CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

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Current List of In-Person Castimonia Meetings 06-15-2020

As you all know, the Corona virus has limited the way we engage in our recovery and we have had to move our meetings to Zoom.

However, as churches open back up, we would like to post a list of meetings that are currently meeting face-to-face for those that would like to attend an in-person meeting.

If you do not feel safe attending an in-person meeting or you feel ill or have a temperature, we encourage you to attend one of our Zoom meetings which will remain operational for the foreseeable future. You can inquire about the Zoom meeting links by sending an e-mail to info@castimonia.org.

Below is a list of in-person Castimonia meetings as of June 15th.

Saturday Morning, 9am, Fellowship Bible Church, Searcy, AR
Saturday Morning, 10am, The Fellowship, Katy, TX
Monday Evening, 7pm, The Fellowship, Katy, TX
Tuesday Evening, 6pm (cst), The Bridge Wesleyan Church, Big Flats, NY
Tuesday Evening, 7pm, Vineyard Church, Sugar Land, TX
Wednesday Evening, 6pm, Kirby- River Oaks Tower, Houston, TX
Thursday Evening, 6pm (cst), Victory Highway Wesleyan Church, Painted Post, NY
Thursday Evening, 7pm, St. Andrews, Pearland, TX

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Tips For Making A Successful Transition To Sober Life

Originally posted at: https://transcendtexas.com/tips-successful-transition-sober-life/

Becoming sober can be like an experience of being reborn. Your brain and body need to relearn how to operate without the influence of the substances. You will need to learn new ways of seeing the world; new ways of communicating with others; and new ways of handling emotions. You will need to retrain your behaviors, so that your former, more primitive, instincts are not driving your addictive actions.

The biggest difference between this type of development, and the comparison to being born, is that the person in recovery is responsible for his or her own self. While it is extremely useful to have others around to coach and assist during the early stages, the recovering adult is the one calling all of the shots.

For recovery to begin, there are two important factors at play. You have to really want it, and you have to be able to envision that there is a viable way out of the addiction. The first aspect is something highly personal to the person who is seeking recovery. The following tips are designed to assist with the second aspect.

Have a Plan

You may have heard the quote, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” These words ring true for most aspects of life, and recovery is no exception. While the initial desire to cease with substance abuse is the spark of life needed for making a change, it isn’t enough to sustain a person for the long term. Long term success requires looking ahead, and marking out specific goals and milestones for your recovery. It involves knowing where you are, and knowing where you want to go. It involves plotting out the road trip for how to arrive at your eventual destination of full recovery.

If you are part of a sobriety team, these professionals can help you to outline your plan. Otherwise, your map of success will need to include a basic structure of your daily activities; a system of how you will spend your newly gained, sober, energy; and how you will address the underlying issues which prompted you toward the addiction, in the first place. You will need to discern potential triggers and pitfalls, and devise preemptive strategies for how to avoid temptations to go back to the substance abuse.

Concentrate on Small Steps

While keeping the long term goals of your sobriety in mind is vital for sustaining the initiative, it is also important that you take the time to appreciate the smaller goals which are reached. Reaching these smaller milestones will provide you with a sense of accomplishment, which will, in turn, embolden you toward reaching the next. Past success is the best predictor of future success, and the small steps made in the beginning of recovery will form the basis of your new past.

Depending on the extremity of your addiction, these baby steps can be as simple as making it through a day without using. They can consist of sitting down to make a list of action steps, or writing a letter to loved ones. They can consist of scheduling an appointment with a therapist, and then attending it. Whatever your daily plan consists of, count each day that you are sober as a success. Remember the ancient proverb which explains that, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Take the time to pat yourself on the back for each of these steps which are made.

Build Healthy Relationships

Humans need other humans. Whether we are social butterflies, or prefer to spend more of our time alone, having a few people whom we know we can depend on is vital for success. While in addiction, the social circle we surround ourselves with is most often not comprised of those who are desiring our best outcomes. Like tends to attract like,  and our new self of sobriety often calls for a new set of relationships.

