CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

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Somebody Hurt Me – VIDEO

Great sermon from this past Sunday on forgiving those that have hurt us.  Coming from a man that was sexually abused as a child, I have come to understand quite a bit about forgiving those that hurt me.  Nevertheless, this can be applied to various aspects of life to anyone who has been hurt by someone else. If you have been hurt by someone (a loved one, a friend, a co-worker) I urge you to watch this sermon.

1. Forgiveness is the key to healing my hurts.

2. Forgiveness does not mean their actions were “OK” or that I forget what she did. 

3. Forgiveness is a process, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.

4. Hating the person that hurt me keeps my hurt alive!

– Hate is a parasite that hurts us, not the person we hate.

5. Forgiving the person allows my life to move forward!

6. Not forgiving others keeps us locked away in a prison, where we hold the key.

7. Forgiveness is for me, not for the person who hurt me.

 

 

Click on this link to view more messages in the Transformed Series:

http://www.thefellowship.org/series/transformed/

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Men and Women

Male attachment needs are somewhat different from women’s. Men generally do not need verbal communication about feelings or “talks” about the relationship. Nor do they need direct, verbal validation of their feelings or needs. Men have a natural, biological proclivity toward interaction with the environment, more so than the verbally based interactions that women desire. They do need to know they are appreciated, respected and loved. And men are often quite satisfied by having these needs met with direct, physically nurturing behaviors by women. Many adult men feel a basic sense of security and even love simply by the very presence of the significant women in their lives. Men also experience sexual connection as a form of nurturance, acceptance, love, and even emotional security. Sex for men is a primary attachment need – compared to women, who need verbal communication and validation. Men also tend to have fewer friends than women, and when they do, they tend to focus on activities rather than verbal interactions (watching sports, hunting and fishing are examples). Recent findings from modern neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology show there are unique aspects of the male brain (also endocrine and other systems) – quite different from female brains. This includes analytical brain structures (not emotional) designed to solve problems. Men have an inborn, biologically based competitive instinct. They also have an area of the brain designed for sexual pursuit that is more than 2 times larger than females (Brizendine, 2010). The brain circuits for fear, aggression and defense are far more prominent in men than in women. In comparison, women have more prominent mirror neuron systems for emotional empathy. There are no male-specific diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The most common diagnoses for men are addictions, personality disorders such as narcissism, avoidant, and anti-social personality disorders, intermittent explosive disorder, conduct disorder, and ADHD. Depression, however, is very common in men. Men also experience complicating medical issues such as stress-related heart and digestive disorders, and they may also present with a variety of sexual disorders. Other medical concerns may result from drug and alcohol addiction.

“I would suggest that just as women who make it in the world of business need male business mentors, perhaps men who make it in the world of emotions will need female emotional mentors.” – Warren Farrell

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Castimonia Tuesday Night Meeting Topic: When does “looking” become “lusting”?

Originally posted at:
http://sexual-sanity.com/2012/08/when-does-looking-become-lusting/

When does a look become lust? Where is line that separates normal, healthy, God-given sexual response from sinful, destructive lust?

Christians generally focus on Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5:27-28 as the standard for moral purity: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” So if this is our goal, we need to be clear about what it actually means to “look at a person lustfully.”

Let’s say you go to a restaurant. You look over to your left, and notice someone at the next table who is very attractive. Maybe they are dressed provocatively. You look at them, and their attractiveness registers in your mind. You might even notice something about their body that is attractive or alluring.

Is that lust? When does awareness and/or sexual attraction cross the line into lust?

Christians have been wrestling with this question for generations. Many wise people have written and taught about this. Let me suggest three words that are helpful in drawing the line between looking and lusting:

1. Looking becomes lusting when we stare

Intuitively we all know that there is some difference between looking at someone and staring at them. It’s one thing look at, or notice someone, it’s another to intensely watch them, to “visually feast on them.”

This is where the much maligned and often misunderstood “two-second rule” applies. The two-second rule suggests that looking at someone for a short amount of time is normal and socially acceptable. But looking at someone for more than two seconds constitutes staring and generally signifies crossing the line into lust.

While trying to legalistically apply this “rule” doesn’t work very well, understanding the principle behind it can be helpful.

Neuroscientists tell us that if we look at something intently for an extended period of time, that image gets burned into our brain, and we can recall the image later. We encounter millions of images and sensory impressions as we go through each day. Most of these we either ignore or pay such scant attention to that we can’t recall them later. They move in and out of our consciousness and aren’t retained.

But some of these images and sensory impressions make a deeper impression. They are retained if we pay focused attention to them … if we “take a mental picture.” That’s what happens if we stare at someone.

Let’s go back to the restaurant example. So you see someone who is attractive and/or dressed in such a way that catches your attention and possibly even creates a minor sexual response. But then, instead of fixating on that, you turn your attention elsewhere. You get involved in a conversation with your companion(s), and other thoughts, sights, and sounds take up our attention. It doesn’t take long for that earlier stimulus to fade, as your consciousness is filled with other thoughts and other stimuli.

