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The Evolution of Revolution: Understanding Sex Addiction

An excellent article about sex addiction recovery.

Patrick Carnes: Evolution of Revolution, Understanding Sex Addiction

http://www.counselormagazine.com/detailpage.aspx?pageid=1443&LangType=1033&id=6442451121

carnespIt was a cold late fall evening, and I was about to give my first address to the medical staff of Golden Valley Health Center. This facility was an 850-bed hospital located in suburban Minneapolis. It had a long and respected tradition as a psychiatric facility that also treated substance abuse. The year was 1984 and Out of the Shadows had appeared in January. While the reception that year certainly started controversies, there was also real and substantive support in both the professional and the recovering communities. The very first inpatient program for sex addiction was set to open in January 1985.

My job that night was to be the keynote speaker for the annual medical staff dinner for close to 300 doctors, clinicians and their spouses. My purpose was to underline the importance of this new sex addiction program. I was nervous, but I strategized that what had worked best for me was to use compelling cases to paint a picture of real need. One example was that I had a letter from the wife of a physician who had joined Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) and received treatment. It was a moving tribute to the power of treatment and her gratitude for the help received. Also I knew I had spouses in the audience as well as doctors, so it was a way for all to identify. And the author had kindly given me permission to share her sentiments anonymously. So I was ready.

Yet I was totally unprepared for what happened. After the lovely supper had been served and eaten, the hospital administrator went to the podium and started his introduction for my talk. It was a cue for a staged walkout. Suddenly about half of the audience simply got up and left. They were led by the most significant psychiatric group on the medical staff. Even more stunning was that key members of the administration staff joined the exodus in protest to the hospital opening a sex addiction program.

Over my career I have had critics, hecklers and reluctant staff members. But that moment was a defining moment in which I and what I represented were clearly not welcome. I remember the spotlights being on me, and everyone waiting for what I would say. I stood there, notes and letter in hand, transfixed with the fear that I had no right to be there. I wondered if I should walk away, but then I looked at that letter and knew I needed to speak the truth I knew. So I stepped forward and with a somewhat halting voice thanked those who had stayed and told them why I was there.

At the time Golden Valley was owned by Compcare Corporation and its president was Dr. Richard Santoni. He and I had spent afternoons together reviewing data and cases about sex addiction. His resolve pushed all of us to opening that program on time. Once open, a transformation occurred. The patients were profoundly grateful to have a place that understood their problem. Compared to most patients in the facility, they were not only hurting but also motivated. Soon the Sexual Dependency Units became the place where everyone wanted to work. Even the physicians who had walked out during my address changed their minds. When the patients came, the legitimacy of the problem was clearly established. The reputation for breaking new ground and being of genuine help compared to the revolving psychiatric doors characteristic of the day was more than attractive. Plus in 1985, physicians would be paid by patient as a separate bill. With $265 a day at stake, those who walked out the night of my talk now demanded to be put on the rotation list.

Then new institutional battle lines were drawn. The word spread that these were interesting, motivated patients who could afford to pay. Doctors wanted to be these new patients’ doctors but did not have time to go through the training to understand what the staff was asking of the patients in the program. Thus you had doctors giving well-meaning but ill-informed advice that was contrary to the precepts of the program. Clearly, a training program was necessary. Similarly, referents were asking for help because now that there was help, others followed locally from 12-step groups. Clinicians also saw the progress made in the hospital but questioned how to maintain momentum when the patient returned to the real world.

Other questions arose. With so many patients coming to the clinic, could they be put into groups? What was the criteria for inpatients other than desperation? Did treatment work for offenders? Were offenders part of a continuum, a separate problem or was there an overlap with sex addiction?

Leading the requests to join the new program were various directors of physician health programs. Most notable among those was Dr. Richard Irons, who eventually joined the staff at Golden Valley, and Dr. David Dodd from the Tennessee Medical Foundation, who worked hard to open the doors to understanding for those who treated physicians with addictions. Both of these men rose to the challenge of leadership and contributed dramatically to the knowledge and acceptance of sex addiction as a problem. Now physicians were joining in the fight and advocating for further knowledge.

