Category: Psychotherapy (Page 2 of 2)

By Peter C. Kleponis, Ph.D., LPC, SATP, CSAT, Integrity Counseling Services —  As Director of Integrity Counseling Services, people frequently ask me what the recovery process entails. I often describe recovery as a three-tiered process: sobriety, inner-healing and transformation.

SOBRIETY:
Being sober means no longer using the substance to which you were addicted – pornography. Many people rate their success by the number of days, weeks, months or years of sobriety. Your sobriety date is the last day you acted out. Having a long period of sobriety can be a great encouragement to anyone in recovery.  The first goal of recovery is to establish a solid period of sobriety, usually about six weeks. Here a person works on developing the tools and skills to achieve and maintain healthy sobriety. This includes eliminating all pornography and access to it, participating in a 12-step support group, and recognizing the triggers and rituals that can lead a person into pornography use. This can be used to develop the strategies to avoid pornography.

INNER HEALING:
This pertains to identifying and resolving the root causes of an addiction. Ultimately the pornography use is the symptom. You will learn there are many painful emotional issues that can lead a person to self-medicate with pornography. Unless these issues are identified and resolved, sobriety tends to be “white-knuckle.”  This almost always leads to failure. Through counseling, a person can identify and resolve the root causes of the addiction. This will make maintaining healthy sobriety is much easier. This is true recovery.

TRANSFORMATION:
This is the ultimate goal of your program. While God wants to help you with your sobriety and recovery, his ultimate goal is to transform you into a new creation. He wants to heal you and help you become the person you were created to be. This is what makes recovery and life exciting for most addicted people. They are able to see God actively working in their lives and are more easily able to discern His will. They are able to claim their true identity as children of God. Marriages are healed and relationships are restored. Many men are grateful that their worlds came crashing down because of their addiction. They realized their lives and relationships were never healthy to begin with. Now they have the opportunity create healthier lives and relationships. Even their wives are happier because of the transformation they’ve seen in their husbands, their marriages and even in themselves. They are finally living happy, healthy lives!

By Peter C. Kleponis, Ph.D., SATP, CSAT, Integrity Counseling Services — People often wonder where God is when they struggle with an addiction. At Integrity Counseling Services, many of the men I work with who struggle with pornography addiction have prayed fervently for God to take it away. However, they feel their prayers have fallen on deaf ears because they continue to struggle. Some believe that God doesn’t even care about them.  They believe that because of their sins they are unlovable.

While it may be difficult for someone struggling with addiction to see God working in his life, the fact is that God is intimately involved. However, it takes some time and skill to recognize how God is at work in the healing process.

The first thing that a person in recovery needs to understand is the difference between a healing and a cure. The difference is time. A cure is immediate while a healing takes time.  In scripture, we read about many cures. Jesus cured the blind man, the crippled man and the lepers. This is what most addicts pray for — an instant cure. While God can do this, it’s been my experience that He prefers to work in healing people’s lives.

God wants to see His children freed from the chains of addiction; however, above all else, His greatest desire is to be in a deep, loving, intimate relationship with each of His children.  While most people would prefer a cure, it probably wouldn’t do much for their relationship with God. They would thank God and simply go about their lives forgetting all about Him.

With a healing, God says, “Let’s walk for a while and talk. Let’s get to know one another and build a relationship.” The end result of a cure and a healing is the same: health and restoration. However, with a healing there’s the added benefit of a deeper relationship with God. Here is how God uses our infirmities as an invitation to draw us closer to him. He wants us to know how much he loves us no matter what we’ve done.  He wants us to know that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” and that He delights in us!  Once you understand that God is more interested in healing you than curing you, it’s easier to be more patient with the recovery process. You can even begin to enjoy the journey of getting to know Him better.

It’s also important to be able to see how God is active in recovery. He reveals Himself through the people one meets, such as a confessor, spiritual director, support group members, sponsor, accountability partners and therapist. Many people I’ve counseled marvel at all the people God has brought into their lives to help them find freedom from pornography use. It requires great humility to develop such a team for recovery. One needs to let go of control, admit powerlessness and let God truly work in his life.

This is summed up in the first three of the 12-steps:

1. We admitted that we were powerless over lust — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Once a man can humbly submit his life to God, recovery becomes easier. He can fearlessly work through the 12 steps. He can reach out for help when needed and offer help to others in need. He will not only grow in humility, he will also grow in other virtues such as honesty, courage, faith, hope, love, trustworthiness, obedience, kindness, etc.

Another reason I believe God doesn’t simply come in and cure people is that recovery is more meaningful when a man takes ownership of it. This requires him to do the work of recovery. In addition to admitting his powerlessness and submitting to God, he needs to immerse himself in a comprehensive recovery program. He must acquire the skills to achieve and maintain sobriety. He needs to identify the root causes of his addiction and resolve them. He needs to mend relationships that have been hurt by his addiction. He needs to help others in recovery. It’s this work that can bring about true transformation in a man’s life. God wants men to experience this!

As one can see in the 12 steps, spirituality has always played an important role in recovery. Building an intimate relationship with God can truly help a person through the tough times and is necessary for authentic healing. However, this rarely occurs without some help. I recommend all my clients find a good spiritual director. This is usually a priest they meet with once a month. They can discuss their relationship with God, their image of God, ask questions about God, and receive guidance in developing a strong and healthy relationship with God through prayer, sacraments, and scripture.

Altogether, it’s not difficult to understand how God is present in one’s recovery and to see him actively working in it. It simply takes knowing where to look and how to look!  It’s seeking the healing, not the cure.