CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

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Castimonia Purity Podcasts

I am humbled to announce that we have begun recording our first set of “Castimonia Purity Podcasts.”

The Castimonia Purity Podcast was created as a tool and a resource for those seeking sexual purity.   Interviews, tools, testimonies, and hope will be shared for all to gain a better understanding of our true potential in Christ.

The episodes are designed to provide heavy information in an approachable avenue.

There is freedom from sexual impurity, and we can all grow stronger through our brokenness.  There is no condemnation for those in Jesus, and there is real hope for those seeking to be free.

Let us know of if you need help or know of great topics for future podcasts.

Puritypodcast@castimonia.org

The first two podcasts are below.  I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as we enjoyed making them.  Future podcasts will be posted about once a week.

Select the Podcast you would like to listen to from the drop down menu under the “Resources” tab at the top of this page.

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Take Owernship of Buttons

by applyingmybeliefs

Working in recovery ministry I get to hear many statements that while they seem to be about others, are actually about the person who speaks them.  Some of the interesting ones relate to getting provoked by others.  Here are some typical examples:

  • She pushes my buttons.
  • I broke it because he upset me.
  • I hit her; she deserved it for not having my dinner ready.
  • She dresses like a slut, so I treated her like one.
  • He made me so angry.
  • I whipped my son for lying to me.

These and the many more that I’m sure a reader can come up with are all about blaming others for our actions.  It happens when our buttons are pushed.  This is the general sequence of events that occur when a button is pushed:

  • We develop in life creating a past.
  • Certain things from the past bother us.
  • Because of these “certain things” we develop one or more emotional buttons.
  • When our button or buttons get pushed we internally respond in an affective (emotional) way.
  • We react toward the person (and sometimes others) whose actions have stimulated our internal response.
  • Our reactions are always internal, and sometimes we add external reactions on top of our internal reactions.
  • We blame them for our actions.

This may seem a little simplistic, but it does capture the essence of what happens in the life of a button owner.

For most of us this responding to a button pushing event is an automatic psychological process; but it doesn’t have to be.

So often our reactions to having our buttons being pushed end up with negative results.  Here are some everyday examples:

  • Getting cut off on the freeway.
  • Our spouse cuts us down with a critical remark.
  • The boss comes in and yells at us for something we didn’t do.

Wouldn’t life be a little better if we didn’t react to a button pushing but instead were able to move right along and deal with the situation in an adult, meaning emotionally mature, way?  If you don’t know the answer to that, yes it would, and not just for us, but also for every person around us.  (There is one possible exception to this; sometimes we have a person in our life who likes to push our buttons for their own purposes.)

Scripture speaks to this when it says this:

Gal 5:22-25 – But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.  ESV

Slap bang in the middle of this scripture are the words “self-control”, and it is that godly characteristic that gets thrown out of the window when we allow our buttons to be pushed.

Our buttons belong to us, we developed them and we maintain them; we are 100% responsible for them.  Our ability to handle a button-pushing episode demonstrates our spiritual and emotional maturity.

So, how are we supposed to handle life when a button gets pushed?  The last verse of the scripture above says it.

  • Walk by the Spirit.

It is only when we walk by the Spirit that we can exercise self-control, because it is part of the fruit of the Spirit.  True self-control is powered by the Holy Spirit, what others demonstrate may look like this, but it is self-restraint and is powered by the sinful nature.  Self-control will never fail us; self-restraint is likely to when it reaches its breaking point.

To overcome our tendency to react to a button pushing we must prepare.  Preparation begins with taking ownership of the issue in our lives and handing the problem over to God.  For me, it is prayer and walking by the Spirit that helps.

If a person wants to stop allowing their buttons to rule their life, they must first take ownership, acknowledge that in every button pushing episode in their life there is one common characteristic; and it is the person who owns the button.  It is us!

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Father’s Day 2016 (Repost)

Originally posted Father’s Day 2012

In celebration of Father’s Day, I would like to tell you a short story about my father’s day 2008.  It was the first time I attended my current Church, The Fellowship at Cinco Ranch.  My wife and I dropped off our 10 month old baby girl in the nursery for the first time.  I was nervous and throughout the entire service, I was worried they would call one of our cell phones to tell us that she needed to be picked up from childcare!  To be honest, I don’t remember the content of the service (apologies to our family pastor who typically preaches on Mother’s and Father’s Day – Robert Jackman), I wish now I had.

When we went to pick up our daughter, I was overjoyed at how happy she was when we picked her up.  And then my “heart strings” were tugged!  The attendants in the nursery handed me a father’s day gift.  I looked at it and read it, and was so grateful for this gift that I made a decision that this was going to be the church for my family.  The nursery attendants took the time to place my daughter’s hand in paint and place her tiny hand print on a poem and frame the paper they used (see the photo to the side).  WOW!  My wife and I now work in the nursery with the infants and sometimes we can get overwhelmed with children, but the fact that these selfless people took time out of their stressed-out baby duty to do this for all the fathers was fantastic!

At the time, I did not realize that us visiting that father’s day and the poem were a “God Thing.”  As I look back at the last 4 years, I can obviously see that it definitely was.  It was less than a year later that I entered recovery for my sexual addiction and it was this church (more importantly the body of Christ – the members) that supported me in my recovery.  To be honest, up until I entered recovery, I was not involved in the church. I was one of those husbands, fathers, men that would come sit on Sunday mornings and let it go in one ear and out the other.  My biggest question after church was “what’s for lunch?”  I just was not invested in the church.

