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

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СКАЧАТЬ get them to a place where they can then attend the workshop at a later date.

      Ken: There is a lot of therapy that goes on; there’s downtime; there’s homework at night; there are special assignments. The whole process is laid out in a very specific way. We’re also going to be offering workshops for male sex addicts, female sex addicts and love addicts, and couples in recovery as well—couples recovering from sexual addiction as well as couples recovering from other enmeshment issues. I can’t tell you the number of wives and girlfriends who have asked me, “Can you see us as a couple?” So we’re going to offer later in the year some more intensive workshops designed by my associates and me.

      Carol: So they really do need to get to your website so they can get on your mailing list and find out what is available. Of course, I’m sure people come from all over the world. It’s especially nice if you live in the Midwest and don’t have to drive as far, but you have people who come from anywhere to these workshops.

      Ken: We do, yes. I get calls for assessments from all over the world, particularly around the enmeshment issue. As you noted earlier, there is not a lot of specific work being done around that. It’s sometimes embedded in other more general recovery work, but the workshop we designed here to my knowledge is the only specific workshop for that issue that’s out there.

      Carol: Again, Dr. Adams, if someone is not sure they’re quite ready for this yet, they can read your book, and the title of your book is?

      Ken: Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners. I’ve also written a book called When He’s Married to Mom: How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men Open Their Hearts to True Love and Commitment. Silently Seduced is for men and women, because both are on the enmeshment issue. When He’s Married to Mom is more specific to men with that problem, although it’s also written for the spouses of those men. Silently Seduced is written for both men and women, because women also get into struggles with their mothers with enmeshment. The course is a little different, although the symptoms are very similar. We see some women who have been surrogate wives to their fathers, although we see more women who are enmeshed with their mothers and wind up absorbing some of their mother’s anger at men. These women find it difficult to make commitments to men or relationships because of the enmeshed relationship with the mother and absorbing her reality, never getting a chance to have her own identity. We do see that enmeshment issue with women; it’s just that my workshop isn’t for women this time around, but my book is.

      Carol: I want to ask you a few questions as we begin to wrap up. You’ve obviously got two very specialized niches for people who are suffering from enmeshment or partners who are suffering with their own sense of identity, because they’ve been so wrapped up and traumatized by being with a sex addict. Do you think it’s truly possible to recover from a sexual addiction?

      Ken: Absolutely. We see people do it all the time, but keep in mind there’s this notion that somebody becomes “recovered.” Right? It doesn’t quite work that way. What recovering people learn is that they are like everybody else at some point when they begin to feel they’re on an equal playing field. They have to continue to manage feelings, deal with issues of trust, and learn to contend with conflicts, negative beliefs, urges; so recovery requires an ongoing commitment to a life process that keeps being conscious and learning to live in reality rather than trying to escape it as their priority. We see people all the time who make that commitment, who stay out of relapse because they’re living a life that is a recovering life. We see that with people who are enmeshed. I get asked that around enmeshed men: “Do you think it’s actually possible for my husband or my boyfriend to break free and be committed to me?” I say yes, but he can’t do it if he remains committed to his mother. The caveat is yes, he can recover, but he’s going to have to get his priorities straight.

      I get asked that by partners of sex addicts: “Am I ever going to be able to trust him again?” You know, that’s a tough question. You can trust yourself again, and you may or may not be able to trust him again. You can certainly come to trust yourself and learn to sort out other relationships in the world, and then there are ways you can determine whether your, hopefully, recovering addict can be trusted again. I do believe it’s possible. People do it all the time, absolutely.

      Carol: And yet, as you indicated, it is a growing process. Addicts are constantly faced with situations that can retrigger them to some degree, and they have to use those skills over and over again and grow stronger. Do you think most people do stay together when faced with a sex addiction in their relationship? What’s your experience there?

      Ken: My experience is what I see in the clinic, so I have a skewed population of course. But of the people who come into our practice, when the addict makes an earnest effort to recover because he knows he needs to—as opposed to image-managing for his marriage—we see a strong base of possibility. If he can empathize with the impact on the partner, and then as a couple if they can grieve the fact that their marriage has been impacted by the sexual addiction and come to terms with the fact that, on one level, what their relationship used to be is no longer and they will always have to contend with some level of pain or grief and then make a new commitment … we see more and more couples doing that. It’s a very difficult process, but by all means possible if they are willing to do the work and there is a base of love and respect that can be either rebuilt or further developed.

      Carol: I know in your “Spouses and Partners of Sex Addicts” intensive workshop, you talk about how the partner really has to do some grief counseling and move toward empowerment from the grief, because if they stay victimized, they stay stuck. Once they grieve and feel empowered from it, they can move forward.

      Ken: That is one of the biggest issues. One of the primary focuses of our intensive is to help them do some grieving. There is sometimes a repetitive refrain with partners because they’re in shock, but one of those is “Why did you do that? I can’t believe you did that.” Sometimes that’s the shock stage. Other times when it’s occurring over the course of two years after the betrayal has been exposed and the addiction has been exposed, sometimes it’s the difficulty with grieving that “OMG, the relationship that I have is just not what it was.” My power comes from facing that reality, grieving it, and making some new decisions for myself.

      We gently support grieving. We don’t make any decisions for partners. We don’t have any agenda for partners to do anything at all. This is really their process. We want to make sure people are clear about that. Sometimes therapists will try to decide for the partner: “You shouldn’t be married to him,” or “You should stay with him because of your religious values.” We don’t take any position about that. Our position is to help the partner grieve her losses; reclaim her reality so she’s better able to make decisions for herself.

      Carol: I know that with an intensive, there may be some people who say, “I don’t know if I can really put out the money right now,” because in some ways it may be the price of ten sessions with your therapist. But I’ve seen the work that people have done in an intensive, and it can provide ten times the amount of benefit and help that they get from doing individual work on themselves. For anybody out there who worries about the money issue, these are very affordable workshops, and you will benefit tenfold by them.

      You’ve done a masterful job of putting these together. Your books are incredible, and I personally have gotten to be a part of Dr. Adam’s teachings. He helped me with my CSAT certification, and he’s one of the finest teachers in the nation on this subject. Kind of what I say about Patrick Carnes, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you wait. Get out there and at least see if it’s the right thing for you.

      Ken: Thank you, Carol, for that vote of confidence. I appreciate it.

      Carol: You’re very good, very compassionate, and very thorough. I’ve talked to people who have worked with you and they say not only do they feel different СКАЧАТЬ