As a substance abuse counselor and now a supervisor of counselors treating both substance abuse and mental illness, I hear about many different reasons clients relapse back into drinking and using drugs. Triggers that pull someone back into the life of abuse and addiction are as varied and numerous as there are people. However, the most common reason I see is an inability to cope with painful emotions.

At the top of that list is guilt and shame. When people cannot face something they have done or something they blame themselves for, they will try to avoid feeling those feelings.

This is natural for nearly all human beings. To keep from feeling pain we try many different ways to avoid emotions. We might throw ourselves into work, or push those emotional thoughts to the back of our minds. Some, unable to deal with difficult thoughts and emotions turn inward and isolate themselves. Others try to pretend everything is fine, while still others escape from their difficult reality through the use of media or other distractions. For the former alcoholic or substance abuser, the use of alcohol and/or drugs was a very effective way to stop feeling pain. It can become their “go to” coping device.

We all have to step back at times from thoughts and emotions that overwhelm us. Many coping mechanisms are benign and do not leave us any worse off; unless, of course, we don’t eventually come back to the real problem and deal with it effectively. For the former alcoholic or substance abuser who uses as a way to cope with his or her emotions, a devastating and potentially lethal cycle of addiction can begin all over again.

For a large number of individuals who struggle with addictions, guilt and shame are already issues they face. Some because of past issues from childhood; some because of the knowledge that they have manipulated and hurt the people that care about them in order to maintain their addiction.

Good substance abuse treatment includes teaching men and women how to deal with these painful emotions. That education should also include the understanding that an addiction is something that controls them. A person need to learn acceptance of the past as something that cannot change and how to have hope for the future. Another aspect of good recovery education includes techniques that can be used to help someone go through those painful emotions instead of trying to avoid them.

Here is a list of good coping skills that have helped many substance dependent individuals keep from falling back into abuse and addiction:

• Journaling: get into the habit of externalizing your thoughts and emotions in written form. Go back and read those entries and see those thoughts and emotions more objectively.
• Learn to take time to breathe deeply and slowly at times of high stress or when emotions become overwhelming.
• TALK TO SOMEONE! 12-step programs encourage the adoption of a sponsor for everyone struggling with addiction for a reason. Dealing with this alone can be too difficult. Would you get into the ring with a heavy weight boxing champion alone? Substance dependent individuals already know that their addiction is more powerful than they are. Don’t fight the fight alone!
• Get counseling: having someone to help address more serious life issues is important.
• Pray: Whatever your religious belief, prayer can be an important part of dealing with guilt and shame.
• Write a new script for yourself. We often play old tapes over and over in our minds; recordings of negative thoughts based on voices from our past or more recent voices, even our own. There is tremendous power in verbalizing new, more positive thoughts about ourselves.

Let me end with a story. A former client of mine, John (not his real name), was addicted to cocaine and alcohol. He shared his story with me, one that kept him from progressing in recovery. As a young boy he was playing with matches in his upstairs bedroom. His younger sister was with him at the time when the unthinkable happened – fire. Not knowing what to do he hid under the bed as did his little sister.

The fire department arrived and was able to rescue him, but his sister died of smoke inhalation. He stated to me that he remembered seeing them lift her lifeless body from under the bed.

The tragedy of being responsible for his sister’s death haunted him, compounded by the fact that his father blamed him for her death and took out his anger on him through physical abuse throughout the rest of his childhood. No one ever spoke to him about it.

Unable to deal with his guilt and shame and tired of the physical abuse, he left home early and began to make his own way in life. Early on he found that drinking and using drugs helped dull the pain of these powerful feelings. He could forget his sense of guilt and shame for a while. But, of course, the development of addictions began to make it all worse. Fortunately, he wound up in treatment.

Through counseling he learned how to stop the negative thoughts of guilt and shame. He was able to accept that, although his sister died in an accident he caused, it was an accident. He realized he was too young to know any better and that his father’s anger was misplaced. He was able to see that he was wrong to project his adult mind into his little boy body to say, “I should have know better.” He realized that he was not old enough then to know better.

