Couples who start recovery work can really struggle to get traction, especially in the beginning. Most couples tend to set goals, usually revolving around the addict’s sobriety. In the presentation, I share the latest research on motivation, goal setting, and ways in which the way you manage goals may actually undermine your recovery efforts. Even though the presentation is focused on couples, much of what is said is applicable to individuals struggling with compulsive pornography use as well.

You’ll have to watch the whole presentation to really get into the things I believe are crucial for couples to have going for them in addiction recovery, but here are the eight items:

1. engage in recovery dailies
2. facilitate a curiosity-focused approach to healing
3. highlight relationship patterns
4. see couple conflict as diagnostic
5. seek personal serenity
6. replace fairness with acceptance
7. create recovery narratives
8. give yourself permission to breathe

I hope you enjoy it. If you find it helpful, please share the video with others!

Adam

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I wrote a letter some time ago for people to share with their religious leaders to help educate them about helping couples through sexual addiction recovery. For those of you looking for that letter, it can be found at Utah Valley Addiction Recovery.

The post A Letter to My Religious Leader appeared first on Marriage Counseling Provo Utah | Family Therapy |Pornography Addiction Treatment |Sex Addiction Recovery | Adam M. Moore :: Marriage and Family Therapist.

First, Saturday, January 16 at 10:00 AM (Mountain Standard Time) I will be hosting my first in a series of webinars on recovery topics. This webinar will be FREE, but limited to the first 100 attendees who register. If you are interested in learning more about this and future webinars, please go to the home page of this website and sign up for the email newsletter.

YOU CAN SIGN UP TO ATTEND THE WEBINAR BY CLICKING HERE

If you are unable to attend the webinar for any reason, I will also have it available to view on my website for a small fee.

Second, starting on Saturday, February 6 at 9:00 AM and 10:30 AM (Mountain Standard Time), I will be hosting two weekly online classes on addiction recovery. One group will be for recovering addicts and the other will be for partners of addicts. Each set of classes will run for 12 weeks and will cost $35 per class (each month paid in advance). Please sign up for the newsletter for updates.

Again, I’m very excited to offer these options to help those who don’t live close enough to see me in person or for those who want additional help and support. Whether you’re looking for a recovery booster or need more personalized, in-depth help, I have solutions for you. The best part is that you can participate from your own home or from a internet-enabled mobile device anywhere in the world.

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Safety refers to being protected from or unlikely to experience danger, harm, or injury. In recovery, safety typically refers to emotional or relational safety, although it can also be physical safety.

You have a right to be safe from:

• Emotional manipulation
• Lies or deceit
• Control or unhealthy use of power
• Threats of any kind (harm, relapse, abandonment)

Safety is more than this.

Safety means working toward dealing with and confronting fears

Safety means freedom to be emotionally vulnerable

Safety means freedom to work toward trust

CAUTION: be careful not to overuse the word safety—meaning, be careful not to apply it to things that aren’t really about safety. Overuse of a word makes it lose meaning and power.

Examples of overuse:

I don’t feel safe because you didn’t do the dishes when I asked

I don’t feel safe because you aren’t helping with bed time for the kids

I don’t feel safe when you don’t agree with me

It’s possible that the behaviors listed above are signs that the addict is in resentment and addict mode—which may create a sense of lack of safety. But the behaviors themselves don’t generally make a person feel unsafe.

Learn to distinguish between the frustrating behavior (or lack of behavior) and the underlying reason you would not feel safe.

Safety is not freedom to always get whatever you want or need, immediately

Safety is not having people agree with everything you believe

Safety is not an absence of any fears or distress in your life

Safety is as much a process as it is an outcome—it’s creating mutual understanding between partners and it includes mutual tolerance of each person’s struggles and weaknesses

What do you do when an addict turns the word ‘safety’ against you?

Sometimes an addict will use the word safety against his partner—turn it around as a manipulation. He might say, “Well I don’t feel safe with you when you get upset because…” or “I don’t feel safe when you keep asking me to do things I’m not ready to do.”

Typically these statements are not about safety—but addicts learn that the word safety has power. Often, an addict’s use of the word safety is meant to use the power to keep his partner from holding him accountable.

In these cases, you will need to set a boundary around the use of the word safety. Make sure you are using it correctly, and then simply say that you will listen to his concerns as long as he does not bring safety in where it doesn’t belong.

You may need help of a counselor to clarify this in some cases.

