CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

Sexual Purity Posts

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New Castimonia Meeting in Columbus, TX

I am humbled to announce that we will officially be starting a new Castimonia meeting on Monday mornings at First Baptist Church in Columbus, TX on March 30th!  This is our first meeting located outside of the general Houston area and also our first morning meeting.
Location information is written below.
Beginning March 30, 2015
Monday Mornings
Time: 6:00AM – 7:30AM
Location: First Baptist Church
1700 Milam Street
Columbus, TX 78934
979.732.6261
This meeting should help those that live West of Katy/Sealy who may not have the opportunity to travel 2 hours round-trip to a Castimonia meeting.
Praise be to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for all He has done to grow His ministry!

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Porn Addiction Leads Teen to Heinous Murder

http://www.worldmag.com/2013/12/porn_addiction_leads_teen_to_heinous_murder
Originally posted December 2013

A Colorado judge last week sentenced an 18-year-old boy to spend the rest of his life in prison for kidnapping, sexually assaulting, murdering, and dismembering a 10-year-old girl. How could the then-17-year-old commit such a heinous crime? It all started with pornography, he said.

Austin Sigg knew he was in trouble when he was just 12 years old. He wrote a note to his Christian therapist, saying, “I have an addiction to porn and would like it to stop,” according to court documents released after the sentencing and reviewed by The Denver Post. But instead of getting better, his addiction grew worse as he watched increasingly violent porn. Sigg’s mother sent him to therapy in 2008 when she found child pornography on his computer. But he returned to pornography after the counseling stopped.

Sigg lived with his mother in Westminster, Colo., in the Denver metropolitan area. A mile away lived Jessica Ridgeway, a fifth grade student and peewee cheerleader. On Oct. 5, 2012, Jessica didn’t come home from school. For two weeks, police, emergency workers, and more than 1,000 volunteers searched the fields and highways near the neighborhood. All the news channels showed Jessica’s picture, along with pleas from her family for her safe return. But Jessica was already dead by the time her mother called 911.

As she walked to school that morning, Sigg hid in the back seat of his Jeep. He lunged from the vehicle as she passed by, tied her arms and legs with zip ties, and threw her in the backseat. He took her to his home where he cut her hair, made her change clothes, and assaulted her in his bedroom before choking her with his bare hands. When he wasn’t sure if she was dead, he filled a bathtub with scalding water and plunged her face under. Sigg dismembered her body in the bathtub, hiding some body parts in the crawl space under his house.

On Oct. 23, 2012, police received a call from Sigg’s mother, saying he had confessed to killing Jessica. Authorities were shocked: They thought they were looking for an adult male due to the atrocity of the crime.

“I couldn’t believe it [was a teenager],” prosecutor Hal Sargent told The Denver Post. “We wondered if it was a mistake.” But DNA evidence tied Sigg to Jessica’s remains, and his descriptions of Jessica’s mutilated body were too precise to ignore. Sigg eventually pleaded guilty to all the charges against him.

As The Denver Post revealed the details of Sigg’s porn addiction, the level of his desensitization to sex and violence became clear.

“[The porn] started getting worse and worse and more violent things … as things got more violent it was such a slow progression of the step up, that … I don’t even know if I realized it was getting harder,” Sigg told a detective. He told police killing Jessica was “the result of acting out his sexual fantasy.”

“Whatever forces have made Austin Sigg who he is, he is broken,” Sargent said. “The only way to protect the community from him is to keep him confined forever.

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Gary Wilson at TEDxGlasgow

The Great Porn Experiment

Published on May 16, 2012

In response to Philip Zimbardo’s “The Demise of Guys?” TED talk, Gary Wilson asks whether our brains evolved to handle the hyperstimulation of today’s Internet enticements. He also discusses the disturbing symptoms showing up in some heavy Internet users, the surprising reversal of those symptoms, and the science behind these 21st century phenomena.

More About Gary Wilson

Gary is host of http://www.yourbrainonporn.com. The site arose in response to a growing demand for solid scientific information by heavy Internet erotica users experiencing perplexing, unexpected effects: escalation to more extreme material, concentration difficulties, sexual performance problems, radical changes in sexual tastes, social anxiety, irritability, inability to stop, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

As a physiology teacher with a particular interest in the latest neuroscience discoveries, Gary was aware that their symptoms might be the result of addiction-related brain changes. Applying the website’s concepts of brain plasticity, many former users have braved withdrawal, reversed their symptoms and restored normal sexual responsiveness.

