and society about the issues of sexual addiction.
I also would like to thank those friends and family who have put up with, listened to and prayed for me as I sought to follow what I believe is a call to do this work. What a blessing to have you in my life! I also want to thank my church “family” of Vineyard Church Northwest.
Erin and Emily—I couldn’t ask for any better privilege than being your mom. Steve—you are God’s greatest gift to me. Thanks for your belief in me.—Barbara Steffens, Ph.D., LPCC Every book writing project owes its conception, gestation and eventual “birth” to many contributors, but this book in particular would never have come to life were it not for the hundreds who shared freely of their stories, their pain or their expertise in helping broken hearts heal after the trauma of relational betrayal. I am indebted to each and every one of you.
Barb, thank you for sharing your research with me and for choosing me to partner with you to transform that research into this manuscript.
Thank you to every woman and every man who gave us permission to use their stories, giving flesh and blood to the facts associated with sex addiction’s traumatic wounding. I won’t thank you by name in respect of your anonymity, but a heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you. And Katherine and Neal, we are especially grateful to you for your boldness in sharing not only your stories, but your names, as you continue to integrate this painful chapter of your lives into your larger life stories. Along with you, I pray that your sharing will help others experience the amazing healing God continues to do in your marriage and in your lives.
And to every woman who ever turned to me for hope, I say thank you for sharing your stories and experiences with me. I continue to learn from you. We are indeed sisters on this journey.
Michael, thank you for allowing me to be your friend as we’ve utilized the teachings of Shepherd’s House and others to bring healing to the life-altering trauma you experienced as a child and the toll it took in every area of your life. For the last three years I have watched and listened as God has slowly done his agape love miracle as you remained committed to your emotional and spiritual healing. The transformation continues to amaze me. What a privilege it is to participate in that life-changing process.
Gaylie, thank you for sharing your experience with Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy and the way this spiritually-neutral body therapy enabled you to reach and heal the trauma that had been stored at your cellular level for many years. I am grateful for the addition of this “non-talk” therapy for readers who, like you, discover that words simply won’t enable them to release the pain that their bodies have absorbed.
Dr. Milton Magness, thank you for sharing your experience in using polygraph testing in a clinical setting with couples who seek healing from the damage sex addiction has created in their marriages and lives. Though we’ve only met through e-mail, I hold the highest respect for your work as again and again women have shared with me the caring, kindness and support you’ve provided during your three day intensives with individual couples.
Silvia Jason and Omar Minwalla, though we’ve not yet met, thank you for sharing and trumpeting your firm belief that partners of sexual addicts frequently suffer from trauma and post traumatic stress. What a joy to find kindred spirits who share our passion to bring attention and healing to those who suffer these wounds without recognition or help.
Thank you to the many authors (and their publishers) who generously allowed us to learn from your work and to quote from your books. We are grateful for your expertise.
And lastly, I am grateful to a dear friend whose story appears in the pages of this book. Even as she faced her own death as a result of her husband’s addiction, she chose to share with our readers her experience with the trauma sex addiction produced in her life. She did so in the hope that it would help point the way toward healing for the millions of others who suffer trauma’s pain as a result of their partners’ devastating addiction.
—Marsha Means, MA
Resources
Steffens Counseling Services (Ohio) Mental health counseling practice specializing in helping partners of sexual addicts and those impacted by sexual betrayal.
Barbara Steffens, Ph.D., LPCC www.bsteffens.com
A Woman’s Healing Journey Specializing in
offering hope and help through telephone and e-support groups, individual telephone coaching, an online community, written resources, healing intensives and training.
Marsha Means, MA www.awomanshealingjourney.com
Healing and Hope (Houston, Texas) Mental health practice specializing in sexual addiction treatment and treatment of the partner/spouse. All services available in Spanish.
Silvia Jason, LMFT, CSAT www.healingandhopehouston.com
Healing for the Soul Offers telephone therapy and teleconference recovery groups for men and for wives in recovery worldwide.
Jayson Graves, M.MFT., Director www.healingforthesoul.org
The Institute for Sexual Health Psychological services, research and training clinic. This institute offers a multidisciplinary integration of cutting edge treatment and clinical services that treats all aspects of the individual and the family system impacted by sexual and relationship challenges.