The problem then was how to acquire that knowledge. I remember sitting at lunch with colleagues from Golden Valley in May of 1985.

We were celebrating all the progress being made and a recent television show with Oprah Winfrey, which brought over 11,000 calls to the hospital seeking help. We were talking of the new training necessary. Suddenly I experienced a deep fear within myself and I tuned my colleagues out. I realized we were celebrating the opening of the hospital program as an end goal that would solve the problem. Yet it was but a waypoint. All these unanswered questions existed. How would we find the answers and pay for the research? We had worked so hard just to get to the point where we had a facility. So many prejudices and professional barriers had to be overcome. We had just begun. When I tuned back to my friends, the tone of the lunch changed when I shared what I was thinking.

Still, throughout this whole journey people were ready to help. Money was found. A team of eight researchers, including myself, started to gather data. Hundreds of therapists opened their practices to this work. And just short of 1,000 sex addicts and many of their partners joined in the effort. The pooling of the efforts of all of us helped us to fashion training as a collecting point for the story of recovery that was emerging. It was the beginning of the Certified Sex Addiction Therapist program whose participants today we call CSATs. The resistance to our work did not stop, since there frequently were obstacles such as “that may work in the city but will not in the country” or even, “that will never work in my country.” Plus the process of discovery led to more questions and complications. Yet we persisted in pooling our knowledge.

What we have experienced is now a global phenomenon. For example, a young woman who just started working on her CSAT returned to a very rural part of Canada. She was told such clinical interventions would never work there and certainly not with families. But with the backing of her hospital she now directs a thriving sex addiction program with heavy family involvement. In Slovenia, a country of only two million, a family physician supports the beginning of a 12-step program for sex addicts. Today she has left family practice behind and devotes herself to helping families of sex addicts. In South Africa, I attended an SAA meeting of about 125. I was struck by the level of knowledge and good recovery in the room. I asked how this happened. It was business leaders who knew something had to be done who had bought materials and distributed them for free. And then they subsidized interested therapists who sought training.

One of the more interesting stories internationally is what the Norlien Foundation in Alberta, Canada, has been able to achieve. Once they became clear about the problem of addiction, they focused first on prevention. They created an initiative for early childhood education and family wellness that leveraged foundation and provincial funds into an amazing resource for Canadian families. Then they brought the very best science experts in addiction together for a series of conferences involving policymakers, government officials and healthcare professionals. They completely revamped the approach to talking about sex addiction by focusing on brain development and trauma. Then they ramped up the discussion into understanding addiction as a brain problem–of which sex was one of the options. They created an initiative to educate providers and physicians. They invited an American think tank called Frameworks to help with a cultural intervention.

(see Figures 1 and 2)

Figure 1
figure1

Figure 2
figure2

Their first effort was to show that a consensus existed amongst all the various professions involved. Amongst the average citizen, however, there were all kinds of perceptions, far from those of the research consensus, and few areas of agreement. Figure 1 graphically summarizes where the discontinuities were. The second initiative was a massive education effort of the public, which showed an astounding shift in understanding. Figure 2 lists what emerged in a survey of 4,000 citizens. Sexual compulsivity was at the top of the list. (For more information, please go to their website norlien.org. It is an open source treasure trove of useful information.

Clearly the time has come for a global conversation. Hosted by Caron and U.S. Journal Training, but supported by key professional associations and treatment facilities,  the 1st International Conference on Sex & Love Addiction will be held April 4–6. A planning group was formed with clinicians and physicians from around the world. The conference is being held in Brooklyn, New York, an international city with easy access. The goal is to again share what we know across disciplines and countries.

Sex addiction does have uniqueness. It requires clinicians who understand addiction, sex therapy, family therapy, trauma, sex offending and brain science. Physicians need to step past traditional psychopathology and recognize process addictions. Cultural differences are a factor. We, for example, are the world leaders of pornography, producing over 400 million pages last year alone (the closest other country is Germany with 10 million pages). Yet the irony is that terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, were consumers of porn. In putting together this conference we were not surprised to learn that the pornography consumption among United States military personnel emerged as a significant issue and the United States military is not the only military struggling with this concern.

