STRONG HOLD

DESCRIPTION

THE LIE

THE TRUTH

HOPELESS

Loss of self-esteem

No purpose or direction

Total loss of hope that

   things will ever change

sense of inadequacy

I am a victim & helpless

I will never change, its hopeless

I am different & so is my problem, so it won’t work for me

I am a victor in Christ

I am the righteousness of God in Christ

The trust sets you free regardless of the problem or person

GUILT

Depressed and bitter

Discontented & grieved

Sense of worthlessness

Denial & dishonesty

I deserve to be punished & condemned

I cannot face the awful truth about myself

I am a product of my past

There is no judgment in Christ

In Christ I am a new creation

I am a product of the cross

SELF-HELP

Behavior oriented

Judgmental

Weary and tired

Trying to earn acceptance through performance

If it is going to be it is up to me

God helps those who help themselves

If I change my behavior, it will change me as a person

Only God can change me

God helps those who give up and trust Him

If I change my beliefs, it will change my behavior

INSECURITY

Worried and anxious

Feels forsaken and without support

Absence of meaningful relationships

Unable to receive love & avoids intimacy

I am unworthy to be loved & accepted

I need someone to validate me as a person

I nee4d someone or something to be secure

I am loved and accepted by God

I am one with Christ., He is in me and I am in Christ

I am eternally secure in Christ who will never forsake me.

SEXUAL ADDICT

COADDICT

12 STEP PROGRAMS

INTERIOR WORLD

Addicts conclude from their family experiences that they are not worthwhile persons. Feelings of inadequacy and failure predominate.  Addicts often see humiliation and degradation as justified or deserved.  The desperate struggle around sexual compulsivity absolutely confirms this belief and enhances feelings of low self-wroth.  Addicts are committed to hiding the secret reality of their addiction at all costs because of their unworthiness.  Yet the addiction guides almost all behavior and decisions.

INTERIOR WORLD

Coaddicts grow up in families in which their self-worth is in constant jeopardy.  Feelings of inadequacy and failure parallel the addict’s sense of unworthiness.  Not believing there are any options, co-addicts tolerate abusive, humiliating and degrading behavior.  Co-addicts are obsessed with sex since sex is the proof of love.

FOR ADDICT & COADDICT

The program provides the understanding that each member is basically a good person.  All learn to separate themselves as individuals from their addiction which is destroying their lives.  When addicts and co-addicts admit the addiction’s power, hope emerges from connecting with others and with a Higher Power.

EXTERIOR WORLD

Addicts create a front of ‘normalcy’ to hide their sense of inadequacy.  They may even appear grandiose and full of exaggerated self-importance.  As consequences to behaviors emerge, the front contrasts with actions that seem to be degrading or self-defeating or both.  Others see decisions or behaviors as irrational, incomprehensible, or even self-destructive, but not ‘normal.’

EXTERIOR WORLD

Self-righteous contempt often masks the co-addict’s inferior fears.  Aggressive, critical, controlling behavior switches with compliance and enabling.  Either position shares a martyrdom role in which the coaddict is being ‘victimized.’

NEW BELIEF

I am a worthwhile person deserving of pride.

KEY STEPS

1,2,3

FAMILY & FRIENDS

Close friends and family members become angry and frustrated with the addicts’ egocentricity, especially when there is insensitivity to others.  Not knowing the interior world of an addict, they are troubled by what looks like destructive or curious behavior that does not fit the image the addicts project.

ADDICT RESPONSE TO CO-ADDICT  Addicts are in a self-serving double bind in the relationship.  When coaddicts are critical and judgmental, addicts use this to justify abusive, compulsive behavior.  When co-addicts are submissive and compliant, addicts feel burdened, exploited and critical.  These feelings also serve as a rationale for addictive behavior.

INTEGRATED WORLD

Addicts and co-addicts have a new sense of pride.  Power of the secret world is broken.  Identity and integrity return.  They no longer need to hide and can become open to each other and to others.

SEXUAL ADDICT

COADDICT

12 STEP PROGRAMS

INTERIOR WORLD

Addicts believe that everyone would abandon them if the truth were known.  They have a constant fear of being dependent on others.  Addicts perceive their sexual behavior as so bad that everyone becomes their ‘fault.’  Addicts assume responsibility for all the pain in loved ones.  Honest guilt and remorse cannot be expressed because that would require honesty about behavior.  Addicts become progressively more isolated.

INTERIOR WORLD

Co-addicts in relationships reflect their basic distrust of others’ love and care for them.  To be in a relationship engages the three co-addictive fears: lose their identities in the relationship, forced to deny what they know to be true, and that meeting their needs would have a price.  To tell others the painful ‘secrets’ would guarantee abandonment.  To be honest with the addicts would sacrifice the safety of being self-righteous or compliant.  Coaddicts, like addicts, assume that they are responsible for all the pain in loved ones.

