Recovery Apps

Posted on January 17, 2012
Filed Under Partners of pornography addicts, Pornography Addiction, self-care, St. George Utah Pornography Addiction Treatment | Leave a Comment

Even though smartphones and tablet devices are capable of delivering harmful content, such as pornography, they can also arm recovering men, women, and couples with powerful tools to help them along in their journey.

We recognize that many individuals in early recovery choose to rid themselves of smartphones and tablet devices to reduce accessibility to pornography. This article in no way suggests that these apps (or the devices  that run them) are necessary for successful recovery.

If you’re already using a smartphone or tablet, then we want to give you more tools and resources to help strengthen your efforts.

There are thousands of apps to help you enhance your recovery goals. Recovery categories can include: fitness, reading, healthy eating, money management, and so on. Here are a few of our favorites:

My Fitness Pal is a calorie tracking program that makes losing weight a lifestyle change instead of a passing fad. Using MyFitnessPal is very simple. Here’s how their basic process works: Based on your fitness profile, they will recommend a daily net calorie target for you to achieve your weight loss (or gain) goals. As you eat and exercise throughout the day, you need to log your meals and exercise in the Food and Exercise diaries. MyFitnessPal will calculate the number of calories you’ve consumed and burned from exercise and let you know how many calories you have left to eat for the day. If you stick within your calorie limits, you should achieve the weight loss you’re looking for. The best part of the system is that logging gets easier the more you do it. MyFitnessPal remembers the foods and exercises you like most and makes it easy for you to add those items to your diary. In just a few days, logging can be as fast as 30 seconds — it’s literally that easy. That’s it! Just a few minutes a day can show you so much about what you’re eating and how that impacts your health.

 

With Hazelden’s mobile applications, you’ll find the instant motivation you need to strengthen your recovery and inspire personal growth no matter where you are.  From apps based on their best-selling books that feature special enhancements like texts and video messages from the authors to those based on their best-selling meditation books, Hazelden mobile applications are there when you need them most, at the touch of your fingertips. Some of their most popular apps include Brene Brown’s “Gifts of Imperfection”, their daily affirmation books for both men and women, and their day at a time series.

 

 

Dr. John Gottman is known as one of the preeminent researchers on marriage and family relationships. He has developed a series of apps to help strengthen marriages and families. Some of our favorites include: “Your Child’s Love Map“, “Fun and Play“, “Open-ended Questions“, and “I Feel.”

These applications are based on more than 30 years of research on strengthening marriages and families. Learning how to access the emotional world of yourself, your partner, and your children is one of the most satisfying parts of life!

 

There are several apps designed to help provide spiritual strength on a daily basis. There are apps for members of the LDS faith, Protestant faiths, and so on. Reading scriptures, sermons, and listening to sacred music has never been more convenient. Many individuals in recovery report that having regular access to these spiritual resources helps them get refocused on what’s most important in their lives.

 

 

S-Recovery helps you recover from sex addiction or porn addiction. This is an added tool to help you live your life without addictive sex or pornography. What’s more, S-Recovery was created by two therapists who specialize in treating sex and porn addiction. With S-Recovery, you can…
• Easily track your number of days in recovery, reminding yourself of your progress.
• Set recovery goals for yourself that are easy to record and track.
• Graphically see patterns and correlations between your healthy activities, your moods, emotions, and desire to engage in addictive or compulsive behavior.
• Learn how healthy activities improve your mood and decrease triggers.
• Set attainable goals.
• Stay in recovery by reminding yourself why you are doing it and what you have to lose.
• Allow technology to help with recovery, rather than making it more difficult.
• Help protect your confidentiality with password protection.
• Easily keep track of your recovery time and navigate to daily logs.
• Rate your mood and emotions daily. Also rate your acting-out risk level.
• S-Recovery’s Graph function enables you to see connections between your mood, emotions, and risk level over time.
•Enter a picture of someone who inspires you to be in recovery. Also enter names, goals, ideas of other inspirations.

The North Face® Trailhead App finds trails, hikes, bike routes and more based on your location. You can even search by activity and length. Whether you’ve selected an existing trip or started a new one, Trailhead tracks your route, distance, speed and elevation in real-time.
•Search from over 300,000 trails, hikes and bike routes.
•Find trips by activity, length and location
•Track your route with a real-time interactive map via GPS
•View your distance, speed, elevation and more

Shamed – Help Make this Documentary a Reality!