The result of learning to cope with guilt and shame effectively allowed him to come to a more realistic acceptance of himself and his addiction and give him the ability to live in recovery. He found healing and freedom. Perhaps you can, too.

When someone says the words, “sexual addiction,” most people automatically think of men who seek out prostitutes or men who have continuous affairs—certainly not women and particularly not Christian women.

However, this stereotypical assumption is completely false.

According to Crystal Renaud, author of the book “Dirty Girls Come Clean,” more than 30% of pornography site visitors are Christian women.

If a Pastor or Christian ministry leader is mentioning the topic of lust or pornography, it’s not uncommon to hear the words, “Men, now listen up. Ladies, we know you don’t struggle with this.”

While this type of addiction creates much secret shame among its sufferers regardless of gender, it is even much more so for women who struggle with a sexual addiction because of this very accepted assumption that it is a merely a man’s struggle. This addiction among women creates silent sufferers that feel great shame and fear of judgment from others. There are few if any resources for women who would seek help for this addiction. New attitudes and perspectives need to be created that allow for the inclusion of women that deserve help in churches and professional settings.

Looking for a men’s sexual addiction support group? Thankfully, these are becoming much more commonplace in churches and therapy settings–there certainly is help available for these men. If you’re female and seeking help for this addiction, the available help is limited if not non-existent in the same places where men are being helped. Stereotypical attitudes about sexual addiction need to be checked with the reality of these hurting women.

Sexual addiction commonly has little to do with addiction to the sex act itself, particularly with women. It is, for both men and women, an intimacy disorder. True intimacy is nearly impossible to attain for those living in a sexually-addicted lifestyle. However, because women are more relationally oriented then men, a sexual addiction in a woman will look much different than in a man’s struggle with sex addiction. Women oftentimes struggle with a “love” addiction alongside a sexual addiction, which is a type of intimacy disorder in which the addicted person is obsessed with the “falling in love” feeling at the beginning of relationships, often leading the sufferer to move from relationship to relationship seeking this feeling, never maintaining a mature intimate relationship.

All the while loneliness and emptiness sets in, with the concurrent beliefs that only they can comfort themselves, others can’t be trusted to meet their needs and oftentimes the belief that intimacy with another person is found only in sex act. Extensive online pornography use, compulsive masturbation, seeking out anonymous sex, erotic literature, the use of sex-related online chat rooms and sexual use of webcams can all be symptoms that happen to women as well as men in a sexual addiction or a love addiction.

Sexual addiction treatment needs to be formatted specifically for women, with an emphasis on treating the intimacy disordered behaviors and thought patterns. Healthy intimacy behaviors can be taught and modeled. Groups can be especially healing for women, because they are more willing to verbally express their feelings in a group setting and they can receive the support they need from one another.

This needs to be talked about in churches, therapy settings, professional settings, and in everyday conversation for the secret and painful shame to decrease and freedom to be made available for this neglected population of women.

by Jen DuBos, MA LPC

When people hear me say the word “dissociation”, they look at me like they should respond with “gesundheit!”

When I go on to explain what it means, they often look steadily more disturbed until I get to the end. Dissociation is a phenomenon that all people use to varying degrees at one time or another to cope with stress.  The clinical definition of psychological dissociation is: a method of coping where one disconnects from one’s own conscious experience of reality- intentionally or unintentionally- due to a perceived threat of danger or annihilation. The user friendly definition of psychological dissociation is avoiding something unpleasant by pretending you are someone, or somewhere, else.

Dissociation is a powerful coping mechanism and can have significant, even severe effects depending on how it is utilized and under what circumstances. Dis-association can by literal and physical, psychological and cognitive, or a combination of both. In many cases, dissociating can be a healthy coping skill – even in dangerous circumstances.