Sex addiction is most difficult to treat because of the intimacy and centrality of sex to being human. At a recent conference, an elderly clinician from China leaned over and whispered to me, “You do know this is the most important global issue we probably have. It is a huge problem in our country. But no one wants to talk about it.” She looked at me with tears in her eyes as she left. She did not even hear my whispered, “I know” as she now was already focused on her labored walking.

My seatmate on the plane was a professional man. After talking with him for a few minutes I was aware that the language he used was 12-step based. I asked if he was in the program and he said yes, that he had been in AA for four years. We talked some about it. Then he leaned over and asked me if I knew anything about sex addiction. I said that I had been in a program of sex addiction recovery for some time. He then said, “I have three sponsees who are struggling because they have not surrendered to their sex addiction. I finally said to one of them that I could not help him any longer if he did not do what his sex addiction treatment asked him to do, because he would die.” He then leaned over and asked me if that happens often. I nodded my assent. He leaned back and said, “We have to wake up.” I said, “I know.”

So consider this issue of Counselor a wake-up call. Sex addiction is not just a collateral problem to be referred on. We have invited some of the best providers in the country to share with you here some of the latest knowledge and tools. Rob Weiss is amazing at his ability to track how digitalization is transforming the key variable in addiction acquisition: availability. Suzanne O’Connor and Stefanie Carnes review some of the latest instrumentation available. Three private practitioners talk about what it has been like to build their practice around sex addiction. Two inpatient providers talk of revising their programs in light of evidence-based practice. Caron Foundation staff share what they learned when they systematically assessed clients for sex addiction. The Pine Grove staff at Gentle Path share their realization of how differentiated their patient population was when they simply tracked the patients as they withdrew from the program. As you read you will also learn how 12-step programs have provided so many good options across the world.

The professionals writing here are both evolutionary and revolutionary, doing what good medicine and science has always done. We make things better by pooling what we know and helping each other. Now our network will extend across the world. In the words of a song from the sixties, “There’s something happening here. . .”

I sold an old farm that my wife and I had while she was alive. In it all the research records were stored that we started collecting in 1985. Among them were all the stories of the 1,000 addicts and their partners. The average transcript was about 80 to a 100 pages long, single spaced. These stories were in addition to all the data collection we did, which took hours to fill out and seven years to collect and analyze. In moving my records, I sat on the floor, opened the boxes and was flooded by memories of all the people who had shared their pain, struggles and success. I heard their voices and wept. I whispered out loud, “I know.” And I think many more will know now too. Thank you.

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My Dad Taught Me That My Sex Appeal Matters Most to Men

My Dad Taught Me That My Sex Appeal Matters Most to Men:
How fathers contribute to girls’ sexualization
Published on June 21, 2012 by Kerry Cohen in Loose Girl

My sister and I grew up as teenagers in our father’s home. We lived in a three-bedroom apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey, right across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan, and I often gazed out my bedroom window to the lights of that bridge, which made me believe that the world contained excitement, though what kind of excitement I didn’t yet know.When my friends came over, my father’s eyes scanned their bodies—these strange, beautiful creatures. Later, he would tell me he thought a friend was cute, that if he were in high school with us, he’d have a little crush. When he said things like this, my stomach hollowed out. I’d back away, eager to get back to the safety of my room.He had a girlfriend, and sometimes he grabbed her ass in front of me, or she rubbed his ear with her thumb in the car and he’d lean toward her, making a sexual noise I didn’t want to hear. He commented on females wherever we were. He’d check them out, eyeing their tight asses. He joked that he liked women who looked cheap, and though I rolled my eyes and laughed with him, I didn’t find it funny at all. Because what did it mean for me, a girl just past puberty, hoping to be wanted by the world? What would I have to do to get love and attention? Who would I have to be?

