TPA e-zine, Issue #11 –Seeing Others Pain

April 6th, 2006

****Outline for this issue****

1. Seeing Others Pain
2. What Every Parent Should Know about Teens and Pornography (Part 5)
3. How Can I Forgive My Loved One? (Part 1)
4. New Products

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Section 1: Seeing Others Pain

One of the challenges of an addiction is that you generally do not see how your actions are impacting others. Most addicts who are in recovery tell me that they have been extremely selfish and self-centered. If you have the unique ability to see how your addiction has impacted others, it probably causes great distress inside of you.

In the initial stage of recovery most of the individuals I talk with who have lived with the struggle of pornography cannot see how their actions impact a spouse or others. However, as time progresses and true healing occurs they begin to clear from the fog of pornography. At this point they realize that they have truly been hurting those who care the most about them. The question I am often asked at this point is, “How can I make up for all of that lost time? How can I make things better with my wife or my children?” The answer is not easy because there are many issues that need to be resolved. What you will find below are a few suggestions to help you get started.

Step #1: Understanding the pain you have caused.

You have likely been in so much pain yourself that you haven’t been able to see too far beyond yourself. Sure others may have hurt you, but right now you need to focus on how you have hurt others. What have you done to hurt your partner/spouse? Have you been neglectful, mean or unkind, isolating, jealous, absent? If so, you will need to get to the point where you can acknowledge the pain you have caused. This isn’t easy, but it is a critical step to healing for yourself and your loved one. I cannot emphasis enough how much you need to acknowledge the pain you have created.

Step #2: Don’t expect quick forgiveness.

True forgiveness comes with time. You may not understand why your loved one cannot simply move on. Remember two people heal at different stages. If you feel like you are done with viewing pornography or sexually acting out, great! Just don’t expect your loved one to automatically feel the same way. It takes time to regain trust. Imagine swapping roles. If your loved one had been on the computer engaging in sexual behaviors would you feel anxious every time they were on the computer? If you push for quick forgiveness, you may be punishing your loved one by telling them to hurry up and forgive. Forgiveness takes time and consistency on your part. Prove to your loved one that you are willing to go through this with them. This will help in the healing more than anything else.

Step #3: Don’t ignore the issues.

When an issue comes up that reminds your loved one of what you have been involved in, don’t just try and ignore this issue. If you can, acknowledge the trigger and let them know that you are sorry. For example, I was recently talking with a woman who struggled for months after discovering her husband’s pornography addiction. Every time he would come home late from work, she would be overly anxious. As we discussed this pattern, I talked with the husband about how he could help his wife through this. He identified the importance of being home on time and when he couldn’t be on time re-affirming to his wife that he was doing okay. This validated her concern and helped through difficult times.

Step #4: Be genuine and authentic.

It is important that you be real with your loved one. If you try and fake and hide anything from your loved one, they will feel and sense it. Many women have told me that the most helpful thing their spouse has done is tell them when they are having difficult times. One woman said, “I would much rather him tell me he is having a difficult day than waiting until he has acted out.” Being honest in the struggles is one of the top requests I hear from women whose spouse is struggling with pornography.

Step #5: Be valuing and caring.

One of the most important things you will do in the healing process is be valuing. Your involvement with pornography is likely to be taken as a devaluing thing to your loved one. Therefore, sending value and being sensitive to emotions is one of the ways to show that you are changing. You may want to take some time and contemplate how you can show more care for your loved one. Some suggestions would include: writing a love note, keep a journal where you can write down all of the things you appreciate about your loved one—then share it with her, write a note of apology for your misbehaviors.

Step #6: Don’t quit.

At times you may want to quit trying because you feel like your loved one isn’t making any improvement. If you quit, it will be validating their belief that you cannot change. Even if you are seeing little change in your loved one, keep consistent. They have likely been consistent and patient with you, now it is your turn.