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People give a lot of advice about whether or not you should share your triggers with a spouse or partner, and how much information to divulge. Let me share some of what I have seen work most effectively for the couples I work with.

First principle

Let the affected partner decide how much they want to know, in terms of level of detail.

Some may want to know exactly when the trigger happened, where, and the nature of the trigger. That is a right they have to help them feel safe about the seriousness of your recovery. Addicts tend to avoid sharing information about themselves with others. When you are willing to share, you look like a person who is taking recovery seriously.

Your partner may not want to know anything about your triggers. It may be too much to handle at this point in their recovery. Respect that.

But most spouses and partners of pornography or sex addicts tend to want at least some level of detail. The reason this is valuable is that it demonstrates what we call a “recovery narrative.” Sharing triggers in a healthy way helps tell the story of your recovery to your partner. This narrative is a key part of rebuilding trust.

Second principle

When you share your triggers, share your recovery process along with the trigger.

Just sharing a trigger without any plan or insight can throw your partner back into trauma. They will worry if they’re supposed to be doing something to stop you from relapsing, or may  just spend the rest of the day or week in a panic. It won’t go well, I promise.

So when you share a trigger, share with these items.

     1. “I was triggered by _____________________”

If it was a memory, or something you saw, be honest about it. You don’t need to go into graphic detail. But don’t try to minimize either. Just tell what happened.

     2. “This is what I think is making me vulnerable to triggers today”

Now you share recent pain or shame experiences, difficult emotions, or internal struggles that put you in a place where that trigger might put you at risk. Don’t pretend you are “fine.” Triggers happen. But when it really pulls at you and sends you into preoccupation, there is almost always something going on underneath that makes the trigger more powerful. If you don’t know, then you call your 12-step sponsor or ask your spouse, “Can you help me figure out what is going on in my life that is making me more vulnerable to triggers than usual?”

     3.  “This is my relapse prevention plan”

Spend time considering what works to pull you out of preoccupation and ground you in reality. What has helped in the past? What has helped your sponsor or others from your recovery group or support network? What are the specific steps you are going to follow to change your path to avoid relapse and to find serenity and stability? Share a detailed plan with your partner.

     4. “This is how I will be accountable about my plan”

Will you call or text to follow up? When? Who will you be accountable to about your plan and follow through? When you follow up, share again what you did and how it worked. Did it help you stay sober? Is it something you will do in the future? Any struggles with it?

When you share more of your recovery narrative along with your triggers, you are much less likely to create trauma or panic in your partner. This builds trust in your relationship during recovery and helps you remain accountable for minimizing your slips or relapses through active recovery, not just “white knuckle” sobriety.

The post FAQ – How Do I Share My Triggers With My Spouse or Partner? appeared first on Marriage Counseling Provo Utah | Family Therapy |Pornography Addiction Treatment |Sex Addiction Recovery | Adam M. Moore :: Marriage and Family Therapist.

One resource I love is Doug Weiss’ DVD set: Helping her Heal. It’s expensive, but in my opinion, well worth it.

Your husband may be sober, but that doesn’t mean his recovery is solid. I strongly recommend that he create a daily set of measurable, visible recovery routintes that you can see. These routines will help you trust that he is serious about recovery. I have a booklet online that you can review on this subject. It’s called How Do I Know if He is in Recovery?

Additionally, he should be telling you when he’s feeling triggered so that you can see that even if he’s sober, his recovery struggle is real. If he says he’s never triggered, you’re unlikely to believe that because it’s just not realistic. Here is what I recommend in terms of how to share triggers:

1. take ownership of the trigger
2. share the underlying emotional pain or shame that is likely driving the trigger
3. discuss a relapse prevention plan, which will usually involve accountability with you and a 12-step sponsor
4. follow-up with you later on how well he stuck to the plan and how it turned out

Invite him to be brutally honest with you about his addiction struggle. Paradoxically, while it may be painful for you to hear how often he struggles, when he is honest about things that may upset you about his behavior, you will know that his commitment to honest is becoming stronger than his commitment to self-protection.

When he slips, invite him to slow down and share more about his incident (you get to decide how much you want to know). If you are worried he is hiding details form you, help him know that you want to know what really happened–that you’re worried he left out some details out of fear about how you would respond. Give him a day to think about it and write down what happened. Then he can come back and read what he wrote to you. Very often, he will share more than he shared the first time he talked about the slip. Let him know that you understand that he may have left out details because of his fears. Help him understand that you need total honesty if you are going to stay in the marriage.