My sister’s and my bedrooms were at the end of a long hall, while my father’s room was right off the living room. He would often rush by the hallway, afraid, it seemed, to look our way. He had grown up with two brothers, and now here were two girls, as alien to him as boys were to me. I like to think now that he didn’t know the harm he did when he commented on those other women, on my friends. I like to think that just as he avoided that hallway, he avoided thinking too much about the things he said. And, meanwhile, the beliefs he had about women negatively affected his life. After my parents’ divorce he dated a string of women, mostly for the wrong reasons, (i.e., their looks). He looked past women who might have made better matches for him, and he held onto women with whom he had little connection. Other than being sexist in this way, my father was highly intelligent, deeply convicted in his liberal beliefs, creative, and terribly funny. His issues with women were the bane of most of his life.

While I was growing up, the culture was exploding with sexual images. Commercials showed half-naked women reeling in men. Clothing for young women was more suggestive than ever. Everywhere I looked, girls were taking off their clothes and grinding against men. Even the cheerleading team in my high school, which my father wanted me to join, performed risqué routines. Everywhere around me was sex. There was no escaping it, not at home, not on TV, not anywhere. And, let’s face it, my father didn’t escape it either. He’d grown up in the 1950s when men were seemingly afforded every last privilege, and then he divorced in the 1970s, during the sexual revolution.

Like most every woman I know, I grew up sexualized, which the American Psychological Association partially defines as believing one’s value is tied to her sex appeal and sex behavior, and allowing oneself to be sexually objectified and/or used. When I look back at my adolescence, I’m not sure I had a fighting chance against this. No one helped me build interests in anything other than being sexy and interesting to boys. And the wave of sexual images, the message that my entire sense of self depended on my sex appeal, was overwhelming.

By the time I went to college, I had decided that the excitement I’d been looking for came from men and boys. If a boy wanted me, I believed that could make me worthwhile in the world—certainly every media outlet suggested that was true. And so did my father. When he commented on my friends’ bodies, I worried about my own body—was it attractive? Was I sexy like my friends? When he ogled other women on the street, he turned his eyes from me. He stopped attending to what might have also been lovable about me, such as my intelligence and sense of humor, in order to prioritize a woman’s bodily appeal. My father taught me that men care most about female’s sex appeal. He taught me that girls mattered when they served a purpose for boys.

For most of my adolescence and all of my 20’s, I used my sex appeal to try to get love and attention. I slept with lots of boys and men, many whose names I couldn’t recall if asked, many more who I thought would love me because they wanted to have sex with me. It seems naïve now, but it took me that long to understand that just because a guy wanted to have sex with me, it didn’t mean he wanted to have a relationship beyond that. It took even longer for me to understand that I could choose to have sex with a man and it didn’t mean I had to have a relationship with him.

I don’t like to blame women’s sexual and relationship issues on their fathers. It’s an outdated notion that grew from the Freudian Electra Complex. There are many other influences on a girls’ sense of sexual self, with our societal obsession with objectifying women for their bodies being the biggest. We live with many more sexual images today, more than when I was growing up. Back then there was no Internet. MTV was new, and solely showed music videos. There were all of 23 channels to surf on TV. Now that we are so inundated, though, we know more about how those images affect girls. Numerous studies have been done, books written, articles published, all informing us of the potentially negative effects.

But fathers have a responsibility to their daughters much like mothers have the responsibility to model self-love, to not put down their own or others’ bodies, and to make good choices in their relationships. Fathers can give their daughters attention for non-sexual qualities, like bravery, strength, intelligence, and humor.

Not long ago, my father told me on the telephone that he had started walking for health. I was about to let him know how pleased I was he was taking care of himself in this way when he noted that he takes the route that goes past the high school near his home so he can see the cheerleaders.

“Dad,” I said, enraged. “Those are children.”

“I’m just looking.”

“That’s disgusting,” I said.

“For God’s sake,” he said, exasperated. “You’re always so sensitive about these things.”

