CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

Jesus Christ

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Stuck In Fear

Anxiety is loving certainty. It is stressful to live in an anxious world, and learning to embrace uncertainty seems impossible to those suffering with anxiety. We must each find a strategy to help us shuttle back and forth between the comfort of what we know, and the discomfort of all that we don’t know to become healthy. Anxiety is about fear being in charge of most of your choices. Getting stuck in fear robs you of possibilities in your life. An example of this is when you are too afraid to make mistakes. Making mistakes is the lynchpin to learning, in fact we learn far more from our mistakes than our successes. If you have anxiety you must learn to use your thinking to balance your exaggerated feelings of fear. Courage is the ingredient that, if sprinkled on that world, would make all of us better people. Greater courage is the antidote to anxiety. Learn to imagine new ways to have courage and to make your world larger. Real courage always has fear attached. Fearless courage is only the foolishness of youth. Follow your curiosity and try new small steps out into the world instead of waiting for life to happen to you. Invite fear to take a back seat instead of driving the train. Fear and excitement always travel together. Remember being scared of learning to ride a bicycle and being excited at the same time? Learn to allow room for both emotions. Don’t let fear erase excitement. Growth depends on one foot being in the familiar and one foot in the unfamiliar… Confusion is the emotion that is crucial to “allowing room for change,” which is exactly why adolescents are both confused and changing. From “Anxiety, Control & Codependency” by Rhoda Mills Sommer, L.C.S.W. http://therapyideas.net/anxiety.htm

“The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes. It is equivalent to a sense of abusing the present.” – Susan Sontag

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MONDAY, JULY 21st, MEETING LOCATION CHANGE

This change affects only the Monday night meeting on July 21st. The Fellowship at Cinco Ranch, where we normally meet, is having their Vacation Bible School (VBS) in the evenings the week of July 21st and all rooms are reserved for this week-long event.  Therefore, we need to move the Castimonia Katy meeting to another location close by.  Grace Fellowship UMC is very close, North of Westheimer Parkway, on the East side of Mason road just North of the Cinco Ranch Blvd light.  The meeting will return to the Fellowship at Cinco Ranch on Monday, July 28th.

Time: 7:00PM – 8:30PM
Location: Grace Fellowship United Methodist Church
Mansion, Room 203 (take the stairs or elevator to the 2nd floor)

2655 South Mason Road Katy, TX  77450
281.646.1903

The other option is to visit our Northwest Houston meeting at Lifepath Church. 
 
Monday Nights
 Time: 7:00PM – 8:30PM
Location: Lifepath Church – Room 108
17703 W Little York Rd
Houston, TX 77084
281.855.0222
NEWLocationMap

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To Mend His Broken Heart

So, what causes men to move on so quickly from a breakup with you to the arms of another woman? You could easily believe the rapidity of his action indicates he isn’t at all broken up about your breakup, that he had no deep feelings for you and he cavalierly is humming to himself, “Another One Bites The Dust.” They would, however, be completely wrong. You see, when men invest emotionally in a relationship, their feelings run as deeply as yours, whether they show it or now. So, when their relationship crumbles, it causes a huge emotional void. …men don’t have the social support network to buoy them up in their time of pain and sadness. If they thought that kind of behavior would be acceptable, they might engage in it. But men are all too aware that stoicism, soldiering on, and “walking it off” are fundamental guidelines in the male handbook… He’s hurting, but he can’t tell anyone. And grieving and wallowing in private are likely to only lead to consuming mass quantities of Jim Beam to dull his pain. Thus, he realizes, with such limited options available, he must speedily move to contain his about-to-erupt emotions by filling the vacuum created by the demise of his previous relationship. How does he do this? By seeking out someone else to focus his attention on, both emotionally and sexually. And, the sooner, the better, for it is this new woman who heals his wounds by allowing him to step back into the comfortable, acceptable space of being the tough, unruffled man that he is supposed to be. She facilitates his return to a state of being where he can once again feel masculine and in control of himself and his emotions. Order is restored and all is right with the world again. The speed in which a man moves from a bitter breakup to a new amorous attachment is directly proportional to the pain he’s feeling — the deeper the hurt, the quicker the hookup. So if you see your ex in the arms of another within days of your breakup, don’t write him off as a horny, uncaring, slime-bucket. Instead, recognize that he was deeply hurt by the end of your relationship and is doing the best he can to mend his broken heart. Taken from an article by David M. Matthews, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/rebound-relationship-why-_n_1569001.html

“Giving up doesn’t always mean you are weak; sometimes it means that you are strong enough to let go.” – Unknown

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Lieutenant Dan’s Redemption – VIDEO

One of my all-time favorite movies is Forrest Gump.  For those that have never seen Forrest Gump (or have been living in a cave for 20 years), Forrest Gump is a 1994 American epic romantic comedy-drama film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis and starred Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise and Sally Field (Wikipedia). It details the story of a man named Forrest Gump through about four decades of United States history.  I never really understood why I enjoyed the movie until I entered recovery and was able to see the various recover-related subcomponents intertwined with the main story.

One recovery-related subcomponent I really enjoyed was that of the story of Lieutenant Dan Taylor.  Lt. Dan, as he’s often referred to in the film by Forrest, is your typical Christian American, patriotic but a Christian by name only.  In other words, he wears his Christian cross, but when tested in life, he gives up on the hope that only Christ can bring and eventually becomes an alcoholic. We then see his powerlessness and unmanageability, also known as his “self-destructive behaviors”.  Then we see him restored to sanity by a power greater than him, God.  Throughout this film, we see God’s plan for Lt. Dan unfolding, slowly, until his redemption at the end.  It is a reminder to me, that even in the tough times, that God keeps His promise and I need to be strong enough to believe, rather than run to my addiction.  I hope you enjoy watching this movie as much as I enjoyed editing it.  Keep an eye out for comments and scripture verses at the bottom.  As always, take what you like a read the rest.

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Abuse Changes a Child’s Brain

The brains of children raised in violent families resemble the brains of soldiers exposed to combat, psychologists say. They’re primed to perceive threat and anticipate pain, adaptations that may be helpful in abusive environments but produce long-term problems with stress and anxiety. “For them to detect early cues that might signal danger is adaptive. It allows them to react, to try and avoid the danger,” said psychologist Eamon McCrory of University College London. However, “a very similar neural signature characterizes quite a few anxiety disorders.” In a study published Dec. 5 in Current Biology, McCrory’s team used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to measure blood flows in the brains of 43 children exposed to violence at home as they looked at pictures of sad or angry faces. Previous studies have shown that abuse affects kids’ brains; as they grow up, abused children become adults with high levels of aggression, anxiety, depression and other behavioral problems. But according to McCrory, the new study is the first to use fMRI to study the form of those changes. “Understanding the neural mechanisms might give us clues as to how someone’s future might be shaped by their experience,” McCrory said. His team compared fMRIs from abused children to those of 23 non-abused but demographically similar children from a control group. In the abused children, angry faces provoked distinct activation patterns in their anterior insula and right amygdala, parts of the brain involved in processing threat and pain. Similar patterns have been measured in soldiers who’ve seen combat. Another recent study found that depression in people who were abused as children is especially difficult to treat. McCrory hopes future work will give a more complete picture of abuse’s neurological effects — and, perhaps, the effects of interventions that help children heal. “Can children change in response to an act of intervention? To a better home environment? We’re quite optimistic that’s the case, that this is reversible. But that’s something we need to test,” McCrory said. By Brandon Keim http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/neurology-of-abuse/

“The difficult child is the child who is unhappy. He is at war with himself; and in consequence, he is at war with the world.” – A. S. Neill