For instance, if you are in an abusive relationship, it is healthy to decide not to associate with the abusive individual anymore.  On the more moderate side, vacation is perhaps the most pleasurable form of dissociation, where we literally leave our lives and go somewhere else to have a different experience for a limited period of time. In pop culture around the world, dissociation from reality is actually the most popular form of entertainment. When we go to movies, play video games, or get lost in a good book, we are taking on a new identity and reality, and dissociating from our real lives. In balanced doses, these are all acceptable forms of dissociation. When they take up large quantities of your time and actually harm your real life relationships and ability to function in society, you have gone too far.

When dissociation is overused for entertainment and becomes an escape or addiction, it has been allowed to have sway over too much of your conscious and unconscious mind. In short, if you dis-associate intentionally, excessively, you actually begin to believe an alternate reality is real. You are lying to yourself and believing the lies. This is the unhealthy side of intentional, conscious dissociation. On the deeper side of dissociation- the unintentional or subconscious implementation of detaching from yourself or your surroundings – things become more complicated when deciding what is healthy and what isn’t.

Extreme dissociation happens most often under duress. People most often recall conscious experiences of unintentional dissociation when they’ve been the victim of a crime. During a rape for instance, women will often describe feeling detached from their bodies, or feeling like the were up on the ceiling, looking down on themselves while the crime was occurring as if they were not an unwilling participant, but an observer.

The most extreme form of dissociation is Dissociative Identity Disorder, more popularly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. This rare disorder is the result of long term, traumatic childhood abuse. When children are exposed to complex, adult level stimuli, they have no adult skills for processing the trauma. When the trauma is ongoing, the body literally responds with an instinctual survival technique in order to keep the self from perishing due to shock. It creates an internal protector, separate from the child victim. If the abuse continues, more companions are needed to shoulder the burden of complex emotions and so more entities are created. They are all actually parts of the same core self, but because children have only concrete thinking, not abstract thought, they cannot conceptualize themselves as a complex person with many different facets. So the mind does the best it can and instead of forming a singular, complicated, many faceted, mature personality, it creates numerous one-dimensional personalities. Though this drastic subconscious effort often accomplishes its goal of preserving the life of the core self and the dissociation is therefore healthy, the end goal of therapy is always to help a person with a dissociated identity to re-integrate and become one whole person- as they were always intended to be.

Psychological dissociation is a phenomenon far more prevalent than I ever imagined when I was doing my graduate studies. I only thought of it in the extreme terms of Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or disorders of memory like Fugue or Factitious disorder. I thought life-altering dissociation had to be brought on by severe trauma or horrible abuse. But it turns out, people dissociate regularly and for a whole host of reasons.

If you’re reading this article and realize any part of it relates to you, take careful stock of

1) Why you dissociate
2) How you dissociate
3) How much or little control you have over the process

If you find you dissociate often for more than one or two reasons, and aren’t sure you have control over if, how, and when it happens, give us a call at Stenzel Clinical.

As discussed in part 1, control is actually an illusion- but one we are willing to preserve at great cost if we engage in conflict without clearly identified motives.  People seek control to feel secure because, like so many destructive relational and cultural patterns, the pursuit of control is fueled by a fear of the unknown.

Further still, control-seeking can be both an offensive and a defensive move, since as we seek control over others, they are simultaneously seeking control over us. In order for me to have power, someone must be subject to me. This is precisely why those in official positions of power have such a grave responsibility to maintain self-control. It is when we begin to feel out of control of our own person that we first begin the frantic fight to establish control over the external world.

In the previous article I offered four questions as guides to keeping your conflict focused and productive instead of allowing it to spiral into a control battle. The questions are 1.) What is my point? 2.) What action should I take? 3.) Is this a battle I can win? 4.) What will happen if I lose this battle?

