Scott Brassart - Sex and Porn Addiction Healing and Recovery: A Practical Daily Reader for Sex and Porn Addicts

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Sex and Porn Addiction Healing and Recovery

A Practical Daily Reader for Sex and Porn Addicts

Inspiration, Information,
and Innovation

Copyright 2019 Three iii Publishing
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-699-04562-6

Contents

JANUARY 1

The Need to Work Step 1

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

In 12-step sexual recovery meetings we often hear discussion about hitting bottom and the resultant moment of clarity where we finally understand and accept the fact that we have a major problem and need to make significant changes. Unfortunately, these moments of clarity can be fleeting. When the crisis passes, so does our desire to live differently. This is where Step 1 comes in. We work Step 1 by unearthing our complete sexual history and the problems our sexual behaviors have created. In so doing, we see, often for the first time, the totality of our addiction and its consequences. In this way, Step 1 reinforces our moment of clarity, cementing our desire for recovery and healing.

Task for Today
Write down ten consequences you have suffered because of your sexual addiction.

JANUARY 2

Stocking Your Toolbox

Addicts must shape the tools of their recovery. Thereafter, the tools will shape them.

As recovering sex and porn addicts, we know that triggers toward acting out in our addiction are inevitable. As such, it is vital that we have a recovery-centric toolkit we can utilize in our moment of crisis. After all, implementing one or more healthy coping mechanisms (tools of recovery) is the only consistently effective way to short-circuit the addictive cycle. As British poet George Herbert once wrote: Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

Task for Today
Make a list of items in your recovery toolbox. What tools do you use the most? What tools are underutilized? What tools would you like to add?

JANUARY 3

Connection is the Key to a Happy Recovery

Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.

An immense amount of mental and physical health research shows that isolated/separated individuals suffer both emotionally and physically. Conversely, people who place a high value on developing and maintaining meaningful connections tend to be happier, more resilient, and more successful. They even tend to live longer. Thus we see that emotionally intimate connections are nearly as essential to life and well-being as more obvious needs like food, water, and shelter. This is doubly true for addicts in recovery. Without healthy dependency and connection, we may make it physically, but we wont be happy. When we go it alone, we fail to thrive.

Task for Today
If youre feeling lonely, offer to help a newcomer. Notice how quickly your loneliness dissipates.

JANUARY 4

Just Another Way to Numb Out

Sex and porn addiction are not about feeling good, theyre about feeling less.

As sex and porn addicts, we use sexual fantasy and behavior to numb out and escape from stress and other forms of emotional (and sometimes physical) discomfort, including the pain of depression, anxiety, loneliness, boredom, shame, etc. This is also why alcoholics drink, drug addicts get high, and compulsive gamblers hit the casino. Whatever the addiction, we are not seeking fun and pleasure; we are trying to control and manage our feelings.

Task for Today
Sit with your feelings, whatever they are, experiencing them fully and then releasing them.

JANUARY 5

What is Sexual Sobriety?

The ultimate goal of sexual recovery is learning to be sexual in healthy, life-affirming ways.

People not familiar with sex and porn addiction often think that sexual sobriety, like sobriety from drugs and alcohol, requires total abstinence. This is not in fact the case. Instead, recovering sex and porn addicts, working in conjunction with a 12-step sponsor or a sex addiction treatment specialist, carefully determine which of their sexual behaviors are problematic and which are not. They then commit, in a written sexual sobriety contract, to engage only in the sexual behaviors that are non-problematic and permitted within the bounds of this predetermined pact.

Task for Today
Think about which of your sexual behaviors cause problems and which do not. Share about this in a meeting or with your sponsor.

JANUARY 6

What is Denial?

As addicts, we tell huge and powerful liesmost of all to ourselves.

Active sex and porn addicts routinely ignore warning signs of problematic behaviorruined relationships, depression and anxiety, trouble in school or at work, financial problems, arrest, etc. Even when we are forced to look at the consequences of our addiction, we tend to place the blame on others and continue our activities without a second thought. Its as if we are unable to see, or we refuse to see, the destructive effects that our addictive behaviors have not only on ourselves but on our loved ones. In other words, we deny that our addiction is a problem.

Task for Today
Examine lies have you told yourself andbelieved about your addiction.

JANUARY 7

What is a Healthy Boundary?

A healthy boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins.

The purpose of healthy boundaries is to facilitate healthy relationships, not to shut relationships down. Healthy boundaries are not about keeping other people out, theyre about letting other people safely in. If other people are behaving in ways that are safe for us, we can choose to let them in. If they are behaving in ways that are not safe for us, we can choose to keep them out. Their behavior belongs to them; our choice belongs to us.

Task for Today
Let other people behave as they wish. Accept that they are not yours to control.

JANUARY 8

Working Step 1: The Powerlessness Inventory

Step 1 reinforces our moment of clarity, cementing our desire for recovery.

Being powerless means we have lost control over our sexual behaviors. We engage in these behaviors compulsively, even when we say we dont want to. And we have no ability to stop our sexual behaviors once weve started (at least not until after sex and orgasm). Put simply, being powerless means that despite the promises weve made to ourselves or others that we will stop our sexual acting out, we find ourselves right back at it.

Task for Today
Think of three examples where you continued in your addiction even though you wanted to stop. Share these examples in therapy or a 12-step meeting.

JANUARY 9

Sex and Porn Addiction Are Not About the Sex

There is a big difference between ongoing happiness and chasing euphoric moments as an escape.

As sex and porn addicts, we are hooked on the dissociative euphoria (the trance/bubble) produced by our intense sexual fantasies and patterns of sexual behavior, including the endless search for sex. We find as much excitement and escape in fantasizing about and searching for our next sexual encounter as in the sex act itself. We can spend hours, sometimes even days, in this elevated statehigh on the goal/idea of having sex without ever engaging in any concrete sexual act. As such, we nearly always spend far more time engaged in the fantasy and ritualized pursuit of sex than in the sex act itself.

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