Sexual Addiction: Wisdom from The Masters. Carol Juergensen Sheets Juergensen Sheets
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 talk first about the spouses’ and partners’ workshops. If someone’s been involved with a person who has been sexually compulsive 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