Omar Minwalla, Psy.D. www.sexualtreatmentprograms.com [email protected]
Hope & Freedom Counseling Services (Houston and the Canadian Rockies) Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) who specializes in three-day intensives for men and for couples to jump-start recovery. Intensives are also good for relapse recovery.
Milton S. Magness www.HopeAndFreedom.com (713) 630-0111
International Service Organization of COSA 12-step recovery program for men and women whose lives have been affected in any way by another person’s compulsive sexual behavior.
www.cosa-recovery.org [email protected] (763) 537-6904
Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy (PRYT) A body-based movement and awareness practice that supports the capacity to hear and integrate traumatic life experiences with compassion and meaning. PRYT practitioners can be found worldwide. Gaylie facilitates workshops or individually as a PRYT practitioner or as a spiritual director in the Christian faith tradition.
Gaylie Cashman, MA, PRYT www.pryt.comwww.yourstillsmallvoice.com
Notes
Introduction
1 We define a sex addict as one engaged in compulsive out-of-control sexual behaviors that negatively impact his or her life or the lives of those in relationships with the person, yet he or she is unable or does not want to stop.
PART I: WHEN YOUR PARTNER’S SEXUAL ADDICTION SHATTERS YOUR WORLD
Chapter 1: What is Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress?
1 Carter, Alchemy of Loss.
2 American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 563-471.
3 Johnson, Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, 182.
4 Steffens and Rennie, “Traumatic Nature of Disclosure,” 249.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., 251.
Chapter 2: A Study in Contrasts: Is it Co-addiction or is it Trauma?
1 Borchert, Lois Wilson Story.
2 Carnes, Don’t Call It Love.
3 Ibid.
4 Schneider, Back from Betrayal, 45.
5 American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 563-471; Carnes, Don’t Call It Love.
6 Omar Minwalla and Silvia Jason, “The Sexual Trauma Model: Partner’s Reaction,” SASH National Conference, Cambridge, MA: 2008.
Chapter 3: Why Your Partner’s Sex Addiction Hurts So Much: Attachment Bonds Betrayed
1 Brooke C. Feeney and Nancy L. Collins, “Couple Relationships,” http://family.jrank.org/pages/118/Attachment.html.
2 Clinton and Sibcy, Attachments, 22.
3 Slay, Counseling Techniques, 1.
4 Pretiti and Amato, “Infidelity a Cause or a Consequence,” 218.
5 Glass and Wright, “Reconstructing marriages,” 475.
Chapter 4: How the Addiction and Trauma Models Differ in Helping You Heal
1 ISO of COSA, “More about COSA,” www.cosa-recovery.org.
2 ISO of COSA, “COSA Recovery Tools” and “Letter to a Mental Health Professional,” www.cosa-recovery.org.
3 ISO of COSA, “COSA Recovery Tools,” www.cosa-recovery.
4 ISO of COSA, “More about COSA,” www.cosa-recovery.org
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 S-Anon International, “The S-Anon Problem (Long Version),” www.sanon.org/Prob.htm.
8 Doug Weiss, Ph.D., and Milton Magness, Ph.D., are two psychologists who specialize in sex addiction and require their s.a. clients to take lie detector tests.
Chapter 5: Trauma Impacts on Every Level: Potential Physical and Mental Health Side Effects of Trauma
1 Van der Kolk, “In Terror’s Grip.”
2 Cowley, “Anxiety and Your Brain,” 46.
3 Van der Kolk, “In Terror’s Grip.”
4 Ibid.
5 David Baldwin, “About Trauma,” David Baldwin’s Trauma Information Pages, www.trauma-pages.com/trauma.php (accessed January 13, 2009).
6 Van der Kolk, “In Terror’s Grip.”
7 Baldwin, “Trauma/PTSD,” Self-Injury: You are NOT the only one, http://www.palace.net/~llama/psych/injury.html.
8 Van der Kolk, “In Terror’s Grip.”
9 Ibid.
10 American Psychological Association, “Effects of Trauma.”
11 Van der Kolk, “In Terror’s Grip.”
12 Sweeney, “Neurobiology of Psychic Trauma.”
13 Van der Kolk, “In Terror’s Grip.”
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 “Stress Disorders,” HealingResources.info.