The site has been linked to from hundreds of threads in forums from over thirty countries, with posts numbering in the thousands. Gary blogs for “Psychology Today” and “The Good Men Project” on the extreme plasticity of adolescent brains, the evolutionary context for today’s flood of novel cyber “mates,” and the neurochemical reasons why superstimulating Internet delivery has unexpected effects on the brain.

Many thanks to Pat Somers of Slow Moving Pictures for the skillful editing of this video.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

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Conquering our Fear – VIDEO

I recently watched “After Earth” and I thought it had some deeper recovery-related gems.  For those that don’t know much about this movie here is a summary from Wikipedia:

In the future, an environmental cataclysm forces the human race to abandon Earth and settle on a new world, Nova Prime.

One thousand years later, the United Ranger Corps, a peacekeeping military commanded by General Cypher Raige, comes into conflict with alien creatures who intend to conquer Nova Prime. Their primary weapons are the Ursas: large, blind predatory multi-limbed creatures that hunt by sensing pheromones the human body secretes when scared (they literally smell fear). The Rangers struggle against the Ursas until the impassive Cypher learns how to completely suppress his fear, in effect becoming invisible to the Ursa—a technique called “ghosting.” After teaching this to the other Rangers, he leads the Ranger Corps to eventual victory.

In watching this movie, I picked up on  the recovery-related theme.   The subtheme I saw in this movie is that of fighting through and conquering our fears.  This resonates with me in recovery in that I tend to medicate my fear of the unknown with unhealthy activities, even compulsively watching television or sports.  There are a number of fears in my life but one of the things that I have become present to over the last few years is that fear is not real and this is stated clearly in one of the scenes of this movie.  For me, I have to understand that fear is simply Future Events Appearing Real, which means I am afraid of something that has not occurred or may never occur!  I hope this movie helps you with any fears you may have.

As always, take what you like and leave the rest.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This video may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for purposes such as criticism, comment, teaching, & education, etc. This constitutes a ’fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED! All trademarks and copyrights remain the property of their owners.

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Worrying About Cheating Is Pointless

As a codependent man, I have often worried about my partners cheating on me out of my core fear of abandonment. I enjoyed reading this as it hit me right between the eyes.  Worrying about my partner cheating on me is pointless and a waste of energy.  Energy that can be re-routed to become a healthier individual and improve my relationship with God and my wife.

Ask any couple what the deal breaker is in their relationship, and a vast majority will tell you that a cheating spouse is right at the top of the list. It’s easy to conceive why a cheating spouse can spell out the bitter end of what might otherwise have been a forever thing. It’s not just the physical betrayal, but also the loss of trust and the emotional infidelity… A partner being unfaithful can also trigger intense levels of depression, low self-esteem, low self-worth and feelings of abandonment for the person who was cheated on. No one wants to feel as though their partner simply found someone better than they are, that they weren’t good enough to love forever. All of this adds up to make complete sense of the fear that many people feel towards the possibility of infidelity in their relationship. But when it comes down to it, the fear of being cheated on is a personal insecurity that only you can change. Don’t get me wrong. If you’ve been cheated on before, I know it’s hard to trust again. Believe me, I’ve been there. But there comes a point when you have to stop punishing yourself and say ‘What they did was about them, not about me’. They chose to cheat because of the kind of person they are, because of the circumstances they allowed themselves to become involved in, not because you weren’t good enough. Yet, it’s hard to believe that when you’ve been betrayed and your relationship has been fractured, and you express the fear that remains with the following kinds of actions or behavior:

* Insecurity about personal looks and attributes

* Checking in on where the other person is going, or has been

* Snooping on phones, emails or internet accounts

* Constantly telling the other person that you know they will leave you for someone else

* Seeking constant reassurance

* Searching through your partners personal items or vehicle for evidence

All of these responses are understandable, but they are also complete energy and time wasters. Obsessing about your partner cheating won’t stop it from happening. From an article by Rachael Lay
http://www.rachaellay.com/why-worrying-about-cheating-is-pointless/

“It takes two people to create a successful relationship. It only takes one person to make it fail.” – From “Truth About Deception”