The post FAQ – My husband seems to be doing OK in recovery, but I still don’t feel safe. What can I do? appeared first on Marriage Counseling Provo Utah | Family Therapy |Pornography Addiction Treatment |Sex Addiction Recovery | Adam M. Moore :: Marriage and Family Therapist.

I have been invited this year to speak at Brigham Young University’s Campus Education Week. I will be presenting on four different days, with a total audience capacity of around 1,200. My presentation series is called:

Confronting Pornography in Your Individual and Family Life: Real Help for Real Problems

Below is the series schedule with class titles.

Tuesday (Aug 18) – How to Protect Your Children from Pornography’s Harmful Effects

Wednesday (Aug 19) – Confronting Pornography in Marriage Relationships

Thursday (Aug 20) – Key Elements of a Healthy Recovery from Pornography Addiction

Friday (Aug 21) – Dealing with Your Future Husband’s Past Pornography Use

All classes will be in room 250 of the Spencer W. Kimball Tower (SWKT) at 8:30 AM and will run 50 minutes each.

If you want to attend my BYU Campus Education Week presentations, you can sign up on the Campus Education Week website.

Registration is required to attend any part of the conference.

The post BYU Campus Education Week appeared first on Marriage Counseling Provo Utah | Family Therapy |Pornography Addiction Treatment |Sex Addiction Recovery | Adam M. Moore :: Marriage and Family Therapist.

A very common question I receive is voiced something like this:

My husband is a pornography addict. Even when he’s not acting out, he is very often resentful toward me and blames me for our problems. How do I protect myself emotionally without crossing over into something unhealthy? How do I keep needed emotional distance without disconnecting entirely from my emotions?

There are many terms people use to describe a healthy emotional distance between yourself and an active addict. We might use the term “serenity” from 12-step or “emotional boundaries” to name this process. Others may use different terminology.

With my own clients, sexually addicted men who are regularly moody, who blame, who are unkind to their spouses, etc. are still very much in ‘addict mode.’ Even when they’re not acting out sexually, the addict part of them harbors resentments and still deeply feels shame—both of which will drive mood swings and unhealthy relational responses.

Blaming others is one of the more common addict responses to their own internalized shame. My sense is that this is a way to push away intense feelings of unworthiness onto others to temporarily relieve the shame feelings. Shame becomes blame. So in cases where the addict is still very much in blame mode, his recovery should be challenged. When recovering addicts are open to feedback, I share these concepts with my clients to help them combat blaming.

1. Surrender

The 12-step program offers a beautiful approach to letting go of resentment. He would call his sponsor and say, “With you as my witness, I surrender the right to blame _________ for _________ ” He may have to call several times a day in the beginning if needed.

2. Provide a counter-argument

Blame is justified by resentment. In an addict’s head, it looks something like this:

My spouse is mean to me and doesn’t meet my needs. Therefore, I am justified in my anger. I have a right to blame and to treat my spouse poorly.

A client once said to me:

I hold court in my head. I am the prosecuting attorney, judge, and jury. I find my spouse guilty of crimes against me and use that verdict to justify treating her however I want.

An addict in recovery would recognize when he’s in blaming mode (whether on his own or by feedback from a spouse or sponsor) and then carefully craft an argument against the resentment and blame. He might say:

I’m angry at how I’m being treated, but I wonder if maybe my resentment isn’t really justified. I don’t like that my spouse is ‘always mad’ at me, but to be fair, I have created a home where there is no trust and I have been dishonest. I’m lucky that my spouse is still with me after all of that. If I can see her anger as a trauma response to being in a relationship with an active addict, I can understand better why she responds to me the way she does. I will choose to see her anger as feedback that my recovery is still incomplete. I will not blame.

In early recovery, this response will seem unlikely. However, I have seen many addicts in recovery reach a point where this is a common thought process when shame, resentment, and blame begin to show up for them. It takes a lot of feedback and practice.

3. Reach out

Almost universally, addicts reach inward for self-soothing when they experience shame and emotional pain. Many addicts I work with struggle to be very aware of their emotional state or needs, so it’s not uncommon for me to see addicts use blame as a way to draw out emotional engagement from others (even if it’s negative emotional engagement).