I am. He’s right. Because for all the times I’ve tried to explain how his behavior has affected me, he doesn’t quite get it. His enjoyment of watching young, nubile bodies dance around in short skirts is just as culturally cued as my belief that I’m made worthwhile through my sex appeal. But, I still wish he would not share such thoughts with his daughter. Perhaps had he worked to be more conscious of his own indoctrination, I could have done that work on myself too.

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How Women Made Porn Fashionable

How women made porn fashionable
By
Published September 15, 2012
FoxNews.com

Porn is becoming a new ideal and value for young girls. And women are  responsible.

Women are consuming and endorsing porn such as ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ — a  book recognized as ‘mommy porn.’ Poorly written, it is not a how-to-manual and  it’s not poetic erotica.

Pulp/romance novels transformed into a new genre  embracing porn as literature – explicitly sexual scenes featuring  bondage/discipline, dominance/submission and sadism/masochism.

More than  20 million copies have sold in the US (40 million worldwide), and it is yet  another example of the way porn is becoming more than socially acceptable  amongst women. Moreover, it is becoming an aspirational target for women.

Women and the media have linked consuming porn or behaving like a  porn actress with instant money, fame, power, glamour, prestige, respectability  and social acceptability. In other words, if you become a porn actress or behave  like one, you will triumph with all of these things.

Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian became famous and rich for making a sex tape,  and they spun off empires of TV shows, fashion lines, perfumes and paid  appearances. The message is: one leads to the other. But it is women who made  Kardashian famous. And it is women who have become the fans and consumers of  everything Kardashian and books such as Fifty Shades of Grey.

Using sex  for money and fame, women have found a new way to feel powerful and secure  without a man or even necessarily a family – Octomom has openly become a porn  actress and stripper.

Mothers, too, are now sexualizing their daughters  and dressing them up as sexual candy for the world. Lindsay Jackson dressed her  5-year-old, Madisyn ‘Maddy’ Verst, in a sexy police uniform and a Dolly Parton  outfit complete with padded breasts and padded backside for a TV reality show.   And Jessica Simpson dressed her 4-month-old girl in bikinis.

Porn  could never have become mainstream and socially acceptable without the support  and endorsement by women. In human behavior, we call this ‘the law of frequency’ — the more often two things are linked, the more powerful that association  becomes until they become inseparable. And women and the media have linked  consuming porn or behaving like a porn actress with instant money, fame, power,  glamour, prestige, respectability and social acceptability. In other words, if  you become a porn actress or behave like one, you will triumph with all of these  things.

Accordingly, girls are more fascinated and driven by the desire  to become famous than they are to become an engineer, doctor or scientist: Kim  Kardashian has 14 million followers on Twitter.Thus, women are creating new  values and morality promoting money, power and glamour as more important than  intelligence, achievement, motherhood or contribution. Studies reveal that  female college students are more narcissistic than males. And teenage girls are  now also becoming fans of porn actors such as 26-year-old James Deen.

The paradox is that women are becoming more educated than men as women  surpass men in attendance and graduation rates – for every two men who get a  college degree, three women will do also. But, women are failing to realize the  dangers of falling for porn or promoting porn as the new fashionable profession  and path to fame, riches and glory. This is the antithesis of female empowerment  as MTV, Kim Kardashian and Octomom are teaching young girls to gain power over  men by using sex.

Women have now created false empty idols and have lost their real sense of  self-worth, value and significance, replacing it with fleeting pseudo-power and  artificial values and relationships, leaving them feeling unfulfilled and  unsatisfied.

I appeal to women to beware of being deceived and betrayed  into the world of porn and sexual objectification the same way that women were  tricked into smoking cigarettes in the 1920s.

In April 1929, a PR expert,  Edward Bernays, working for a US tobacco company, hired young models to march in  the New York City parade and alerted the press that they were fighting for  women’s rights by lighting “Torches of Freedom” as they lit up and smoked  cigarettes. The media publicized the event and it helped to break the taboo  against women smoking in public. In the same way, women today are using porn as  a misguided attempt to gain power and freedom, and to become more powerful and  independent. And they are only betraying and fooling themselves.