Posted on January 17, 2012
Filed Under In the news/media, Pornography Addiction | Leave a Comment

For those of you who are personally, or through the life of a loved one, struggling with pornography or sex addictions in your lives, you understand the power of shame. You know how incapacitating it can be. You understand that until you can remove the shame from what you are going through, you cannot heal.

Jessica Mockett, a filmmaker based in Utah, is producing and directing a documentary feature film entitled Shamed. After nearly two years of research and study she has concluded that in conservative Christian cultures, shame is what keeps so many good people who would be righteous, faithful followers of Christ tethered and strapped to an addiction that leaves them feeling hopeless, unlovable, and unworthy of God’s protection and blessings.

Unlike guilt, shame tells us that we are bad people. But we are not. We are always worthy of love, though sometimes our actions or behaviors need to be curbed and changed. That is what life is for, it is an opportunity to be challenged and to embrace our weakness and make them strengths.

Shamed will look at how to remove the debilitating personal and group shame that exists around pornography and even healthy sexuality in conservative Christian communities. Those of us who would preach a balanced life of fidelity and healthy sexual appetites, are being drowned out by the pervasive messaging of an over-sexualized world. Our best protection is open, honest, healthy communication on pornography and sexual addiction, empowering the people we love to “SPEAK, LISTEN, and HEAL.”

Jessica and her very talented, experienced team are raising funds for this amazing project. They have begun a campaign on the site Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a platform that allows for a lot of people to donate small amounts of money to a creative project. Kickstarter’s rules are such that you must set a financial goal and a deadline. If the project does not meet its goal by the deadline it does not receive any of the money raised, and consequently, anyone who donated will not be charged.

Shamed set an ambitious goal of $40,000 with a deadline of Feb 14, 2012. The team felt confident that there were at least 400 people in the world who would each donate $100 to this great cause. At 8 days into the campaign they are at about $8,000. The response is such that everyone is adamantly agreeing that a message like this is needed and important, yet few are putting forth funds. The film will not happen without reaching this goal.

The team is asking for those of you who know what the struggle is like, who know very well that thousands and thousands of people are still suffering in silence, to take action and donate to this film. It will not happen without generous support. And it needs to happen. We need to get the message out to a broad Christian audience that shame is holding people back, to educate them on the subject, teach them to remove the shame, give them tools to communicate honestly about it, arm them with confidence that recovery is so very possible, and that life is so much happier on the other side of the addiction.

Do not fear that you can’t give very much. $25, $50, or $100 is a wonderful contribution, but any sized contribution gets Shamed closer to the goal. If you can afford more, please, give more.

Please visit the film’s Kickstarter Page to learn more about the project, the crew, and view a teaser trailer. Or visit the Shamed website. Feel free to email the filmmakers to ask them questions or to tell them if you want to share your personal story of dealing with a sex addiction in your life on film.

Your support is needed. Please share this information with everyone in your life who would be able to support this endeavor.

 

Falling Back in Love with Your Spouse

Posted on January 13, 2012
Filed Under Couples Pornography Addiction Recovery, Pornography Addiction, St. George Utah Pornography Addiction Treatment, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Couples who have experienced sexual betrayal often reach a point where they wonder if they can ever feel love again for their spouse. Many go through the necessary steps of healing, forgiveness, acceptance, and other recovery steps, but both feel like their love isn’t what it used to be. Infidelity expert Dave Carder shares some specific exercises couples can do to recapture the love they once felt.

Gratitude

Posted on December 16, 2011
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

One of the casualties of addiction and trauma is the loss of enjoyment of the world around us. Addiction and trauma numb the delicate sensitivity required to sense and feel the wonder of nature, the human connection to others, and our own spirituality. The journey of recovery awakens these sensitivities within us and opens us up to what feels like a new world. As you watch this video, notice what you feel as you watch and listen to the message.

Setting Boundaries During the Holidays

Posted on December 15, 2011
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Does the fear of offending friends or family members keep you from setting boundaries? It’s a timely topic with the holidays fast approaching. Therapist, Julie Hanks, says it’s ok to set boundaries, even if you offend someone.

Opening up in Recovery

Posted on November 15, 2011
Filed Under Pornography Addiction, St. George Utah Pornography Addiction Treatment | Leave a Comment

By Geoff Steurer, MS, LMFT
Director, LifeSTAR of St. George, UT

One of the most significant recovery tasks for both addicts and partners is having the courage to open up to others about their struggles. The thought of having to tell other people their story fills them with fear and dread. Of course, this is why most addicts and even partners, stay quiet for so many years, hoping that the problems will just go away.

