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March 24, 2021 By Castimonia

New Castimonia Step Group Starting in July!


Our founder, Jorge, will be leading a new step study group starting in July.  This is his 5th Step group.

The group lasts for about 2 years and you will go through all the steps including the pre-step and post-step work in the Castimonia book. 

They will meet every 2 weeks on Saturday mornings from 830am to 950am before the 10am Saturday Castimonia meeting in Katy. There is no cost to join the group but you must purchase a copy of the Castimonia book, 2nd edition.  Out of town guests will be able to use Zoom to join the group if they cannot attend in person.

This group takes a strong, long term commitment and is great for those ready to work the steps and have the Lord change their lives.

Please have any interested individuals contact Jorge at jorge@castimonia.org.

Filed Under: General Meeting Information Tagged With: castimonia, christian, porn addiction, recovery, Sex, sex addiction, step group

January 25, 2021 By Castimonia

The Top 10 Types of “Stinkin’ Thinkin”

SOURCE:  David Burns

One of the most common types of skills learned in psychotherapy today focuses on our thinking. Unbeknownst to many of us, we often engage in internal conversations with ourselves throughout the day. Unless we’re trained to examine these conversations, however, many of us don’t even realize we’re having them! For instance, imagine looking in the mirror at yourself. What’s the first thing you think when you look at yourself? That thought is a part of our internal conversation.

Having these kinds of conversations with yourself is perfectly normal and in fact, everybody does it.

Where we mess up in our lives is when we let these conversations take on a life of their own. If we answer ourselves in the above example with something like, “I’m fat and ugly and nobody loves me,” that’s an example of “stinkin’ thinkin’.” Our thoughts have taken on an unhealthy attitude, one that is working against us instead of for us. Psychologists would call these thoughts “irrational,” because they have little or no basis in reality. For instance, the reality is that most everyone is loved by someone (even if they’re no longer with us), and that a lot of our beauty springs from inside us — our personality.

It is exactly these kinds of thoughts that you can learn to identify as you go through your day. Often times it will be helpful to keep a little journal of the thoughts, writing down the day and time you had it, the thought itself, and the type of irrational thought — or stinkin’ thinkin’ — from the list below. As you learn to better identify them, you can then learn how to start answering them back with rational arguments. In this manner, you can work to turn your internal conversation back to being a positive in your life, instead of a running negative commentary.

1. All-or-nothing thinking – You see things in black-or-white categories. If a situation falls short of perfect, you see it as a total failure. When a young woman on a diet ate a spoonful of ice cream, she told herself, “I’ve blown my diet completely.” This thought upset her so much that she gobbled down an entire quart of ice cream.

2. Overgeneralization – You see a single negative event, such as a romantic rejection or a career reversal, as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as “always” or “never” when you think about it. A depressed salesman became terribly upset when he noticed bird dung on the window of his car. He told himself, “Just my luck! Birds are always crapping on my car!”

3. Mental Filter – You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water. Example: You receive many positive comments about your presentation to a group of associates at work, but one of them says something mildly critical. You obsess about his reaction for days and ignore all the positive feedback.

4. Discounting the positive – You reject positive experiences by insisting that they “don’t count.” If you do a good job, you may tell yourself that it wasn’t good enough or that anyone could have done as well. Discounting the positives takes the joy out of life and makes you feel inadequate and unrewarded.

5. Jumping to conclusions – You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion.

Mind Reading : Without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you.

Fortune-telling : You predict that things will turn out badly. Before a test you may tell yourself, “I’m really going to blow it. What if I flunk?” If you’re depressed you may tell yourself, “I’ll never get better.”

6. Magnification – You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities. This is also called the “binocular trick.”

7. Emotional Reasoning – You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel terrified about going on airplanes. It must be very dangerous to fly.” Or, “I feel guilty. I must be a rotten person.” Or, “I feel angry. This proves that I’m being treated unfairly.” Or, “I feel so inferior. This means I’m a second rate person.” Or, “I feel hopeless. I must really be hopeless.”