In particular, you need to keep learning and protecting yourself from relapses. If you are going to groups or therapy, keep going. Keep learning and reading to improve yourself. You may even be able to share some of the things you are learning with your loved one. It will help them to see that you are motivated to change. If they see that you are going back to previous behaviors, they will likely feel discouraged and hopeless. When you keep learning and growing it will instill more hope in them.

In the next newsletter, I will discuss the importance of attaching to others as you recover.

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Section 2: What Every Parent Should Know About Teens and Pornography (Part 5):

Pornography and Social Relationships

During the past few months, I have discussed how pornography impacts your child’s mind, emotions, and feelings of self-worth. Now let us explore how pornography can impact your child’s social relationships. An unanticipated outcome of heavy involvement in pornography is limited or reduced social interaction. This was illustrated to me by a client who spent much of his high school years isolated from friends and others. At an early age he experienced social anxiety when in crowds and public places.

As he hit puberty he found comfort in sexual stimuli (pornography). While his parents were encouraging him to get involved socially, he would revert back to his social anxiety excuse. Since they had both felt a little apprehension themselves during high school they figured he would grow out of his social fears, like they had. Unfortunately, this client graduated from high school with very few friends and had experienced limited social relationships. He had not developed healthy social skills. He simply didn’t know how to interact with others his age. When he left home for college, he was extremely uncomfortable meeting new people and interacting with others. The result was that once he got to college, he turned to pornography to comfort him when he felt alone.

This story demonstrates three common problems that individuals struggling with pornography have with social relationships. First, very few men and women who regularly view pornography feel comfortable in social settings. While not all people experience high stress as a result of regular viewing, most openly tell me that pornography has made them pull back socially. Young men feel like they are not good enough for the girls they want to date and consequently they hold back in social settings out of a fear of being rejected. Their thoughts are: “If others knew how involved I am in pornography, they wouldn’t want anything to do with me.” Such thoughts limit how much of themselves they are willing to share with others—a prerequisite for positive social interactions).

Second, pornography prevents those caught in it from developing healthy social skills. Throughout life, successful people learn how to socially interact with others. They learn by making mistakes and through trial and error. This is a skill that you simply do not turn on and off. It requires work and time and sometimes rejection. The learning experience of making social mistakes and realizing that people can forgive and forget is valuable. Those who isolate themselves do not give themselves these important opportunities to make mistakes. Teens who isolate themselves have to learn how to mature socially later in life. In some cases this maturity doesn’t come and the end result can be acting out sexually.

Third, during the teen years, creating and molding one’s identity is a big part of healthy development. Researchers and theorists agree that this is a critical time and can be a positive or a damaging life-altering period. As a clinician I have seen both. I have found that many of my adult clients share traumatic stories from teen years. Many have fears of rejection, fears of being made fun of, or beliefs that they are not good enough for others. This brings up a question, “What type of identity will a teenager form of himself when his mind is constantly thinking about pornography and sexual things?” Imagine the following thought process going through a teen’s mind:

“I wonder what my friends would think about me if they knew how much I view pornography? Here I am on the same sports (dance, etc.) team with these guys and I feel alone. I have my own little secret. I’ve created my own little world. I wonder why I have this problem and they don’t. Why do I think so much about pornography? I cannot seem to get these thoughts out of my head. I wish I knew what was wrong with me.”

Imagine how these thoughts impact how this person feels about himself. He isn’t likely to feel comfortable interacting with his peers because he believes he is different. He also feels like he is living a double life. It is hard to create a strong sense of self while living a lie. In most cases, viewing pornography requires secrecy which results in forming a dual identity (one for public and one for private). In contrast, a more healthy identity can be formed when no secrets are kept and public and private behaviors are the same.

When teenagers and adults learn that they can live without pornography in their life a common outcome is increased social experiences. Furthermore, those who are most likely to succeed in fighting the battle with pornography learn that their social relationships help them avoid relapses. As a therapist, I often encourage my clients to focus on developing healthy relationships with others. Such relationships provide added motivation to fighting the battle with pornography. In teens, positive social experiences help them form a more healthy identity.