Pornography is much more than a moral or social issue.

Renowned  physicist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst Dr. Jeffrey Satinover says porn is “a  form of heroin, hundred times more powerful than before.” Forensic psychologist,  M. Douglas Reed and renowned pharmacologist Candace Pert reveal that pornography  is like a drug that triggers the brain to release a psychopharmacological flood  of “epinephrine, testosterone, endorphins (endogenous morphine), oxytocin,  dopamine, serotonin, and phenyethylamine,” which can lead to addiction and  various other behavioral disorders.

Gal Dines, professor of  sociology and women’s studies and chair of the American Studies Department at  Wheelock College in Boston, has written about and researched the porn industry  for over two decades. Professor Dines, author of “Pornland: How Porn Has  Hijacked Our Sexuality,” believes porn is a public health issue with documented  negative effects on young people, distorting “the way women and girls think  about their bodies, their sexuality and their relationships.”

Pornography  is equally damaging to adult relationships and social bonds – men are struggling  to develop close, intimate relationships with real women with some men now  preferring porn to sex with an actual human being.

Bottom line: porn does  not promote love or sex but rather cruelty and hatred to women, and so, while  women continue to endorse and make porn fashionable or a new ideal, they are  foolishly robbing themselves and undermining all of the positive strides and  triumphs they have made in their quest for equality.

Patrick Wanis, PhD, human behavior and relationship expert. For more  visit: www.patrickwanis.com. Follow  him on Twitter@behavior_expert.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/15/how-women-made-porn-fashionable/#ixzz26jUScXRd

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Porn; The Sexification Of Young Women

Porn; The Sexification Of Young Women

Posted on September 16, 2012 by
Porn; The Sexification Of Young Women.

As a man gets older, he will engage in porn featuring younger and younger women. Many will cross the line in child pornography. The numbers are increasing of child porn sites.

Child porn is interconnected with child kidnapping and children human trafficking.

The last statistic that I was aware of was that there are over 100,000 child porn websites, and growing.

We know that in the United States, this is illegal and anyone engaging in any form of child porn is subject to the scrutiny of law enforcement. There are sophisticated ways that males will watch and download child porn which is highly disgusting and destroys a child for life.

But that is another subject.

In this article, you will note a couple of things.

One, women exercise power over men with their flesh and femininity.

And they know it.

Proverbs 6:23-25 says….

“For the commandment is a lamp, and the law a light; reproofs of instruction are the way of life, to keep you from the evil woman, from the flattering tongue of a seductress. Do not lust after her beauty in your heart, nor let her allure you with her eyelids.”

This is talking about women that sexified their looks to attract a weak willed, undisciplined male.

The prostitute and the sexual immoral women wait for the simple or gullible males that have no control over their sex lives. Married men that experience marital problems and search for a body to have sex with will throw aside all discipline just to have an orgasm.

Two, mothers that dress their young 5 year olds are “sexying up” their child and it is not the kind of thing mothers should be doing with their child. Mothers are also engaging in sexual immorality and this is just another form of teaching and training their child to view sex as a means of employment and feminine power over men.

Additionally, we see that mothers are also selling their daughters for a variety of means, which at the top of the list is for money.

Whether it is for the drug habit, to pay bills, it really doesn’t matter. It is the job of the mother to protect her child. Not sell her child.

This is nothing new because many women get their way through college, get promotions, and live lavish lifestyles as a high priced escort, street prostitution, and strip joints all across America. They also do work at truck stops along the interstate highways.

No different than the old testament forms of idolatry where sex was a part of the hedonistic idolatry ritual of their times.

Nothing new that it is happening in the church where the sexual immoral women come to church to seduce undisciplined males, both single and married. The continuing drama of sexual immorality in the church is raging and many pastors are not taking control of their sex lives.