But if you were staring, you were burning that image into your memory. Later that day, if you sat down and closed your eyes, you could probably call to mind that person, or that image.

2. Looking becomes lusting when we fantasize

Sometimes we do this while we stare: we build a fantasy in our minds about the person we are starting at. We imagine talking to this person, starting a relationship with this person, or doing something sexual with this person. In the later instance, way we are literally “committing adultery in our minds” as Jesus talks about in Matthew 5:28.

When we start to obsess about the person, when we spin stories or scenarios in our minds about them, then we have crossed the line into lust.

3. Looking becomes lusting when we objectify

To objectify someone is to cease to view them as a person, and instead view them as an object. We do this when we focus on a person’s body – or body parts – instead of focusing on them as a person. Then we move from relating to them as a human being to thinking about them, looking at them, maybe even evaluating them in the same detached, objectifying way we might look at a pornographic picture.

Habitual pornography users can struggle to build healthy relationships with members of the opposite sex because of this tendency. Viewing pornography trains you to objectify people, focusing on their body and sexuality. Sexual thoughts can intrude in your consciousness as you are trying to relate on a social level with someone.

You can probably see that these three words — staring, fantasizing, and objectifying — are related, and they often go together in practice. If you’re staring at someone, you might also be fantasizing about them. If you are fantasizing about someone, you might also be undressing them in your mind … objectifying them.

Obviously things like pornography, sexual chat, and erotic stories all fit into this category of lusting. They don’t satisfy our sexual desire, they feed it and create desire for more. They don’t build intimacy. They don’t bring people together. They alienate people, because they train people to objectify and fantasize, rather than to love, serve, and relate.

Our goal is to treat other people with love and with dignity as persons. When we view people primarily as objects for our viewing and critique, or view them primarily from the standpoint of potential sexual partners, we are severely limiting the ways in which we can connect on a human, non-sexual level.

 

 

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EPA: Prolific Porn Watcher Still on Payroll

From Greenwire
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
http://www.eenews.net/

Robin Bravender, E&E reporter

Months after getting caught in the act of watching pornography at the office, a highly paid U.S. EPA employee has been banned from the building, but he’s still on the payroll.

The offending staffer’s habits came to light during a spectacle of a House hearing in May. Aghast lawmakers took turns jabbing EPA for failing to fire the staffer, who confessed to having watched pornography on his work computer for between two and six hours per day since 2010.

“How much pornography would it take for an EPA employee to lose their job?” asked incredulous Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

“Fire him. Fire him,” demanded Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).

The fact that EPA’s prolific porn watcher is still employed more than four months later has prompted even more outrage from Capitol Hill.

“If this is not a case for the EPA to take someone off the payroll, which the agency’s Inspector General uncovered months ago, then what is?” Issa said today in a statement. “It is simply unacceptable that this individual would continue to receive compensation courtesy of the American taxpayer. The EPA clearly needs to get its house in order, and it is astonishing that such egregious abuses remain unresolved.”

Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) promised congressional action.

“Paying to keep a confirmed porn watcher at government expense demonstrates the need for dramatic reform and the need to suspend federal employee compensation after they have been caught in the act,” Mica said today in a statement. “It may be too late in this Congress to further pursue this reform but I will make every effort to see how we can address this matter.”

The staffer is on administrative leave but still receiving his salary, according to EPA spokeswoman Liz Purchia. “This employee continues to be investigated by the [Office of the Inspector General] and U.S. Attorney’s Office, and we are working with these offices to obtain information necessary to move forward with administrative action,” she said.

EPA would not offer more updates about the employee’s status, and Jeff Lagda, a spokesman for the EPA inspector general’s office, said he couldn’t share any more specifics while the investigation is ongoing. The employee’s name has been withheld by EPA and investigators.

Investigators confirmed the staffer’s porn viewing when an OIG special agent arrived at his workspace to conduct an interview. The agent “witnessed the employee actively viewing pornography on his government-issued computer,” Allan Williams, deputy assistant EPA inspector general, told lawmakers at the May hearing (Greenwire, May 7).

The employee confessed to spending hours each day watching porn at work, and the OIG found that he had downloaded and viewed more than 7,000 pornographic files while on the job, Williams said, noting then that the Justice Department had accepted the case for prosecution.

Issa shared some additional details about the staffer’s habits, including the fact that he had spent four consecutive hours on a site called “Sadism is Beautiful.” Committee staff also noted that the employee was a highly paid GS-14 staffer who had received performance awards during the time period he had been watching pornography at work.