FOR ADDICT & COADDICT

The fellowship of the program surrounds participants with people who have suffered in the same way.  They no longer feel unique.  They trust and are trusted with personal secrets.  They have the opportunity to assess their strengths and weaknesses, as well as to take stock of their own values and behavior.  Their new vulnerability allows them the hope of depending on others outside the program.  They rediscover the fundamental human processes for restoring relationships through amends and forgiveness.

EXTERIOR WORLD

Addicts create the image of being in charge of life and in no need of help.  They appear unaffected by any problem, but will often do extreme or indulgent things as if making up for something.  No explanation is offered, however.  Some addicts may continue to be charming and sociable, but all addicts become ‘unreachable’ personally as they close off all avenues of ulnerability.

EXTERIOR WORLD

Co-addicts go to extreme lengths to appear self-sufficient.  They seems unaffected by any problems and will expend intense energy to conceal problems.  In fact, they will take on many extra responsibilities, being all things to all people.  In general, they often seek relationships in which they can dominate or nurture so they can be intimate with minimum risk.  This self-sufficient exterior protects the family secrets.  Also, the internal belief that the co-addicts are responsible for everything is acted out.

NEW BELIEF

I am loved and accepted by people who know me as I am.

KEY STEPS

4,5,8,9

FAMILY & FRIENDS

Significant persons in the addicts’ lives start to feel pushed away, useless, neglected and unnecessary.  They become confused at seemingly generous gestures, but in the absence of any personal warmth or presence.  Anger and hurt accumulate with a sense of abandonment in reaction to the addicts’ contradictory behavior. 

ADDICT RESPONSE TO COADDICT

Addicts rely on co-addicts to pick up the pieces – especially as powerlessness and unmanageability increase.  Yet addicts may start to be critical of co-addicts’ efforts when they assume extra responsibility.  Internally, addicts start to feel progressively more useless and without places in the co-addicts’ lives.  Addicts feel unneeded, especially when co-addicts are busy nurturing others, such as children.  The co-addicts’ involvements serve as further justification for compulsiveness. 

INTEGRATED WORLD

Addicts and co-addicts develop a realistic sense of their strengtghs and weaknesses, of their personal self-worth, and of the limits of their impact on others.  They take a new responsibility for their behaviors, their behavior becomes more and congruent with their values. They learn that mistakes can be accepted, amends made, and forgiveness received.  Addicts and co-addicts can become responsive and responsible members of the human community.

SEXUAL ADDICT

COADDICT

12 STEP PROGRAMS

INTERIOR WORLD

Addicts feel unloved and unlovable, which means other people cannot be depended on to love them, so their needs will not be met.  The resulting rage becomes internalized as depression, resentment, self-pity; and even suicidal feelings.  Because they have no confidence in others’ love, addicts become calculating, strategizing, manipulative and ruthless.  Rules and laws are made for people who are lovable.  Those who are unlovable survive in other ways.

INTERIOR WORLD

Co-addicts’ desperate need for love and nurturing exceeds any one person’s ability to respond.  They make perfectionist demands on all aspects of the addicts’ behavior in a misdirected attempt to guarantee satisfaction of all their needs.  When they are disappointed by the addicts’ failure to meet the impossible demands , rage becomes internalized, resulting in despair, self-pity, and resentment.  These down times alternate with periodic hope and exhilaration that things will change.  Co-addicts’ conniving manipulation and criticism are based on the assumption that if the addicts met the high standards, needs would be met.  Addicts become the co-addicts’ source of self-worth and good feelings.  The conviction that the co-addicts will have to pay for the love and car pervades all relationships.  To be affirmed with no requirements goes beyond the co-addicts’ experience.

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EXTERIOR WORLD

Addicts rage about unmet needs in the past prevents the possibility of expressing needs now because they anticipate being rejected.  Addicts appear not to want or need anything.  They are purposely unclear about their intentions in relationships and are thus seductive in behavior, i.e., they try to be affirmed or cared for without expressing that they need it so they will not risk rejection.  Addicts make extensive efforts to show how respectable and law-abiding they are.

EXTERIOR WORLD

Martyrdom accompanies the co-addits’ systematic efforts to make themselves indispensable.  In exchange, co-addicts expect addicts to furnish proof of care and love.  Failure to do so results in further efforts to reform the addicts or in self-righteous punishment and rejection.  Co-addicts do not communicate personal needs, only disappointment in unmet expectations.  Preoccupation which addicts often results in the denial or tolerance of addicts’ behavior.  Co-addicts ‘keep score’ of what is owed in the relationship. The more coaddicts do for the addicts, the more they expect in return.

NEW BELIEF

My needs can be met by others if I let them know what I need.