In recovery, an addict would recognize the blaming as a sign that he needs real human connection—then seek humility and vulnerability, and open up to others. Making real, vulnerable, human connections can have powerful effects on triggers in addiction. It is probably the most healing approach to recovery.

It is so important to distinguish sobriety from recovery. An addict may be sober but still very much responding to the world out of resentment and shame. This is as much a part of the addiction as the sexual acting out behaviors are.

Now, let’s further address how you would respond to the common addict-mode blaming. Addicts will often take a wife’s feedback and turn it around on her. He will transform her feedback into evidence of her “problems” or of her “unwillingness to forgive” or her desire to “persecute.”

Many of the wives I work with, in an effort to be introspective and from a desire to become healthy themselves, will carefully scrutinize the feedback and often wonder to themselves:

Is he right? What if I am all of those things he says? What do I have to work on?

The major issue with this is that the husband’s feedback does not come from a place of humility or a legitimate desire to help his wife heal. It comes from a desire to avoid the experience of his own internalized shame. The way a wife would recognize this is by the way that she internally experiences the husband’s feedback.

This is where I really encourage wives to trust their own instincts. When she is not in an active addiction herself, a wife should feel completely confident in trusting her own “gut feeling” about things her husband says to her. In my experience wives’ instincts are very, very accurate about their addict husbands’ intentions, motivations, and emotional state.

This is where you would then differentiate between a healthy emotional boundary versus what I would call emotional distancing or emotional numbing. When a husband is in addict mode and blame mode, it is completely reasonable and even advisable for a wife to say to herself and to her husband something like this:

I care about you and about our relationship. However, right now my gut is telling me that you are in addict mode. I feel this because of the way you are turning my feedback around on me and trying to blame me for being upset about living with an addict. We have not yet healed and I am still very often afraid about my sense that your recovery is still lacking. I am setting a boundary with you right now. If you choose to turn my feedback around on me and make me out to be the unhealthy one, I cannot emotionally engage with you until I feel emotionally safe with you again. When you are ready to accept feedback from me, which is designed to improve our relationship, I will gladly re-engage. Until then, please do not expect me to be emotionally present because it is too dangerous for my mental health.

The way this is presented helps because it is clear and specific; it outlines that the emotional boundary is there for protection, not punishment; and it provides a way out.

When I talk about emotional distancing or emotional numbing as an unhealthy approach to recovery (on the part of the addict’s spouse), I’m usually referring to a state of mind that involves a lack of emotional self-awareness. I will sometimes see wives get into a state of emotional disconnect with themselves, meaning that they are unaware of their own feelings. They lose touch with their own needs. They are simply in pain-avoidance mode.

Sometimes, this emotional disconnect is done intentionally as a form of psychological control or punishment. The wife intentionally disconnects from her husband as a way to try to punish him or control his behaviors. She thinks, “This will become so miserable for him that he will have to change for me.”

These types of responses are problematic and not representative of real recovery for the wife. Sometimes I see wives taking this approach, but my experience says that in the vast majority of cases, it’s a misguided attempt to elicit empathy.

I often talk and write about this. A wife will think:

If my husband really understood how much he is hurting me, he would not continue his behavior. If he can experience the pain I am experiencing, maybe he will finally understand, and stop hurting me.

Sometimes wives’ attempts to elicit this empathy is through hurting their husbands to help him understand her pain. This, of course, never works.

Most addicts I work with struggle to truly empathize with their wives’ experiences throughout the addiction and recovery process. In fact, I would say that helping a person “learn” empathy is one of the hardest and most elusive elements of recovery work.

So ultimately, as a spouse of an addict, your responsibility is to pay attention to your intentions. You may need the help of a sponsor to evaluate your motivation or intention when it comes to how you emotionally respond to your husband’s addict behaviors.

Seek regular feedback to help you feel confident that your response is healthy. If your intention is to help him understand your experience or to keep yourself safe from the addict side of your spouse, then you are likely on the right track. Again, seek regular feedback about your responses from someone further down the road in recovery.

There will always be a delicate balance between keeping yourself emotionally safe by not investing in the ‘addict mode’ responses and reactions from your husband, and becoming emotionally numb—avoiding your emotion rather than learning to respond to it. I don’t think anyone ever “masters” it. It’s a continuous challenge that requires a lot of feedback from other healthy people who care about you.

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Boundaries are…

“Even if you decide not to stay engaged in recovery, I will continue to do my own work.”

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