And then my life fell apart, and who was there to help me put things back together?  The body of Christ!  I began getting involved in church activities such as a couple of men’s Bible studies including one on Joseph, a Man of Integrity and Forgiveness (Swindoll).  It was during the study of Joseph where I confessed to having a sexual addiction.  I believe most of the men in the room were shocked and silent.  During the study on lesson 2, resisting temptation, I admitted my past sexual sin.  The funny thing is, after the study a couple of guys came up to me and also told me they struggled with about the same issues as I did.

From there, I took a Men’s Fraternity course, the Quest for Authentic Manhood that addressed a lot of my wounds growing up as well as showing me how the Bible defines manhood.  I continued on to various Christian studies and then in June 2010 I started the Castimonia Men’s Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group, meeting for the first time on Saturday, June 12, 2010.

Had it not been for the experience at the nursery on father’s day of 2008, I don’t think I would be where I am today.  I pray all fathers in recovery have had similar experiences and that they can reflect on how God used the love of their children to draw them closer to Him.  And for fathers that are still living in sexual sin and need a reason to get out, I would like for you to look into the eyes of your children and understand that if you remain in that secret sexual sin, then there is a high probability your children too will inherit that sin or marry someone who has their own sexual sin.  Had I stayed in my addiction and kept it secret, I am certain that my daughters would have grown up to marry someone who carried the same character defects and same sexual secrets as I did.  Furthermore, if I had sons, it would be much worse for them as they would end up with some sort of intimacy disorder, such as sex addiction, if I had kept up my isolation and secrets.  So please seek help and step into the light, the path of recovery is not easy, but it is so much better than a life of sexual impurity.  It is a much better life for you, your wife, and especially your children!

Happy Father’s Day!

Take what you like and leave the rest.

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Childhood Trauma and ADHD

Link to "How Childhood Trauma Could Be Mistaken for ADHD"

Recent studies have shown a notable similarity between the behavior of children diagnosed with ADHD and the behavior of children living in traumatic and abusive situations:

Though ADHD has been aggressively studied, few researchers have explored the overlap between its symptoms and the effects of chronic stress or experiencing trauma like maltreatment, abuse and violence. To test her hypothesis beyond Baltimore, [Dr. Nicole] Brown analyzed the results of a national survey about the health and well-being of more than 65,000 children.

Brown’s findings, which she presented in May at an annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies, revealed that children diagnosed with ADHD also experienced markedly higher levels of poverty, divorce, violence, and family substance abuse. Those who endured four or more adverse childhood events were three times more likely to use ADHD medication.

Interpreting these results is tricky. All of the children may have been correctly diagnosed with ADHD, though that is unlikely. Some researchers argue that the difficulty of parenting a child with behavioral issues might lead to economic hardship, divorce, and even physical abuse. This is particularly true for parents who themselves have ADHD, similar impulsive behavior or their own history of childhood maltreatment. There is also no convincing evidence that trauma or chronic stress lead to the development of ADHD.

For Brown, who is now a pediatrician at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, the data are cautionary. It’s not evident how trauma influences ADHD diagnosis and management, but it’s clear that some misbehaving children might be experiencing harm that no stimulant can fix. These children may also legitimately have ADHD, but unless prior or ongoing emotional damage is treated, it may be difficult to see dramatic improvement in the child’s behavior.

“We need to think more carefully about screening for trauma and designing a more trauma-informed treatment plan,” Brown says.

Dr. Kate Szymanski came to the same conclusion a few years ago. An associate professor at Adelphi University’s Derner Institute and an expert in trauma, Szymanski analyzed data from a children’s psychiatric hospital in New York. A majority of the 63 patients in her sample had been physically abused and lived in foster homes. On average, they reported three traumas in their short lives. Yet, only eight percent of the children had received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder while a third had ADHD.

“I was struck by the confusion or over-eagerness–or both–to take one diagnosis over another,” Szymanski says. “To get a picture of trauma from a child is much harder than looking at behavior like impulsivity, hyperactivity. And if they cluster in a certain way, then it’s easy to go to a conclusion that it’s ADHD.”

A previous edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders urged clinicians to distinguish between ADHD symptoms and difficulty with goal-directed behavior in children from “inadequate, disorganized or chaotic environments,” but that caveat does not appear in the latest version. Unearthing details about a child’s home life can also be challenging, Szymanski says.

A child may withhold abuse or neglect to protect his family or, having normalized that experience, never mention it all. Clinicians may also underestimate the prevalence of adversity. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, a years-long survey of more than 17,000 adults, found that two-thirds of participants reported at least one of 10 types of abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction. Twelve percent reported four or more. That list isn’t exhaustive, either. The study didn’t include homelessness and foster care placement, for example, and the DSM doesn’t easily classify those events as “traumatic.”

It’s not clear how many children are misdiagnosed with ADHD annually, but a study published in 2010 estimated the number could be nearly 1 million. That research compared the diagnosis rate amongst 12,000 of the youngest and oldest children in a kindergarten sample and found that the less mature students were 60 percent more likely to receive an ADHD diagnosis.