Next month, I will share how pornography impacts your child’s sexual development and sexual relations.

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Section 3: How Can I Forgive My Loved One? (Part 1)

I hope that the past four months has helped you understand more of the process of healing from one who has gone through this process. If you haven’t read my interview with a friend who was struggling with a spouse’s addiction, I would encourage you to do so.

Now to the topic of knowing how to forgive. Let me begin by sharing a concept I recently learned from Dr. Janis Abrahms Spring. She was speaking on forgiveness at a local conference that I attended. She has done a significant amount of work to help individuals and couples understand a healthy way to forgive. Her more recent book is, "How Can I Forgive You?."

The concept that most stuck out to me was the idea of “Cheap Forgiveness.” She described cheap forgiveness as a quick and easy pardon with no processing of emotion and no coming to terms with the injury. This is a very important idea for my clients considering that many of them have been at this point. They are quick to forgive without asking the offending party to make changes. The consequence is they feel like they are continually getting walked on while their partner is NOT changing their behavior.

The fact is that individuals who are too quick to forgive are less likely to see their loved one alter their behaviors. So the idea is that when you forgive a loved one, you should see new and healthier behaviors in your loved one. With this idea in mind, ask yourself this question, “How has my loved one shown me that they have and are changing?” If you cannot identify anything, perhaps forgiveness has not been earned.

The idea of earning forgiveness is important. In Christian teachings the offending party is asked to “make right the wrongs they have done” or in other words, to reconcile with the person that has been offended. The process of reconciliation cannot take place if the offending party is not willing to acknowledge and accept responsibility for the pain and hurt that they have inflicted upon the loved one. Even more important is that the offending party be willing to patiently accept that they have hurt their partner and that it takes time to heal. Far too often the offending party expects their hurt partner to quickly forgive and move on. Healing takes time. So rule number one for forgiving is to step back and evaluate what is “really” going on in your relationship. Here’re some questions to ask yourself:

1. Is my partner demonstrating a desire to change their behavior and is he/she making the changes (e.g. going to counseling, attending groups, learning how to overcome their problem)?
2. Is my partner patient with me or does he/she expect me to quickly get over things?
3. Do I feel genuine remorse from my loved one?
4. Is my loved one willing to love me even when I am upset, irritated, or feeling angry?
5. Is my partner willing to open up to me and tell me how he/she is doing with their addictive behavior?

I hope these questions will get you thinking about the process of forgiveness. Remember one of the key parts to real forgiveness is dependent upon how your loved one deals with their misbehavior.

Next month, I will discuss how you can emotionally move on--forgive regardless of how your loved one responds.

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Section 4: Products

One book that continually receives great reviews is Mike Cleveland's book, "Pure Freedom: Breaking the Addiction to Pornography ." I believe there are many approaches to helping others and Mike has helped many people with his good work.

Books for Partner or Spouse

Even though I recommended these books last month, if you are a partner or spouse I seriously recommend you consider these resources.

An Affair of the Mind: One Woman's Courageous Battle to Salvage Her Family from the Devastation of Pornography

Living With Your Husband's Secret Wars (Paperback)

If you haven't had the chance to read my book or listen to my CD's, I highly recommend you consider my approach. The CD's are basically my first 3 hours of counseling that I do with individuals struggling with pornography. I also have recorded an hour of help for a spouse and one hour for parents. You can find my book and these CD's at Amazon. The link below will get you to my book. The book is listed #1 at Amazon. The CD's and book move between #2 and #5 at Amazon.

"Treating Pornography Addiction: The Essential Tools for Recovery."

I wish you the very best.

Until May--Good luck and may God Bless you.

With regards,

Dr. Kevin Skinner

p.s. Last month I told you that in the next couple of months I have some exciting news. Stay tuned. I think by July you can expect something new and exciting to help both those struggling with pornography and their loved one. I am working feveriously to get these projects completed. You will be the first to know when they are completed.