In this article, from the media is a very powerful and compelling story of females entering the dangerous house of porn. There are many young females that are giving themselves over to this sinful industry. In some cases, because the economic conditions of our times is squeezing many females towards giving up their bodies to uncaring, violent men, little do they know about what awaits them.

Drugs, alcohol, STDs including HIV/AIDS, rape, 16 hour shoots with different men with well below minimum wage pay. Having watched my share of sexual slavery, males that perform are vicious. The sex industry lets the females be the star of the show. On the side lines are other males waiting to get at the star. It is no more than gang rape.

Mothers, do you really want your daughter to be a part of this ungodly industry?

After you read this article, it’s the same in the church and in the world in dealing with porn.

Masturbation is the only reason why a male or female watch porn.

Porn is just another place where, in private, a person gets off without being involved in a relationship. This is another form of fantasy sex that the devil has billions of people in bondage.

In a 24 hour period, 2.1 billion, to be exact, will download Internet porn.

Wives?

Can you trust your husband to tell you the truth? If you can’t find out why there is a disconnect. Why he is distant from you. When he doesn’t talk to you but could talk to everyone else. Wives, if he hasn’t touched you in weeks or months. Has a lot of FB female friends. And never gives you the time of day.

Porn is where he is. Masturbation is where he is. An adulterous affair is where he is.

If you are sexually addicted, just go back to my home page to find out how to break free, in Jesus’ name. It’s time for you to get right with God first, and then get right in your relationship with your wife.

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Taboo Topics: Pornography and Masturbation

Taboo Topics: Pornography and Masturbation
Originally Posted: http://brettfish.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/taboo-topics-pornography-and-masturbation-intro/

the next topic that i will be dealing with [and starting with my own story] is that of PORNOGRAPHY and MASTURBATION which are often closely linked together.

the idea of Taboo Topics is to take a topic that is very real [and often raw and painful, perhaps embarrassing or just difficult to speak about] but which no one, for various reasons, is speaking a lot about and to invite people who have had experience in that area to share their stories and perhaps offer some encouragement or advice to others who have experienced or are currently dealing with the same thing.

a lot of people suffer or struggle in silence and because no-one is speaking/writing about these things it can feel like you are along in it and are the only one and that no-one else can even begin to understand or appreciate what you are going through. and while each situation is different i think that often someone who has gone through the same type of situation is a lot more able to speak life, truth and encouragement or else able to simply cry/scream/wail in a language you completely understand.

so these are real stories of real people and for the most part people who have been brave enough to share their names and contact details [or are largely open to you being linked to them via me]

PORNOGRAPHY and MASTURBATION is a tricky one. as the saying goes, 92% of guys admit to masturbating, and the other 8% are lying. both masturbation and pornography have been seen as guy issues, often making women feel extremely alienated or like freaks if they are caught up in it, it almost being okay if a guy struggles with it cos that is expected, but surely no women do. i hope we will have some stories here in time that will show differently. the idea of Taboo Topics is not to definitively answer some of the issues we are facing – different people have had different journeys with different issues and so some peoples stories might be wildly different while some may even contradict in their advice or suggestion given. the idea is largely to share that you are not alone in your struggle – someone else has gone through this and a whole bunch of people have discovered freedom and forgiveness and rediscovered or are rediscovering sexual purity. another element with this particular one is that society and the church may have different viewpoints on this – it is important i think to remember that we live in a sex-saturated society that visually/orally/socially puts huge focus and emphasis on sex as the be all and end all and so what is considered ‘normal’ and ‘necessary’ comes with that starting point in mind. my hope is that whatever advice/suggestion/viewpoint people share you will test against scripture and trust that the Holy Spirit will guide you to all Truth and wholeness.

but the biggest thing to know is there is nothing that you have done that will make God love you any less [just as there is nothing you can do that can make Him love you any more] – there is freedom in Jesus and hopefully these stories will help some of you on your journey to get there:

to read about my story [brett “Fish” anderson] click here

to read the story of Catherine Rogers, click here

to read the story of Jaco Hall, click here

to read the story of Steve Heineman click here