The third question, whether you can win, is a delicate objective. It’s where most well-meant disciplinary actions go astray because in the face of seeming defeat, parents will resort to battle tactics in order to compensate for one or all of the primal fears (failure, death, and abandonment). On the other side, children and teens will ramp up as parents crack down (or even before that) -  responding with outrage to what feels like tyranny.

So how is “victory” determined?

In fact, there is no stationary definition in this case – it is defined according to circumstance and specific, personal parenting goals.

If your child has a way of getting your goat and you make it a goal not to get flustered in an argument with her, and you remain calm when she is hysterical – even when she says you’re old and stupid – you have had a victory.

If it is your goal to stand firm in your disciplinary decision and you don’t give in, even if your son shouts or whines or threatens to leave home if you do not yield, you have had a victory.

If it is your goal to consider the extenuating circumstances that may be affecting your child’s uncharacteristic behavior and you remember to do this before you act, you’ve had a victory.

If your definition of winning is ever “I have to force them to comply”, it better be for only one reason – to prevent imminent death or dismemberment of your child or someone else.  In counseling, the only reason confidentiality can be broken is if the client is suicidal or homicidal and is not willing to sign a no-harm contract. Legally, we have the responsibility at that point to intervene and preserve life and the client is taken to the hospital. We call the police to take them if we have to. As a parent, you do have the responsibility of keeping your child alive and healthy if you possibly can.

But even if you can control someone physically, you have not controlled the mind, the heart or the will. A child or teen has to find internal motivation to make positive choices and changes in his or her life and the seeds for internal motivation are planted by parents through nurturing, modeling, and providing structure. Other than in the extreme cases afore mentioned, acts of force serve only to bruise and break the heart and soul of young people – hindering personal growth and only stoking the fires of rebellion as your child gets older. So if your child is running towards the street, catch them. If they say they have a plan to harm themselves, seek help immediately. But if you find yourself in a panic when you realize the outcome you were hoping for is not going to transpire, think before you launch in to fear-driven fight for domination.

So what happens if you deliver an unequivocal failure?

What if your child swears at you and you swear back? What if she makes a threat and you counter with an even bigger one? What if you say she cannot leave this house and she walks right out the door? Two components make it possible to still turn terrible control battles in relational victories.

First, you must have a structure in place for offenses before those offenses are made. House rules and the consequences for breaking them should be agreed on by the parents and as children grow, they may provide more input. These house rules and their consequences should be posted in the house so there is no confusion about what is expected and what will happen if one defies the expectations. This provides teenagers especially the opportunity to build long term perspective and a pension to think about the consequences of their choices. It also saves you from trying to make a sound judgment in the midst of a harsh climate.

The final opportunity to salvage your efforts of teaching a primary lesson, after the loss of a control battle, is to acknowledge your own faults, offer forgiveness and pursue reconciliation. If you behaved badly, you need to have the humility to apologize to your child and ask forgiveness. Also, if your child tries to apologize to you, you need to forgive them graciously. Admitting fault and reconciling without the holding of grudges is a critical part of teaching how to love others and love self unconditionally – which is the greatest lesson of all.

Control is an illusion.

Some people discover this reality when a tragedy strikes and they realize that no matter how well prepared, no matter what prior knowledge they may have had, they could not affect the end result. The battle for control is an age-old struggle that has led to more suffering, death, war, and vain pursuit than any other philosophical concept in existence. It has re-organized continents, lead to the systematic elimination of entire people groups, and been the basis of slavery for millennia.

The greatest tragedy of all is that it has, indeed, been for nothing; an attempt to harness a concept that cannot be established in reality for any significant period of time. Whether it be between two superpowers or two people, a control battle can only end in a lose-lose scenario. Still, there is a hunger in us, a clawing desire to establish a sense of control over ourselves, our environment, our future, or over others. This internal battle is what makes tyrants and dictators out of presidents and parents alike. Since I have little sway over the political powers that be, I will instead offer some helpful insights on how parents can avoid the cursed control battle with their kids.