8. “Should” statements – You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped or expected them to be. After playing a difficult piece on the piano, a gifted pianist told herself, “I shouldn’t have made so many mistakes.” This made her feel so disgusted that she quit practicing for several days. “Musts,” “oughts” and “have tos” are similar offenders.

“Should statements” that are directed against yourself lead to guilt and frustration. Should statements that are directed against other people or the world in general, lead to anger and frustration: “He shouldn’t be so stubborn and argumentative!”

Many people try to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if they were delinquents who had to be punished before they could be expected to do anything. “I shouldn’t eat that doughnut.” This usually doesn’t work because all these shoulds and musts make you feel rebellious and you get the urge to do just the opposite. Dr. Albert Ellis has called this ” must erbation.” I call it the “shouldy” approach to life.

9. Labeling – Labeling is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying “I made a mistake,” you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” You might also label yourself “a fool” or “a failure” or “a jerk.” Labeling is quite irrational because you are not the same as what you do. Human beings exist, but “fools,” “losers” and “jerks” do not. These labels are just useless abstractions that lead to anger, anxiety, frustration and low self-esteem.

You may also label others. When someone does something that rubs you the wrong way, you may tell yourself: “He’s an S.O.B.” Then you feel that the problem is with that person’s “character” or “essence” instead of with their thinking or behavior. You see them as totally bad. This makes you feel hostile and hopeless about improving things and leaves very little room for constructive communication.

10. Personalization and Blame – Personalization comes when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn’t entirely under your control. When a woman received a note that her child was having difficulty in school, she told herself, “This shows what a bad mother I am,” instead of trying to pinpoint the cause of the problem so that she could be helpful to her child. When another woman’s husband beat her, she told herself, “If only I was better in bed, he wouldn’t beat me.” Personalization leads to guilt, shame and feelings of inadequacy.

Some people do the opposite. They blame other people or their circumstances for their problems, and they overlook ways they might be contributing to the problem: “The reason my marriage is so lousy is because my spouse is totally unreasonable.” Blame usually doesn’t work very well because other people will resent being scapegoated and they will just toss the blame right back in your lap. It’s like the game of hot potato–no one wants to get stuck with it.

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Parts of this article were exercepted from the book, “The Feeling Good Handbook” by David D. Burns, M.D. © 1989.

Filed Under: Sexual Purity Posts Tagged With: addiction, porn, porn addiction, recovery, Sex, sex addiction, stinkin thinkin, stinking thinking

November 18, 2020 By K.LeVeq

How to Read the Bible and Actually Get Something Out of It!

God’s Word was a mystery to me. Oh, I knew it. Or could quote some of it. I knew a lot of the stories. Understand it? Really get something from it? No. Hear God while reading the Bible? Nope, not ever. I am thankful to a good friend for his mentorship in the below method and others in studying God’s Word at the direction of the Holy Spirit. Key point…at the direction of the Holy Spirit. Trust me on this. Below are the steps I follow. Take what you like and leave the rest.

Get a journal. Use it everyday just for your Bible reading. Trust me on this. If you like things like documenting, journaling, trending then you will want a journal just for this. Journaling is a great practice for actually remembering things, well it is for me. I am getting old so journaling is a must. I also find it really neat to revisit my past, see where God has brought me from. When you do this, it reminds you of how good God is. Really good. I can’t see it in the middle but revisiting is eye opening. 

Read His Word. Everyday. Yeah, I know, right? Actually spend time in His word. Not hours. I spend about 15 minutes a day. You have 15 minutes you can spare by turning off your phone. Trust me, you can find the time. I used to think I had to be a Biblical scholar or more of a scholar than I currently am to read the Bible and understand it. Actually, not so much. I use blueletterbible.org. It’s an amazing website. Then I do the following:

  1. Decide what book I will read
  2. Read a passage a day (maybe 5 – 10 verses)
  3. Identify the verse or verses that resonate with me
  4. Write them down in my journal
  5. Use the concordance in blueletterbible.org to further understand those verses
  6. Write down what I hear from the Holy Spirit

See this is the part where God speaks. His Holy Spirit will reveal truths to you when you read His word. Don’t get frustrated to start. It’s up to HIM to reveal His truth to you. Be faithful and He will do so. So you don’t forget them, WRITE THEM DOWN. 

