Sexual Addiction:Strength/Hope/Recovery

Today Carol the Coach will be talking to Alex A. Avila, who has written a new book that will come out 10.8.22 callEmotional Safety: Honoring Yourself While Creating Trust and Presence to Experience Meaningful Relationships. He will talk about the need for emotional safety so that you can build on a foundation that is required tocreate a new relationship. This book and our discussion will help us understand the emotional pain and distance we experience from others and how to navigate that gap with confidence. Particularly after repairing betrayal, we can learn how to protect ourselves and make sense of our current pain in the context of our entire lives and our core needs. Emotional safety is an innate tool that helps us carefully assess whether to build new relationships with people who have harmed us. When we decide to do so, the book helps us begin taking specific steps that still honor ourselves in the process.

Today, Carol the Coach will be interviewing Melissa Ruff who has developed livefreewives.org to serve woman who want to be free of the anxiety and fear that accompanies partner betrayal.She is going to share with partners how they can REALLY tell if theri husband is in true recovery or white knuckling it.

Today Carol and Kim talk about the ERCEM Model and the book that came out to guide you through your healing.

How to tell if your partner is slipping or you are?   There are many reasons to stay in a relationship, from family, finances, and most importantly love. But staying in a relationship where both parties are figuring out the next steps after the discovery of SA isn’t easy. What if they cheat? What if I can never trust them again? How will I be able to tell if we can move past these issues or if our relationship is doomed? Sometimes, the problem isn’t your partner. In this podcast, Carol the Coach will explore with Rebecca Stokes how to  explore the green lights that tell you your partner is doing well, and maybe it’s your turn to do some work, as well as, the red lights that reveal real problems. We’ll talk about how past traumas and betrayals impact the brain and nervous system, leading to cloudy decision making. Then we’ll look at what you can do to take charge of your experience, set healthy boundaries, and decide whether to stay or go.

Today, Carol is interviewing a resilient woman who was raped by her husband and misguided by the church. She talks about her confusion about his actions and how they tried to find guidance with the church. She lived years in that confusion until she started to focus on herself which started the road to recovery.

Carol the Coach will be interviewing Michael Ciaccio who will be sharing the origins of The Center for Healing and their specialized program, the My House Workshop to help sex addicts and church leaders heal from sex addiction. The Center for Healing is a clinical group practice working with those struggling with attachment wounds, trauma and sexual brokenness.  The Center was founded in 2013 and has 5 clinical therapists working with clients daily.  He will share the powerful story behind the beginnings of the Center in that the church was in need of someone who could address sexual addiction, ow addressing for the Catholic and greater Christian population in general.   In 2016, Dr Todd Bowman, Fr Sean Kilcawley and myself started the My House Workshop for Men, a 3 day intensive in Kansas City.  The workshop includes experiential group work, psychoeducation and an integrated spiritual component.  There is a half day on betrayal trauma to address how this addiction has impacted the client’s spouse or partner.  This has addressed an important need in the church to help seminarians and priests as well.

Sexual abuse is the secret shame that lies deep within. Men hold onto this secret shame for an average of 25 years before they disclose the hurt and pain they have endured and carried by sexual abuse perpetrated by another male. So many men and their spouses wonder how male sexual abuse has affected the survivor. Today Carol the Coach talks to Doug Carpenter who wrote a riveting book call:. The book contains over 40 reasons why men don’t tell.  The degree of shame is significant and it often causes men to have confusing feelings regarding their sexuality.  As men disclose their abuse, it is important to examine how the abuse changed their thinking and behavior. A good majority of men were abused before puberty. The research shows that men on average are abused around the age of eight or nine while in the latency stage of development. The disruption of this phase created a stirring of sexual curiosity and desire that was awakened before its time.  This early awakening has a direct effect on behavior. Boys may tend to seek out further sexual exploration, have an increased interest in ography, seek out their abuser and initiate sexual activity, or may be driven to initiate sexual acts with others long before the natural instinct of puberty and progression into adolescent desires instinctively emerge. The latency disruption sets the stage for acts of sexual impulsivity and compulsivity, but can also lead to emotional dysregulation, sexual anorexia, and sexual dysfunction in adulthood.  Men who have experienced sexual abuse deserve to be heard and to heal! The wounded inner child deserves to be comforted and protected. The lies men have told themselves must be confronted and dispelled. The adult deserves to be free of the impact of sexual abuse and move into living a happy life free of emotional, physical, relational and sexual dysfunction, and sexual compulsivity.

Carol has a new workshop that she wants you to be aware of if you are looking to heal from the sexual betrayal that occured as a result of sexual addiction.

Today Carol the Coach interviews fellow podcaster, Rhys Pasimio who is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Certified Sex Addiction Counselor, and Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor, as well as a soon-to-be certified IFS practitioner. Rhys is in recovery  and produces the Outer Circle Inner Stillness Podcast. He believes recovery is about much more than just behavior change. It is a whole person, whole life transformation, mirroring the conversation experience in a spiritual journey. He will explain the many questions addicts have including, "How do sober people live? What do they do, think, feel and believe that sets them apart from people without addiction, and people not yet in recovery?"  His podcast, Outer Circle Inner Stillness explores answers to this question. He looks at daily practices, basic beliefs and assumptions, that set the individual on a trajectory toward their Outer Circle values, as well as things to avoid that set you on a trajectory toward middle circle chaos. The core of the show explores the intersection of sobriety work and spirituality, and how these disciplines often compliment each other.             Further, there is a series within the series called Lives of the Sober, in which I interview people with 25 years or more of recovery. My aim is to capture the wisdom of our recovery elders, so we can learn from their example. He hopes that this will inspire others along the journey!

In 2019, Charlen Benson, wrote the book Unstuck book. She has added a missing piece to the book and wanted our viewers to know that she has created a Study Guide which  offers thought provoking questions, easy-to-follow checklists, road-tested tips, healing exercise, insightful writing prompts, and profoundly moving prayers. She explains to Carol the Coach, "When we are ‘on the road’ in our relationship, we get along fine and are able to navigate amicably our varying interests and desires.  On the road, we are conscious, mindful, balanced, and aware.  However, when we don’t know how to balance our wants and desires with our mate, it’s like we get stuck in a ditch. Where we land depends on childhood experiences.  We either default to becoming a people pleaser Others-Focused” (OF) or insist on our own way “Me-Focused.” (MF).  Over time I discovered 21 predictable OF and MF default behaviors, though that’s not an exhaustive list. Each ditch behavior represents and extreme behavior that is a subconscious, automatic, preprogrammed, reaction, driven by fear and feeling powerless to do anything else.  When the default behaviors don’t work, we switch to the opposite extreme reaction, propelling our counterpart to the opposite ditch. OF’s engage in their behaviors to protect themselves from the rejection they experienced in childhood by acting in abandoning ways, while MF’s try to protect themselves from abandonment by acting in rejecting ways.  When we identify our reactive behaviors, name the fears driving them, we then can overcome those fears by engaging in a combination of the 24 strategies offered. " Find out how you can create healthier relationships too!