KEY STEPS

6,7

FAMILY & FRIENDS

Those who are close start to see the double life, the Jekyll and Hyde, in the addicts’ worlds.  The addicts’ ups and downs remain difficult to understand.  Worse, distrust and disbelief in the addicts begin.  Things appear to be so smooth, yet the intuition is that they are not.  Inconsistencies between the addicts’ public and private lives confirm these intuitions.

ADDICT RESPONSE TO COADDICT

Addicts fail to perceive co-addict’s needs.  Partially, their failure stems from the addictive preoccupation and sexualization of all needs.  The co-addicts’ behavior, however, also obscures the issues in the relationship.  Addicts grow resentful of the coaddicts’ expectations, yet also feel a sense of failure for not meeting them – which no one person could do.  Co-addictive judgments simply document what addicts already fear to be true.  Yet addicts remain assured that coaddicts will not leave while they are co-addictively preoccupied – as long as they are still judging, they are still there. 

INTEGRATED WORLD

By taking more responsibility for themselves, addicts and co-addicts see their roles in having their needs met.  Addiction or co-addiction is unnecessary for dealing with anxiety or pain.  To be dependent on others is acceptable.  When disappointed, appropriate anger invites further human connection, as opposed to rage, which keeps others out. 

SEXUAL ADDICT

COADDICT

12 STEP PROGRAMS

INTERIOR WORLD

Addicts confuse nurturing and sex.  Support, care, affirmation and love are all sexualized.  Absolute terror of life without sex combines with feelings of unworthiness for such intense sexual desires.  Sexual activity never meets the need for love and care, but continues to be seen as the only avenue to meeting those needs.  Addicts have a high need to control all situations in an effort to guarantee sex.  Yet there is a secret fear of being sexually out of control.  Addicts promise themselves to stop or limit sexual behavior because of this fear.

INTERIOR WORLD

Co-addicts believe sexual attention proves they are lovable.  Sex becomes a trade-off for love.  Therefore, co-addicts have a great fear of being unattractive and sexually inadequate.  When addicts are sexual with others, co-addicts feel total personal rejection, adding to their sense of unloveability.  Given the stakes, co-addicts have difficulty exploring or enjoying their own sexuality.  Exploitive experiences foster deep resentment and rage, which further validate all the co-addictive core beliefs.

FOR ADDICT & COADDICT

Addicts and co-addicts learn the power the addiction had in their lives.  They discover they do not need the addiction to survive, but they do need the program consistently because of the addicton’s power.  By recognizing their powerlessness and unmanageability, addicts and co-addicts start tolive new lives that focus on human relationships as opposed to sex.  Program members continue to learn about this process through teaching others.

EXTERIOR WORLD

Sexual obsession pervades lifestyle and behavior.  Addicts make maximum effort to ensure all possible sexual opportunities.  Addicts at all levels of behavior feel the need to control sexual access, protect their ‘supply.’  Seeking degrading or humiliating sexual experiences simply extends internal feelings of unworthiness. Addicts publicly profess extreme sexual propriety, however about some sexual matters.  Cover-ups, lies, and deceptions are made to conceal personal sexual behavior. 

EXTERIOR WORLD

Because sex is a trade-off for love, co-addicts may find themselves being sexual when they do not wish to be or, worse, participating in sexual behavior that is degrading and humiliating,.  Co-addicts may also dress or act seductively to get attention.  Efforts to control the addicts’ sexual obsession include the use of sex to manipulate addicts to prevent them from being sexual with others.  Sexual attitudes of the co-addicts can continue the external themes of self-sufficiency, self-righteousness and martyrdom.

NEW BELIEF

Sex is but one expression of my need and care for others.

KEY STEPS

10,11,12

FAMILY & FRIENDS

The addicts’ protestations of high sexual morality obscure the impact of sexual obsession on friends and families.  Close family and friends tend to reject suspicions of sexual compulsivity because of the addicts’ ‘values.’  As evidence of powerlessness over behavior and unmanageability mounts, these persons become confused, not knowing what to believe.  In addition, they do not wish to intervene in something so personal.  Since they don’t feel close enough to become involved, they choose the other option, which is to withdraw.

ADDICT RESPONSE TO COADDICT

Addicts feel confused by the coaddicts’ contradictory signals about sex.  Often addicts misinterpret the coaddicts’ need for relationship as sexual overtures and then totally fail to understand the co-addicts’ feelings of being exploited.  Addicts are ashamed when sexual feelings are not returned, since that confirms that their sexual intensity is bad.  Also, there are feelings of resentment about the coaddicts’ efforts to control and judge the addicts’ sexual behavior, all of which perpetuates the3 addiction cycle of the addicts.

INTEGRATED WORLD

Addicts and coaddicts find what their obsession could never discover: a deep and personal sense of self-worth and value.  They can be affirmed and loved, as well as loving and affirming.  They learn that rewarding and varied sexual experience within the context of significant relationships adds nurturing to one’s life.  Living the program assures them that sexual obsession does not direct their lives.