Some of us may have been taught in our families to not share our problems with others. Perhaps we have had bad experiences opening up, or being caught, and vow never to experience the same rejection and humiliation.

Regardless of the reasons, it is a fact that something important happens when you open up to a safe person about your story. You begin to experience relief that you’re not the only one carrying the secret. Dividing up the weight of your story with other people is one of the best ways to begin healing from addiction.

This is why 12-step programs work so well. You walk into a room and instantly feel like you’re not the only one in the world struggling. There is a sense of relief that you’re not alone anymore. This relief is only available to those who have the courage to open up and talk to others about their struggles.

Now, I don’t recommend you open up to just anyone. The safest places to start are with professionals and support groups. These environments will almost always be a positive experience. However, it’s not going to be enough to only talk with professionals and groups of anonymous people. Your next step is to take the risk and open up to someone in your natural support system.

When you open up to your family and friends about your struggles, you want to make sure that you’re telling those individuals who can actually support you. Brene Brown, author of The Gifts of Imperfection warns that “if we share our shame story with the wrong person, they can easily become one more piece of flying debris in an already dangerous storm.” Make sure that person is someone who has earned the right to even know your story.

Additionally, if you’ve harmed other people through your addiction, then those individuals need to hear from you as well. They need to know that you’re taking the appropriate steps to make amends and that you’re fully accountable for the impact on their lives.

Sharing your story with safe people will reassure you that you’re not a bad person, only that you’ve done bad things that need to be corrected. There is a big difference between feeling like you’re a bad person versus recognizing you’ve done some bad things that can be corrected. The relief you’ll feel as others love and support you will be worth the risk of opening up about your story.

Secrets are the lifeblood of addiction and will only serve to fuel the addiction even further. Try reaching out and opening up to others as a way to get real relief from the pain of addiction.

Let me finish with one more thought from Brene Brown: “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

 

 

Healing the Brokenhearted

Posted on October 6, 2011
Filed Under In the news/media, Partners of pornography addicts, Pornography Addiction, St. George Utah Pornography Addiction Treatment | Leave a Comment

KSL Channel 5 out of Salt Lake City, UT, recently produced a documentary that offers viewers an inside look into the heartbreaking experiences of women and couples impacted by pornography and sexual addiction. The documentary is called “Healing the Brokenhearted” and aired between general conference sessions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with hundreds of comments and requests for a rebroadcast. The documentary is available for viewing online and will also rebroadcast on KSL Channel 5 on Sunday, October 9, 2011 at 11am MST.

 

Who Can We Talk To?

Posted on September 15, 2011
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

 

In this webisode, Dr. Jill Manning, a licensed marriage and family therapist, answers the question: Who can I talk to?

One thing that I found in my research with wives and also in my clinical work with women was this common thread of isolation. Women, even women who are well connected to friends and family and have a strong social network around them, will tend to feel very isolated when this issue arises in their lives.

And that isolation can be a very serious problem in and of itself because when you are isolated you are not reaching out and seeking resources that are available.

So when women ask me ‘Who can I turn to,” there are two things that come to mind:
1. Not everyone is ready to talk. Some people need time to step back, reflect, OK what’s going on, how did we get to this point and just become oriented.

And for those women I’d want them to know even if you are not wanting to talk, there are still many ways that you can get support. There are so many terrific books, blogs, online websites and resources online that you can get into and learn that you are not on your own and start brainstorming with some of those ideas that are available that way.

For women who need more direct, one-on-one help and to be talking, I encourage them to find someone that they trust, someone that has an understanding of this issue, or is at least curious about this issue, and perhaps they know nothing about it, but they are a trusting friend and confidant that is willing to be taught what your experience is like. And I think anyone like that can be a tremendous sounding board and support.

Now there is also professional helps. And more and more we see a wider range of support available for women to speak one on one in a confidential setting to get ideas and support for how to navigate this tricky and complex issue.

Jill C. Manning, Ph.D., is a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in research and clinical work related to pornography and its impact on marriages and families. She was selected to be a visiting Social Science Fellow at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., and as a result, testified before a Senate sub-committee on the harms of pornography. She is the author of “What’s the Big Deal about Pornography?: A Guide for the Internet Generation,” and the newly released CD, “Let’s Talk about the Elephant in the Room: How LDS Women Can Protect Families from Pornography.”