There is an old adage which admonishes that, “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” While therapists and substance abuse disorder specialists might become your initial support group, it is important to focus on the eventual obtainment of more natural friendships. Work on becoming the type of person whom you would want to be friends with, yourself, and then seek those same traits out in others. Your own positive vibes, as you progress in your new life of sobriety, will likewise attract them to you.

Focus on Self-Care

As much as your family and loved ones may have insisted that you needed to get sober, this journey is really all about you. We aren’t able to truly find happiness until we learn to properly love ourselves, and finding happiness is a key to sustaining recovery. When happiness fills our hearts, the temptation to use substances becomes much less powerful.

Initially, implementing self care practices can seem foreign. It can even seem a little selfish. Proper self care involves defining boundaries, and learning to say no to some of the requests of others. In order to sustain the energy you need to apply toward retraining your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, you will need to learn to keep enough back for yourself.

In addition to not giving too much of your energy out, you will also need to learn ways to refill your tank. In addiction, the substance is used as a substitute for genuine peace of mind and emotion. In sobriety, you will need to become more creative in your approach toward obtaining the same – or better – levels of contentment. Identify what activities provide you with the biggest boost of natural high, and be purposeful toward including those activities in your daily or weekly schedule. Treat your self-care time as a requirement, and don’t allow it to be sacrificed in the name of things which are declared as being more important. Most obligations can afford to wait while you tend to your own self-care needs, and you will be better equipped to face your challenges, because of it.

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Castimonia Purity Podcast Episode 83: Loneliness, Fishing Lures, and Animal Skins

Doug talks through some analogies that help his recovery as he looks for ways that Satan is trying to trap him.  He discusses how loneliness can be a driver towards addiction, so we need to find ways to be aware.  We can use self-care techniques and other connection elements to battle and beat loneliness 

Remember that you are not alone on this road of recovery…..for more information please email us at puritypodcast@castimonia.org.   

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Men’s porn habits could fuel partners’ eating disorders, study suggests

A woman whose boyfriend or husband regularly watches pornography is more likely to report symptoms of an eating disorder, new research suggests.

The study is one of the first to look at how a romantic partner’s behavior might be linked to the likelihood of a woman experiencing or engaging in such things as extreme guilt about eating, preoccupation with body fat, binging or purging.

In addition to finding an association between a partner’s porn habits and eating disorder symptoms, the research also found a higher incidence of those symptoms in women who said they feel pressure from their boyfriends or husbands to be thin.

The study, led by researchers at The Ohio State University, appears in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

“We often talk about the influences of media, family and friends on eating disorders, but little has been done to determine how a partner’s influence might contribute to a woman’s disordered eating,” said Tracy Tylka, a professor of psychology at Ohio State’s Columbus and Marion campuses. “It’s a gap in the research and if certain partner variables are risk factors we should be giving them more attention.”

The study is also the first research of its kind to address these partner influences in women who are older and more likely to be in long-term relationships.

“The women who were part of this study had an average age of almost 34, and were from a broader demographic than the stereotypical white adolescent girl with anorexia,” Tylka said.

“Disordered eating affects many people who do not fit this description – as many as 20 to 25 percent of women – and this study helps us better understand the influences on these women.”

The participants, 409 U.S. women in relationships with men, answered a questionnaire designed to identify symptoms of eating disorders and answered questions about perceived pressure from the media and others (partners, friends and family) in their lives to lose weight and have a thin body. They also reported how many hours of pornography their current partner viewed per week, ranging from none to more than eight hours, and estimated how often their previous partners had viewed pornography on a scale ranging from never to almost always.

The researchers then analyzed the relationships between those responses and found a clear association between eating disorder symptoms and both perceived partner pressure to be thin and pornography use.

“In many categories of eating disorder symptoms, perceived pressure from a romantic partner to be thin appeared to be more detrimental than pressure from friends or family, or even the media,” Tylka said.