When you start down the road of an argument with your child, there are questions you should be asking yourself:

1) What is my point?

2) What action should I take?

3) Is this a battle I can win?

4) What will happen if I lose this battle?

These first two points will be addressed in the first half of this article.

First, your answer to question number one needs to relate directly to one of the basic responsibilities we have as parents. Those responsibilities are:

1) Teaching our children to love and respect themselves

2) Teaching our children to love and respect others

3) Teaching children the basic societal principles of honesty, reliability, modesty, and charity.

If the point of your battle is not related to these three points, it is not appropriate. If you are in a role of power over another, such as in the parent-child relationship, you have the responsibility to behave with maturity and selfless intent because you already have the upper hand of a power position.

So, even if your teenager has adopted a “tone” and is calling you “lame,” you should not say “You’re lame!” with hands on hips and cancel those plans she just made as you think “I’ll show her to be rude to me.” While this is an understandable reaction and not even necessarily the wrong consequence, the nature of the punishment is actually selfish and comes from a place of woundedness. In a peer-to-peer relationship there is more freedom to express personal feelings because we can’t ground our friends for being rude. We meet them on an even plane of mutual respect and the power differential doesn’t hamstring peers in their ability to defend themselves. But in the parent-child relationship, children do not have the maturity to respond appropriately, nor do they have the ability to express themselves freely for fear of further punishment. Therefore, modeling proper behavior in a conflictual setting is arguably the most effective way of teaching children how to be respectful.

After determining your point is in line with basic parenting goals, it’s vital to consider the variables influencing your child’s behavior before deciding how lenient or severe your action should be.  Is your child ill, engulfed in other social or academic turmoil, or low on sleep? Are you are at home, in the car, or in a public place? Are her or your friends around? Is this behavior typical or unusual? If this is a rare occurrence and you’re at home alone, a verbal reprimand may be sufficient for getting back on track. If she is showing off for her friends and this has become a pattern, more severe disciplinary action may be required to correct the course. If she is overwhelmed by college applications and Susie just kissed Johnny and she likes Johnny, you may remind her that you understand she is under a lot of stress, so you’re going to give her a chance to rephrase her statement.

Once you’ve decided your point is valid and made your attempt at correction or discipline, things can go one of two ways. Either your response evokes a compliant and apologetic counter- response, or it serves to escalate things into a full blown battle for control. If it’s the former, you need to be prepared ahead of time for how you will navigate victory or defeat. Read part two for these valuable insights. We will address the role of pursuing a victory in relational conflict and how to recover from a defeat.

We’ve talked about some causes of The Three year Twitch so you can spot the warning signs – now let’s talk about some strategies you and your spouse can do to limit insecurities and keep The Three Year Twitch to a minimum.

As insecurity and pressure mounts, and satisfaction in the relationship decreases, couples become high risk for sabotage. Sabotage is the act of fouling up your own team from within in order to control an anticipated negative outcome. If it seems inescapable that the enemy is going to capture your fort and all the weapons therein, sabotage dictates that you damage all your own weapons and burn your own fort to the ground so at least you can control the terms of your retreat and minimize the damage the enemy can inflict on you with your own defenses.

This is the phenomenon I see most often in marriages where one or both partners feel insecure and criticized. As a result, around year three or four, before there are kids, people may begin to behave badly. Rather than try to bear up under a critical spousal eye, invest even more deeply in the relationship and therefore, prove your love once again can stand the test of trial and time, many people say “What’s the use? Obviously he or she is falling out of love with me so why would I try even harder- so I can be even more hurt when this thing blows up?”

The most common form of sabotage is having an inappropriate relationship with someone outside the marriage. Cheating is still the most universal relational no-no in both the religious and secular community. If you want to control the dissolve of your marriage and your worst fear is that your spouse will leave you, having an affair first is the most fool-proof way to seal your marital doom.

