As a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (and supervisor), certified Intimacy Anorexia Therapist, and, most importantly, an APSATS certified partner betrayal trauma specialist (and supervisor), one of my most important goals is to help recovering sex or porn addicts recover in a way that helps his primary partner heal. Since I work predominantly with male recovering sex addicts in traditional relationships; hence, that usually means I helping him heal her. be true about her relationship. It is usually the start of a long period of living on an emotional rollercoaster.
I’ve run men’s sex addiction recovery groups for over a decade and specialize in men’s Sex Addiction-Intimacy Anorexia (SA-IA) groups. The combination of both sex or porn addiction and intimacy anorexia means their partners have been doubly wounded – sexually betrayed and intimacy/emotionally deprived. That means there is a lot of healing that needs to happen for her, and requires a lot more help from him than is typically needed.
I’ve seen my fair share of men who only want to do enough work to get out of the doghouse, then do what trauma healing is going to involve. I’ve seen men who really want to help her heal – in their head, but are faint-hearted when it gets uncomfortable for them.
More often what I have seen is men who want to help her heal and are willing to learn to tolerate the comfort, with the support of a band of brothers and concrete tools to help them in their efforts - as well as earned grace for the wishy-washy growth curve. So, what gets in the way? The two major problems I see are the obstacles in their head and hearts, as well as a skill level that sometimes I refer to as empathy dyslexic.
Over the years I have had to create many exercises to help them grasp certain aspects of their more emotionally-gifted, empathy connoisseur partners. These exercises are designed to be very basic, grow incrementally, and involve pen and paper practice, followed by real life practice via implementation with their wives. I create the exercise when it doesn’t exist and give thanks when I find those resources that do exist.
My favorite resource was written by a cherished friend, and admired professional, Carol Sheets. Help.Her.Heal is a fantastic resource for all men in recovery, but particularly valuable for the empathy dyslexic man. The book is great, but as Carol wisely discerned, reading is necessary but not sufficient. A better way to absorb and implement the material is a live, workgroup series with other dyslexic men: separate sessions for separate concepts with the expectation of practicing between sessions.
I think this concept is so important that the team at Intensive Recovery Healing take turns offering the workshop series year-round. So, if you have a betrayed partner that you want to help heal, thing you might be empathy dyslexic, and need the support of a good, short-term workshop to help learn, develop, and implement empathy to help your partner heal, consider a Help Her Heal group workshop.
Dr Janice Caudill is a Texas psychologist licensed for telehealth in most states. She is a CSAT-S, IAT, APSATS certified partner betrayal trauma specialist, and trained to lead Help Her Heal groups.
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