And both partner pornography viewing and pressure to be thin appeared to be associated with a woman’s disordered eating behavior even if she didn’t idealize thinness, according to the study.

That’s important to note, Tylka said, because women may be responding solely to what they think their partner values, even if they don’t value that “thin body ideal” for themselves.

Tylka said she was interested in the potential relationship between partner pornography use and eating disorders because it could prompt women to feel pressured to aspire to unrealistic body types, or to “feel sexless because their partners are spending time with porn instead of connecting with them.”

“The relationship between partner pornography use and disordered eating was stronger for this group of women than for college women we’ve previously studied. That could be because these women have had more relationship experiences, and these experiences have shaped their relationships with food and their perceptions of their bodies,” Tylka said.

The study did not examine potential differences between women who watch pornography with their partners and those whose partners view pornography alone.

Tylka said further study is warranted in the area of partner influences on disordered eating among older women. Understanding these factors could help improve eating disorder prevention and treatment, she said.

“Some professionals are already advocating for integrating partners in eating disorder prevention and treatment, and these findings support this argument.”

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Viewing pornography increase unethical behavior at work

New research discovers employees who view pornography aren’t just costing companies millions of dollars in wasted time, they’re causing harm to the company.

A study published in the Journal of Business Ethics finds that viewing pornography at work increases unethical behavior. Given unethical employee behavior is linked to a number of negative organizational outcomes — like fraud and collusion — employee pornography consumption is putting organizations at risk.

“Pornography is often framed as an issue affecting only individuals and relationships outside of a business context,” said study co-author Melissa Lewis-Western, a Brigham Young University professor of accountancy.

“But businesses are made up of people, and people make decisions, and businesses function off the decisions people make. If you have a societal phenomenon that a lot of people are participating in and it negatively impacts individuals’ decisions, that has the potential to impact organizational-level outcomes.”

The study included an experiment with 200 participants and a nationally-representative survey of 1,000 other individuals. In the experiment, one group was tasked with recalling and recording their last experience viewing pornography. The researchers chose not to expose participants directly to pornography due to ethical concerns and concerns of selection and demand effects.

Meanwhile, members of the control group were asked to recall and record their most recent experience exercising. Both groups were then employed to watch the entirety of a boring 10-minute video consisting of a blue background with a monotone voice speaking with subtitles.

Researchers found 21 percent of those who had recalled their last experience viewing porn did not finish viewing the video, but lied about it. Only 8 percent of those in the control group did not finish the video and lied about it. This represented a statistically significant 163 percent increase in shirking work and lying for those who view pornography. Similar evidence was obtained from the survey.

The experiment also found that the rise in unethical behavior is caused by an increased propensity to dehumanize others; pornography consumption increases the viewer’s propensity to view others as objects or less than human.

Authors, which include BYU accounting professor David Wood and former BYU graduate student Nathan Mecham, say because porn consumption causes dehumanization, the incidence of sexual harassment or hostile work environments is likely to increase with increases in employee pornography consumption. “Organizations should be mindful of those risks,” said Mecham, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Pittsburgh.

“If you have a larger portion of your employees that are consuming pornography at work, it’s likely changing their behaviors and those changes are likely negative,” Lewis-Western said.

“Regardless of your stance on pornography, most people want to be good employees, they want to be fair to men and women and they don’t want to be unethical. That’s where we need to start the conversation. We need to refrain from viewing pornography to create work environments that are inclusive to all.”

The researchers suggest companies take steps to reduce pornography consumption at the office, including:

  • Preventative controls such as internet filters and blocking devices
  • Policies that prohibit porn consumption at work, with penalties
  • Hiring employees who are less likely to view pornography than others

“Almost everyone cares about the #MeToo movement and women, but if you care about that, then you have to care about this issue too,” Lewis-Western said. “If your manager is regularly watching pornography at work, then our research suggests that the way you are treated is going to be different in negative ways.”