Pray. Yeah, pray. After I read His Word and discover what He has for me, I pray. I pray the same way every time. I follow ACTS (Acknowledge, Confess, Thank, Supplicate). I first acknowledge and praise my God and Savior for who He is. Then I confess my unconfessed sin in as much detail as I possibly can. Then I thank Him for what He has done for me in my life. Finally, supplication. I bring my requests to Him. I ask Him to validate the truths I read in His word. I pray specifically. 

Reading His Word daily was really intimidating to me until I started using this method. Figure out what works for you and spend time in His Word daily. Don’t miss out on what the Holy Spirit has for you!

Filed Under: Sexual Purity Posts Tagged With: christian, Constant contact with God, Holy Spirit, recovery, step 11, Study

November 9, 2020 By Castimonia

Castimonia Purity Podcast Episode 86: Step 11 in Sex Addiction Recovery

Step 11 in Sex Addiction Recovery:

Keith and Doug discuss some ways to work Step 11 by allowing God to truly direct our steps as well as being open to that process.

Remember that you are not alone on this road to recovery. For more information, please email us at puritypodcast@castimonia.org

Filed Under: podcast, Podcasts, Purity Podcast, Sex Addiction Podcast Tagged With: castimonia, Christ, Purity Podcast, recovery, sex addiction, step 11

October 30, 2020 By Castimonia

The Anatomy of Anxiety Part 1

By Dr. Robert Kellemen

Does worry, doubt, or fear get the best of you sometimes? Do you wonder where anxiety comes from and how to defeat it in your life and the lives of those you love?

Then we need a biblical anatomy of anxiety.

God intended for us to experience a mood that is the “flip side” of anxiety. If we are to understand the “disorder” of anxiety, we must understand the “order” that sin has disordered. What normal, healthy, God-given process has become perturbed in anxiety?

Vigilance

Anxiety is vigilance out of control and out of context. God designed us with the mood of vigilance which is meant to move us to relationship and impact. With vigilance, God puts us in fast motion, urges us to act quickly in response to a life threat.

Anxiety is “stuck vigilance.” Vigilance is proper, constructive concern for the well-being of others, the world, and self. Anxiety is vigilance minus faith in the Father. Vigilance results in tend and befriend behavior. Anxiety results in flight or fight behavior.

Anxiety is vigilance that does not turn us back to trust. It leads us to a toxic scanning of our environment. God says, “Be vigilant! Be alert! Take your stand, and having done all, stand firm! Quit ye like men!”

Anxiety says, “What if? I can’t handle this! I have to run. I have to fight. I have to self-protect!” Anxiety is scanning without standing. Instead of scanning and standing, we scan, and scan, and scan… It is continual worry. Continued “what if?” thinking and feeling.

The Family Tree of Anxiety

Vigilant faith, anxiety, and anger are cousins. Their family tree? Vigor, from which we gain three related words: vigilante, vigil, and vigorous. Anxiety and anger involve vigilance without faith and without love. They are non-trust, non-relational responses to threat.

Vigilance, on the other hand, is a trust, relational response to threat. It relates to others by protecting the person being threatened. It relates to others by engaging, challenging, confronting (not attacking) the person doing the threatening. It relates to God by trusting that what He calls me to do, He equips me to fulfill. In God’s Kingdom we are either worriers or warriors!

Filed Under: Sexual Purity Posts Tagged With: anxiety, castimonia, porn, porn addictoin, pornography, recovery, Sex, sex addiction, sexual addictin

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Castimonia Restoration Ministry, Inc. is a 501c3 non-profit organization


This site is intended for individuals who struggle with maintaining sexual purity. This information is posted for individuals at various stages in their recovery, year 1 to year 30+; what applies to some, may not apply others. Spouses are encouraged to read this blog with the caveat that they may not agree with, understand, or know the reason for some items posted. As always, take what you like and leave the rest.

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