Employees working in Washington, D.C., at the General Schedule 14 pay scale earn between $106,000 and $139,000 per year in fiscal 2014, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

‘It’s not easy to fire somebody’

When lawmakers grilled EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy on the porn watcher at a separate hearing in June, she said she shared their frustrations that problem employees couldn’t be fired more quickly. “Any way that we can make these processes move more quickly, I’m all for it,” she said (E&ENews PM, June 25).

“I actually have to work through the administrative process, as you know, and there is still an ongoing OIG criminal investigation, is my understanding,” she told lawmakers. “We have actually banned him from the building. He no longer has access to any EPA equipment” and was already on administrative leave at the time, she said.

The slow pace of dealing with the employee isn’t too far out of the ordinary, said Earl Devaney, the now-retired economic stimulus watchdog who spent decades in top government oversight posts.

If DOJ has accepted the case for prosecution, he said, “EPA is totally handcuffed” from taking administrative actions in the meantime, as prosecutors are likely involved in negotiations with the suspect to plead to a crime or are pursuing an indictment. “If they are going to prosecute, they don’t want that administrative action having been taken because let’s say they go to a jury and the jury hears that he’s already lost his job, they start feeling sorry for him,” Devaney added.

“The fact that they’ve accepted it as a crime suggests to me that it’s something more than just watching, let’s call it regular porn,” he said, suggesting that something more serious might be involved. Devaney noted that he wasn’t familiar with the specific circumstances of this case.

However, because the employee had confessed to watching an average of several hours of pornography at work per day, “that could be enough to say, ‘Let’s send a signal here, and on a technicality we’ll charge him with a crime.’ Theft of government services comes to mind, because he’s abusing taxpayers’ monies; obviously, they didn’t pay him to watch porn,” Devaney added.

Not many people get fired from EPA in any given year based on performance issues. In the agency of roughly 16,000 staffers, only five have been terminated due to discipline or performance issues so far in fiscal 2014, according to a database kept by OPM. Ten were fired for performance or discipline in fiscal 2013; 24 were terminated the previous year.

Those numbers appear “about normal if you go across government,” Devaney said. “There are so many hoops that you have to jump through, so many appeal rights that a suspect has that they can literally tie up a general counsel’s office for weeks and months.

“It’s not easy to fire somebody.”

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Understanding Childhood Trauma Exhibited in Adulthood – VIDEO

Once again, continuing the theme of “300: Rise of an Empire” I found a third subtheme in this movie.  Although not really impressed with the movie as a whole and how Hollywood has distorted history and also added a completely fabricated and unnecessary sexual scene to this movie, I thought it had some deeper recovery-related gems.  For those that don’t know much about this movie (and I don’t expect those early in their recovery to watch the entire movie) here is a summary from Wikipedia:

Based on Frank Miller’s latest graphic novel Xerxes, and told in the breathtaking visual style of the blockbuster “300,” this new chapter of the epic saga takes the action to a fresh battlefield-on the sea-as Greek general Themistocles attempts to unite all of Greece by leading the charge that will change the course of the war. This film pits Themistocles against the massive invading Persian forces led by mortal-turned-god Xerxes, and Artemisia, vengeful commander of the Persian navy.

Nevertheless, in watching this movie, I did pick up on  the recovery-related themes.  Maybe it was me trying to find some sort of redemptive quality in a poorly made movie, or maybe it was the Holy Spirit saying to me, “use this material, men will ‘listen’ when you speak to them through these films.”  I don’t know which one it was, but I’m hoping it was the latter.  The third subtheme I saw in this movie is that of a violent and vicious female naval commander, Artemisia, who shows no mercy and destroys her enemies.  What we see in 300: Rise of an Empire, is a discussion that takes place between Themistocles and his generals discussing Artemisia and her childhood.  Here we see a child who was severely traumatized, through no fault of her own, and who grows up to be, to put it bluntly, a psychopathic killer.  This movie does a good job establishing the connection between childhood trauma and the acting out of that trauma in adulthood.  There are many in recovery who experienced a tremendous amount of childhood trauma, even to the extent of what is shown in the film, who have medicated the trauma by acting out in a variety of ways. Understanding this childhood trauma and how it affects those around us is important because we begin to feel empathy for the individual and not hold on to our resentments against them.  Trauma does not excuse the acting out, it only allows us to understand why the individual is choosing to act out in a very destructive ways; ways that show a need for safety and self-preservation.  I hope you enjoy watching this film as much as I enjoyed making it.  It’s amazing how many recovery themes one can find in the average Hollywood movie.  I encourage you to look deeper in to the media you watch and see what the Holy Spirit is telling you about that media.

Disclaimer: Although tempted to watch the original movie from where this clip was taken, a person new to recovery should consult their therapist, sponsor, and/or accountability partner on whether to watch this film.  It has a sex scene with some partial nudity that could sexually trigger the individual. Also, the excessive violence (some of which I removed from this clip) can be harmful to your recovery if you are like I was early on; prone to medicate the viewing of violence and associated guilt.
As always, take what you like and leave the rest.
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