If we extrapolate this out a step further, we also find that acts of sabotage are fed by one of the primary human fears: fear of abandonment. Although people often want their own way, if we are honest with ourselves, we would sacrifice nearly anything to save a genuine connection with another soul. But fear and love are equally powerful motivators and sometimes fear is even more forceful- when the instinct to protect self is in play.

Fear of abandonment is caused by trauma in primary relationships at any age that has not been worked through and resolved. It is safe to assert that everyone experiences heartbreak or disappointment at some point in their early life, but it is the process of grieving and resolving the trauma that releases us from the long term relational problems abandonment or betrayal can create. If your life experience includes the break- up of your own parents, long absences of either or both parents during childhood, abuse of any kind from a primary caregiver, significant other, or even a bully at school; if you’ve been cheated on, harshly punished, or experienced intensely conditional love from a person who was expected to love you unconditionally, the urge to sabotage is likely familiar. Rest assured there are tangible and practical ways to ensure that you and your spouse weather the storms caused by risk in relationship, and come out of them tested and stronger than ever.

First and foremost I suggest that if you relate to any of the primary causes of fear of abandonment listed in this article and you don’t feel resolution, regardless if you’ve had counseling previously, consider seeking counseling. For fear of abandonment or a tendency to sabotage, see a therapist experienced in grief, trauma, and marital counseling. Including your spouse in your process towards healing is an excellent way to draw nearer to one another- as vulnerability activates the nurturing impulse in all of us. If you are confused about what attracted you to your spouse or you feel estranged from him or her, seek a therapist who will utilize psychodynamic, existential, or other forms of self-psychology to help you learn more about yourself. If the discussion about kids is bringing up issues from your own childhood, or you and your spouse have a hard time deciding how you will raise your children, seek a therapist experienced in family systems, marital, and/or developmental models.

If you don’t believe you are ready or in need of counseling, simply adopting a more open, honest, and genuine posture towards your spouse and yourself can help tone down tension and misunderstandings. If you have concerns about patterns in your relationship or how you will co-parent, write them out to clarify your own thoughts and ask your spouse to sit down with you at a designated time to discuss. Let your spouse know ahead of time what you’d like to talk about so your other half can also gather his or her thoughts and contribute meaningfully to the conversation. Often times, we begin talking about who was supposed to do the dishes and end up yelling out why it means you’ll be a terrible parent. When things escalate this way and get intense so quickly, there are deeper issues melting into smaller more trivial matters. Take the time to address these, and soon, before they get built up and seem overwhelming.

Finally, decide to trust your partner, and yourself, unless you have been given gross and overt reasons not to. If your spouse, to your knowledge, has not cheated on you or violated your trust in some other dramatic way- do not waste your emotional energy fretting over whether he has or he will and what that will do to you. Make the firm decision today not to live in fear. Instead, remember the promises you’ve made to one another and trust in that commitment. Treat your spouse as you would like to be treated and adopt a positive outlook that expects success in your relationship. You can make it through the Three Year Twitch and if it gets a little too twitchy, we are here to help.

Come attend this free event during the 9:30am or 11am services to learn what you need to know before your kids go online and how to create Internet guidelines that work for your family. Compass Church is located at 1551 E. Hobson Road in Naperville. See you then!

She’s Talitha, a shepherd/lab mix who is certified with Therapy Dogs International and owned by Stenzel counselor Suzanne Clarey. Suzanne talked with The Glancer this month about pet therapy and how Talitha connects with clients to create a uniquely therapeutic environment.

“Dogs are non-judgmental and an accepting presence. They intuitively know what people need more than people do sometimes. It’s remarkable that a dog can sometimes do things that I cannot.”

– Suzanne Clarey, Stenzel Clinical Counselor (and Tali’s owner)

Enjoy this article and learn how animals like Tali help in healing.

Both events are FREE and will be at The Compass Church during the 9:30am and 11am services. That’s 1551 E. Hobson Road in Naperville. If you have any questions about attending, call Stenzel Clinical at 630.588.1201.