Sexual Addiction: Wisdom from The Masters. Carol Juergensen Sheets Juergensen Sheets

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СКАЧАТЬ field. This man, Dr. Kenneth M. Adams, is one of the gurus in terms of treatment. He has spent several decades working with sexual addiction and partners of sex addicts. One of the things he found that was incredibly helpful was to create intensive workshops. This form of treatment educates clients and helps them to get the fundamentals. People who took these intensives found that they learned so much so quickly. Instead of going to therapy for a year or two, they learned in four, five, or seven days enough information to access the resources to solidify their recovery.

      Tonight, Dr. Adams is going to be talking about two intensive workshops that he has set up for this year. The first is called “The New Intensive Workshop for Mother-Enmeshed Men.” For some of you, you may not even know what the word “enmeshed” means. What Dr. Adams has found is that some clients have particular difficulty in breaking free from unhealthy behaviors and unhealthy relationships. Some men have had an overly enmeshed relationship with their mothers. Enmeshed means overly close, and the relationships that addicts have with their mothers may lack boundaries. Men with enmeshed relationships may feel a lot of underlying anger and guilt. It’s not like these men wanted this close relationship with their mothers. Usually they are a casualty of a mother who wants too much closeness with them, uses them as surrogate husbands, and uses them as surrogate companions. This occurs oftentimes in families that have experienced trauma. So Dr. Adams created this workshop to help participants—through experiential work, artwork, and small- and large-group experiences—to identify the trappings of this kind of relationship and to understand how that actually by default creates an erotic template that is very difficult to change without the help of these intensive workshops or without the help of skilled therapists who understand how tough it can be when you’re in a family without boundaries, specifically between mother and son.

      He’s written books on the subject. He is a speaker across the country. This workshop can be instrumental in changing a relationship that is very difficult to change. He also has directed and created a workshop for spouses and partners of sex addicts. He has an intensive outpatient workshop that is being led right now by Judith Trenkamp and Hope Ray. They have studied directly under him and have the same spirit of compassion and attention to detail that Dr. Adams has had in all of his programming, as he created his Life Healing Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. If you’re a partner of a sex addict and you have trouble with boundaries, you have trouble saying no, you have trouble putting yourself on the front burner in creating self-care; if you don’t feel empowered—as a matter of fact, you feel identity-less—and you’re having difficulty figuring out what your feelings are and how to develop your own individuation, you’re so consumed by the sex addict that it’s really hard to know what you need; then you really need to look into this amazing workshop that is going to be March 13–16.

      You can contact Dr. Ken Adams and his associates to get more information on that. You can always email me at [email protected] for contact information too. Tonight we will be finding out more about these intensives and why you would want to use them. We will also learn more about the impact on a spouse or partner when you’ve got this kind of relationship with your mother: How do you break the chains of codependency when this occurs?

      Now let’s talk about the skill for the week. I hope that you’re all having a successful new year. We’re already into January and I’m a big advocate about not having resolutions, but looking at behavioral change. A “Carol the Coach-ism” that I have is “Don’t create a goal that you really want to work toward; instead find a word that depicts a change you’d like to see in yourself.” Maybe it’s a self-word, such as “fitness,” or a relationship word, such as “communication” or “closeness” or “intimacy.” Perhaps you want to work on something very specific. In that case, find a word that reflects what that is, and then figure out how you can symbolize and identify ways of experimenting with that word throughout the year. My word this year is “service.” If anybody is in a Twelve Step program, they know that the Twelfth Step is about “How can I serve others, how can I serve my community, and what can I do to serve?” When we serve, we do many things, but certainly it takes the focus off of us and it creates a healing for others that ends up coming back and making us feel good too. So service is going to be my word for the year.

      One year, it was “inspiration.” Another year it was “boundaries.” Another year it was “self-care.” I am now the queen of self-care, so I don’t need to work on that. I do a really good job of that. I work hard, but I play hard. I would love to know what your word is. I would love for you to email me and let me know what that word is. I cannot say enough about how a word can change your life when you write it on Post-it notes and you put it in your phone and you look for fun ways to demonstrate that word. As opposed to feeling deprived or getting that sense of deprivation, you get excited about what that word has to bring.

      Certainly in the recovery field, there are a lot of words that make a difference—“gratitude” being one of them. I do not fall asleep at night without thinking of three things I’m grateful for. When I’m grateful, I’m happier. When I’m happier, I feel better about myself, and I exude something that the world needs. The world needs for us to be positive, but we can only do that after we heal our own wounds, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about tonight: healing the wounds of dysfunctional relationships, whether it’s in our partnerships or in our core relationships with our family of origin. When you look how not to be a victim to that, then you free yourself to be the person you really want to be and you can create the life you deserve, and that’s what counts. So I would encourage you to think about your word for the year and to email me at [email protected].

      So now we are going to hear from Dr. Ken Adams who has a wealth of knowledge in the field of sexual addiction. Welcome to the show, Dr. Adams. How are you tonight?

      Ken: I’m fine, a little cold up here in Michigan, otherwise good. I’m excited to be on your show again. I’m looking forward to having a chance to talk with you and your audience.

      Carol: Obviously, these are two intensives that you created and saw such a need among a lot of different people, but especially amongst people who suffer from sexual addiction or who love somebody who suffers from sexual addiction. So tell me, what is the focus of your intensive workshops? Why did you create them?

      Ken: I think there is a need for short-term intensives and there are a number of those programs throughout the country. I wanted to add our expertise and knowledge base to them. They help people identify problems in a more efficient way and help people get unstuck in the course of their normal recovery and treatment process. We created two. We have other ones coming. We created one for partners of sex addicts, spouses and partners of sex addicts. And we created another one specifically for men who have had enmeshed or covertly incestuous relationship with their mothers. In other words, where there has been a too-close relationship with Mom. We find that to be a dynamic among addicts, particularly sex addicts. Not every addict has that, but we do find that to be an issue, so we wanted to address that. It’s been a topic in a couple of my publications, a couple of my books. I wanted to take what I knew and create an intensive for men. We have a few others coming toward the end of the year.

      The folks will come on Thursday night and leave on Sunday. The meals and the lodging are provided. It’s an intensive process from beginning to end, and it’s a therapeutic process designed to help people get unstuck, and identify the issues, and move them along. We’re very excited about that. We’re almost full on one of them. We have some slots left on both, but one is almost full at this point.

      Carol: Okay. Who would be most likely to need both of these kinds of workshops?

      Ken: Let’s СКАЧАТЬ