18 Perry, “Applying Principles of Neurodevelopment.”
19 Freyd, Klest and Allard, “Betrayal Trauma.”
20 Sweeney, “Neurobiology of Psychic Trauma.”
21 Horner, “Damaging Effects of Stress.”
22 Cowley, “Anxiety and Your Brain.”
23 Horner, “Damaging Effects of Stress.”
24 Cornish, “Emotional Immune System.”
25 “Stress Disorders,” HealingResources.info.
PART II: YOUR JOURNEY TOWARD WHOLENESS
Chapter 6: Healing from Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress
1 H. Norman Wright, “Grief and Crisis Counseling: Ministering to the Hurting,” Leadership Seminar November 15, 2001, CNN Leadership Training Series.
2 David Baldwin, “About Trauma,” David Baldwin’s Trauma Information Pages, www.trauma-pages.com/trauma.php (accessed January 13, 2009).
3 Sweeney, “Neurobiology of Psychic Trauma.”
4 Friesen et al., Living From the Heart Jesus Gave You.
5 Milton Magness, personal communication with the author.
6 Levine and Frederick, Waking the Tiger, 35, 36.
7 Australian Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health, “About Trauma,” Trauma and mental health. http://www.acpmh.unimelb.edu.au/trauma/about_trauma.html (accessed January 13, 2009).
8 Levine and Frederick, Waking the Tiger, 49, 61.
9 Ibid., 156.
10 Ibid., 155.
11 Van der Kolk, Psychological Trauma, 155-156.
Chapter 7: From Crisis to Stability
1 Slay, Counseling Techniques, 11, 23.
2 Van der Kolk, “In Terror’s Grip.”
3 Hannigan, Ida B., 85.
4 Levine and Frederick, Waking the Tiger, 95, 96.
5 Haines, Healing Sex.
6 Slay, Counseling Techniques, 11, 23.
7 Freeman, Clinical Applications.
8 Bourne, Anxiety & Phobia Workbook, 200.
9 Estes, “Story as Medicine,” 7.
10 Malchiodi, Expressive Therapies, 1.
11 EMDR Institute, “A Brief Description of EMDR,” EMDR Institute, Inc., http://www.emdr.com/briefdes.htm (accessed January 13, 2009).
12 Levine and Frederick, Waking the Tiger, 101, 215.
13 Ibid., 111.
14 Ibid., 61- 62.
15 Ibid.
Chapter 8: From Integration to Triumph
1 Tedeschi and Calhoun, “Posttraumatic Growth.”
2 Levine and Frederick, Waking the Tiger, 120.
3 Chellis, Ordinary
Women, 2.
4 Virkler, Speaking Your Mind.
5 Van der Kolk, Psychological Trauma, 8.
6 Enright, Forgiveness is a Choice, 25.
7 Levine and Frederick, Waking the Tiger, 194.
8 Ibid., 33.
9 Estes, “Story as Medicine.”
10 Ibid.
Conclusion: The Rest of the Journey
1 Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health (SASH), 2007, http://www.sash.net (accessed February 12, 2009).
2 Mayo Clinic Staff, “Compulsive sexual behavior,” Mayo Clinic, http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/compulsive-sexual-behavior/DS00144/DSECTION=symptoms (accessed February 12, 2009).
3 Marsha Means, “Coping with your Husband’s Sexual Addiction,” A Woman’s Healing Journey, http://www.awomanshealingjourney.com/copingwithhisaddiction/index.php (accessed February 12, 2009).
4 Ibid.
5 Source unknown.
6 Holeman, Reconcilable Differences, 12.
7 Jennifer Schneider and Debra Corely, Disclosing Secrets: When, to Whom, and How Much to Reveal (Center City, MN: Hazelden Publishing & Educational Services, 2002).
8 Mark Laaser, Talking to Your Kids About Sex: How to Have a Lifetime of Age-Appropriate Conversations with Your Children About Healthy Sexuality (Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook Press, 1999).
9 Weiss, Douglas. “Sexual Anorexia,” 3. 10Ibid.
Bibliography
American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Pub, 2000.
American Psychological Association. “The Effects of Trauma Do Not Have to Last a Lifetime.” Psychology Matters. http://www.psychologymatters.org/ptsd.html (accessed January 13, 2009).
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