August 22nd Meditation: Creating a Sexual Recovery Plan

Saturday, August 22nd

August 22^nd – Creating a Sexual Recovery Plan

I did not know what a Sexual Recovery Plan was or how it could help me.

The nature of sexual compulsion often veils our true needs and desires with fantasy and confusion over sex. A Sexual Recovery Plan can help us break through the chaos and decide how to handle this sensitive part of our lives. Creating such a plan is a process of “peeling the onion” to examine our compulsion, layer by layer. We may ask a sponsor or other member to help us build our plan.

We often felt shame about our compulsive behaviors, but we were powerless to stop them. We had no skills to help us resolve this conflict. Forming an SRP enables us to identify the harmful sexual activities from which we seek relief. We can develop guidelines by establishing boundaries around those behaviors. A plan may also give us insight into some of the conditions that may trigger our bottom-line behaviors and help us identify positive actions to replace those harmful activities.

By setting guidelines for our behavior, the plan frees us from making anxiety-provoking choices in the confusion of sudden opportunity or sexual excitement.

By following a Sexual Recovery Plan, we move away from harmful behaviors. We find ourselves gaining the time and energy that we had been spending on our compulsions.

August 21st Meditation: Healthy vs. Compulsive Sexuality

Friday, August 21st

August 21^st – Healthy vs. Compulsive Sexuality

Healthy sexuality nourishes intimacy and safety. Compulsive sexuality can be self-destructive and dangerous.

Many of us turned to compulsive sex to find the validation and connection we believed we otherwise could not achieve. For some, the more time and energy we spent pursuing that elusive “perfect” sexual experience, the more unattainable it seemed. In pursuit of that ideal, some of us have increased the intensity of our sexual activities, including unsafe sex, danger, humiliation, or physical harm.

Yet the emptiness of our lives was still there and, in fact, had deepened with shame. We had trapped ourselves into a spirit-breaking ritual.

For many, practicing healthy sexuality might seem beyond our reach. We had often used sex to fill an unfillable void. Breaking that cycle may seem difficult and scary.

At meetings, we may hear the slogan: Sex is not an emergency. In building our Sexual Recovery Plan, that slogan begins to make sense. By working the Steps and using the Tools, we experience change and growth. The void in our lives begins to shrink as we pursue healthy, affirming actions.

Just as every member defines their acting out behaviors, we also learn to define our ideal sexuality, which may evolve as we grow and change in our recovery.

Compulsive sexuality disconnects us from ourselves. Healthy sexuality furthers our sense of self.

Help with SCA YouTube Videos

Be an ISO Outreach volunteer and help make SCA YouTube videos for our channel. Our next project is to make short (2-3 minute) videos on your shares about Chapter 2: The Twenty Questions (from our Big Book). I would like your input (either audio or text) on any of the following questions. You can send it to me either on here scannereditor@sca-recovery.org or at outreach@sca-recovery.org. Your voice and personal information will not be used and your content may be edited . Please consider helping us out by sharing your experiences, hopes and program tools that may have helped you with the question: Chapter 2: Twenty Questions
1. Do you frequently experience remorse, depression, or guilt about your sexual activity?
2. Do you feel your sexual drive and activity are getting out of control? Have you repeatedly tried to stop or reduce certain sexual behaviors but inevitably found that you could not?
3. Are you unable to resist sexual advances or turn down sexual propositions when offered?
4. Do you use sex to escape from uncomfortable feelings such as anxiety, fear, anger, resentment, guilt, etc., which seem to disappear when the sexual obsession starts?
5. Do you spend excessive time obsessing about sex or engaged in sexual activity?
6. Have you neglected your family, friends, spouse, or relationship because of the time you spend on sexual activity?
7. Do your sexual pursuits interfere with your work or professional development?
8. Is your sexual life secretive, a source of shame, and not in keeping with your values? Do you lie to others to cover up your sexual activity?
9. Are you afraid of sex? Do you avoid romantic and sexual relationships with others and restrict your sexual activity to fantasy, masturbation, and solitary or anonymous online activity?
10. Are you increasingly unable to perform sexually without other stimuli such as pornography, videos, “poppers,” drugs/alcohol, “toys,” etc.?
11. Do you have to increasingly resort to abusive, humiliating, or painful sexual fantasies or behaviors to get sexually aroused?
12. Has your sexual activity prevented you from developing a close, loving relationship with a partner? Or have you developed a pattern of intense romantic or sexual relationships that never seem to last once the excitement wears off?
13. Do you only have anonymous sex or one-night stands? Do you usually want to get away from your sex partner after the encounter?
14. Do you have sex with people with whom you normally would not associate?
15. Do you frequent apps, websites, clubs, bars, adult bookstores, restrooms, parks, and other public places searching for sex partners?
16. Have you ever been arrested or placed yourself in legal jeopardy for your sexual activity?
17. Have you ever risked your physical health with exposure to sexually transmitted diseases by engaging in “unsafe” sexual activity?
18. Has the money you spent on pornography, videos, web-camming, apps, phone sex, or hustlers/prostitutes strained your financial resources?
19. Have people you trust expressed concern about your sexual activity?
20. Does life seem meaningless and hopeless without a romantic or sexual relationship?

