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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ or addictive, depending on what word you like, those spouses and partners of sex addicts, as it is known, are traumatized by a number of issues related to that: the betrayal of trust, the blaming, the “gas lighting,” which is referring to telling people that they’re crazy—“How could you think that about me?” They suffer from what I’ve heard called almost an existential mistrust. In other words, they come to mistrust the world at large. So there is a tremendous amount of trauma that occurs when somebody is involved with an addict who has repetitive betrayals of trust, violations. There is sometimes physical and sexual abuse, of being ridiculed for not being attractive enough, and so forth.

      So we created a workshop specifically for partners and spouses of sex addicts. In this case, this is a workshop for women. It’s not coed at this point. We will create one that’s coed, but this one is for women. You can only do so much in four days, but we were really specific. We want them to feel validated. We want to help them reclaim their own reality, their own feelings, and to have a sense that they can manage and get through this and come to trust themselves. That may or may not mean that they can trust their addict partner again, but we help them in that process to come to trust themselves. That was the goal of our intensives for partners, and we’re very excited to offer that. I feel like it’s a very gentle experience, but steady in terms of helping people stay with it. It’s designed for the majority of partners who have had some trauma, who feel stuck, who need a boost, and who feel they could benefit from an intensive experience.

      We have folks who are prepared to do a phone interview to make sure the fit is right, so we screen people. If we feel like it’s not a good fit for them, we tell them up front. We don’t take everybody who comes in, because we want to make sure they have a good experience. I think that says it all.

      Carol: That’s great. Let me ask you something. Obviously, partners of sex addicts are in a lot of pain, no matter where they are in their recovery. You used that word “trust.” They have trouble trusting their partner. They actually have trouble trusting themselves, so if they are wondering “Is this the kind of program for me?” that phone interview is an assessment that will actually help them to decide “Would this be worth my while? Am I ready for this now? Am I ready to get unstuck?”

      Ken: Exactly. We let people know that we know we can’t create a process that tackles the needs of every single person who falls under the umbrella of a partner of a sex addict, so we’re very careful about bringing people into the process that we think are a good fit. We want to work for them. We want the process to work for the group as a whole. So for the screening, they can contact my office and we will do a phone screening with them. We will talk to their therapists. We prefer they be in therapy with somebody, so we have people coming from all across the country for these workshops, as well as local people. The therapists actually stay on campus for the partner one. We’re very careful with how we match the person with the process, which I think is what makes a process work, frankly, like these intensives we’re creating.

      Carol: And the therapists who are running these intensives are?

      Ken: Dr. Judy Trenkamp and Hope Ray are the women who are the therapists who are running the partners’ workshop. They are both CSATs, certified sex addiction therapists, and they have also been trained in the new certification for dealing with partners of sex addicts. These two women really know what they’re doing. They have a wide knowledge base, they have good hearts, they’re very skilled therapists, and I feel very fortunate to have them work for me.

      The “mother-enmeshed men” workshop is actually run by myself and one or two of my associates, depending on how big we get. Those are male therapists for that one.

      Carol: I was going to ask you how many people typically attend an intensive.

      Ken: There are two parts to the process. There is a large, sort of educational kind of class didactic period where the larger group comes together, and then there are small groups for the actual processing and therapy work. Then they come back into the larger group to do things that help to move the whole group along. The small groups are kept to approximately six people. The most we will take is probably three groups, so the size of the total group is no more than probably eighteen.

      Carol: So that really is very manageable, isn’t it?

      Ken: Absolutely. When you’re doing a large lecture, or you’re doing something like a bonfire, we take them through a process where they let go of old wounds and they use the bonfire as a ritual. We have virtual experiences to help move them along. We’re very excited about that. We also have that for the men in the mother-enmeshed men workshop as well. I don’t know if you want to get to that or hold off for the moment for that.

      Carol: Let’s go ahead and segue into that, because I think that is probably the workshop that most people would be most curious about. I know that a lot of my listeners don’t necessarily even understand enmeshment in general. Can you explain what that is?

      Ken: Sure.

      Carol: You used the word “incest.”

      Ken: Let me start with “enmeshment,” which is a little more tolerable of a word. Back in the 70s or 80s, 80s for sure, the family therapist at the time began to notice that too much closeness between generations in families was linked to somatic disorders [having a significant focus on physical symptoms — such as pain or fatigue — to the point that it causes major emotional distress and problems functioning] in children. When they began to work with separating the grandparents from the parents and the parents from the children, they began to notice that the somatic symptoms of the children decreased. What they began to postulate was that you can have too much closeness in a family system, where the closeness becomes intrusive and engulfing and guilt-producing and burdensome. It’s the opposite of what we typically hear in dysfunctional families when we think about neglect and abuse. This is where the family appears very close, and in many ways is very close, but oftentimes in some of these close systems, the closeness can be too much. One of the particular pieces of that kind of system can be what we call a “parent-child enmeshed relationship,” in which the parent is overinvolved with the child, at the cost of the child’s own identity, their own separateness, their own individuality—all the way from mothers being jealous of their son’s girlfriends and vice versa with fathers and daughters.

      When I talk about “covert incest,” that’s referring to the enmeshed relationship beginning to feel like it’s a romantic relationship. Think about sons and mothers in this case: “Not only is my mother too engulfing and making me feel guilty all the time, but she’s treating me like her boyfriend. That feels terrible to me, icky.” Even though there’s no physical sexual touch, the relationship can feel very much violating sexually. In other words, “I have to be loyal to my mother; my mother is my girlfriend rather than having a girlfriend,” for example.

      Sometimes that can occur very innocently, if you will, so anybody who is a parent knows that. I’m a parent and my wife is a parent and we have a son, and I’ve seen this unfold in our family. Any parent has a normal love affair with their child, right? It’s a special kind of love, and it’s very sweet. This concept of enmeshment is not meant to degrade or criticize that kind of relationship, but when the parent uses the child to get their needs met, that’s a problem. This workshop is particularly for men and you see a lot of this issue with men and their mothers, particularly among the sex addict population, but not limited to that group. This workshop is focused particularly on men, because I think there are a lot of men who go untreated around this, and I wanted to create a workshop for them.

      What happens when these men and boys are playing the role of their mother’s surrogate husband, listening to their complaints and their sexual frustrations about their father, feeling as if they have to be angry with their dad on behalf of their mother, and they have to declare loyalty to their mom; what occurs is that in adulthood, СКАЧАТЬ