Trauma and Addiction

The following are excerpts from an article by Robert W.

For a very long time in the world of psychology, when clients manifested symptoms of trauma and sought help to understand their feelings and behaviors, they were “diagnosed” as weak-willed and inherently emotionally unhealthy. Therapists of this particular era had little to no training or understanding of trauma and its wide-ranging, long-lasting effects, so they mostly avoided the issue, providing neither resolution nor hope.

This began to change when countless Vietnam War veterans returned manifesting profound emotional, psychological, and behavioral problems (including addiction). And it wasn’t just the soldiers who identified this change; their friends and families also noticed a huge difference. Psychologists finally took a serious look at the ways in which past traumas can impact a person’s current thinking and behavior—an idea that immediately resonated with both mental health professionals and the people who’d experienced severe trauma.

Can the symptoms we see with combat veterans also manifest in the general population in response to other forms of trauma? The answer was an undeniable yes.Research has made it clear that trauma as seen in war veterans are no different, in terms of later-life manifestations, than trauma experienced by victims of sexual abuse, domestic violence, racial intolerance, homophobia, gender discrimination, violent crime, misogyny, bullying, neglect, chronic family dysfunction (including addiction and mental illness), and intimate betrayal. In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association added its first trauma-focused diagnosis, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The new diagnosis identified three primary symptoms:

Re-experiencing trauma—in flashbacks, nightmares, and even in response to loud noises and stressful situations
Numbed response, including depression and abuse of addictive substances and behaviors, as a way of coping with the pain of re-experiencing
Hypervigilance, including anxiety, psychological arousal, jumpiness, overreactions, etc.

One study looking at the long-term effects of unresolved early-life trauma found that survivors are:

1.8 times as likely to smoke cigarettes.
1.9 times as likely to become obese.
2.4 times as likely to experience ongoing anxiety.
3.6 times as likely to be depressed.
3.6 times as likely to qualify as promiscuous.
7.2 times as likely to become alcoholic.
11.1 times as likely to become an intravenous drug use

In time, we began to look at family-wide issues wrought by global traumas, such as how addiction affects everyone close to the addict. About the impact of trauma, secrets about trauma, and shame. This is the basic idea of trauma. It happens to us and it happens to those we love. And if we don’t find a way to recognize it, call it out, and find better ways to cope with it, it will color our thinking and behavior indefinitely. Also prior to this, addiction was considered by most to be a moral failing, a lack of self-will, or a deep psychological flaw (a personality disorder), rather than an emotional illness. Part and parcel with implementation of the disease model was recognition that addicts are nearly always survivors of severe or chronic trauma. It is clear from both research and clinical observation that addictions are not about feeling good; they’re about feeling less. Addicts turn to addictive substances and behaviors not because they want to have a good time, but to self-medicate and self-regulate their emotions. Their primary goal is to escape from life and not feel stress, anxiety, depression, fear, and other forms of discomfort. And they continue to do so even as their clearly (to an external observer) out-of-control behavior creates significant problems: relationship issues, trouble at work or in school, declining physical and/or emotional health, financial turmoil, legal concerns, mood disorders, and more. Addicts cope with stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness, boredom, attachment deficits, and unresolved trauma by getting high (via a substance or behavior) instead of turning to other people who might emotionally support them. As they do this repeatedly, this choice becomes a pattern, and then an addiction.

Addicts are almost universally traumatized as children, which affects their ability to attach in healthy ways as adolescents and adults. Thus, they learn to use fantasy and dissociation via substances and behaviors for emotional regulation, rather than relying on intimate family, friends, and community for emotional support as a healthier person might. In time, they become compulsive and obsessed with this substance or behavior, using it as their primary emotional and psychological coping mechanism. Today, both the disease model and the role of trauma, especially unresolved early-life trauma,are well-accepted. The “Minnesota Model” of viewing and treating alcoholism as a disease rather than a moral failing took root. Addiction programs (heavily based on the experience of sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous) began to be developed. These treatment programs chose to view addiction as a primary disorder (rather than a symptom of some other psychological disorder) best treated with long-term abstinence and sobriety-focused social supports.