Mentally Practice Your Way Out of Craving

Posted on September 15, 2011
Filed Under General Sexual Addiction, Pornography Addiction | Leave a Comment

By: Mark Chamberlain, PhD

When I worked at a preschool for autistic children, we went through a peculiar routine every time one of them failed to follow directions.

“Kevin, it’s time to clean up.” Little Kevin was oblivious. “Kevin, please put your toy away.” He kept playing with the truck. “Kevin, you need to put your toy away.” No response.

Now it was my job to walk over and guide little Kevin’s body through the motions of cleaning up. “Kevin, it’s time to clean up.” Placing my hand over his, I’d guide his hand down and help him pick up the toy truck with it. I would them walk him over to the toy bin and help him drop the truck in. There you go Kevin. That’s the way we clean up.

With that, we would have been done–if I’d had my way.

But I wasn’t in charge. I was following a treatment program. So instead of getting on with the reading activity that was next on the schedule, I’d pick up the little truck, walk Kevin back over to where he’d been playing, and drop the truck on the ground again, where we repeated the whole thing.

“Kevin, it’s time to clean up.” The guiding of his hand, the picking up of the toy, the walking to the bin, and the dropping of the toy in the right place.

Then we did it again. And again. For a total of ten reps. If you’re thinking, “Wow, that would get old,” you’re right. It got really old.

But drudgery was not the goal. I wasn’t punishing Kevin into submission. Push the little Sisyphus’s rock down the hill again and make him do it all over again.

The developer of our program, Dr. Ivar Lovaas, knew that impaired nervous systems need more repetition in order to acquire skills and generate them independently when they’re called for. It wasn’t enough for Kevin’s mentally distant mind to know what he needed to do next. His brain and body needed to be conditioned: This instruction goes with this behavior. See, this instruction goes with this behavior. And, as if that weren’t enough, this instruction… You get the idea.

The principle of repetitive conditioning can be very helpful to those of us in the habit of repeatedly engaging in self-destructive behavior.

In the throes of a craving, our nervous systems are impaired, in a way. We are mentally distant, not unlike little Kevin. It’s as though the mind’s in a thick forest, and can only see one path from here: succumbing to the urge.

Every time you take that path in the heat of the moment and end up acting out, why not go back to that forest after things have cooled off and make a few practice runs, mentally? Imagine taking a better path, one you hope to take in the future.

Olivia was excited to practice this exercise. She’d relapsed four days ago. I had her imagine sitting at the computer again and having the urge to view pornography. She dwelt on that for 30 seconds. Then she imagined standing up, walking out of her dorm room, and then outside for some fresh air. She repeated to herself these thoughts, which we’d come up with earlier:

“Walking away feels good now and builds strength for later.”
“I won’t have to suffer the usual guilt and discouragement.”
“It will feel good to have conquered this problem by the time I leave for summer break.”

She spent time dwelling on each thought and associating it with the trigger situation: being alone in her dorm room with the urge to view pornography.

Then, she thought about a second scenario where she found pornography tempting: watching TV late at night. After thirty seconds of focusing on it, she imagined standing up, turning off the TV, and walking into the bathroom to get ready for bed.
“Walking away feels good now and builds strength for later.”
“I won’t have to suffer the usual guilt and discouragement.”
“It will feel good to have conquered this problem by the time I leave for summer break.”
Olivia practiced imagining being in a state of craving and then taking a different path this way for ten minutes a day over the next month. It built her capacity for standing up to cravings and making a different choice in the heat of the moment.

Sex as an Addiction Officially Recognized by American Society of Addiction Medicine

Posted on August 17, 2011
Filed Under Pornography Addiction, St. George Utah Pornography Addiction Treatment | Leave a Comment

For years, the idea that sex could be addictive was scoffed at by medical professionals, therapists, and others. Many believed that it was simply an excuse for bad behavior and weak morals. However, anyone who has ever worked with individuals who struggle with sexually compulsive behaviors can testify that the pull and power of these behaviors over individuals who struggle looks a lot like addiction.

Now, we are one step closer to officially calling it an addiction.

The American Society for Addiction Medicine recently released an updated definition of addiction, which now includes sex and other process addictions (like gambling, shopping, etc). They recognize that people can get a “high” from these activities that impacts their brains, emotions, relationships, and lives in the same way drugs and alcohol do.

I especially like their “ABCs” of addiction that help clarify whether someone really has an addiction:

Addiction is characterized by:

  1. Inability to consistently Abstain;
  2. Impairment in Behavioral control;
  3. Craving; or increased “hunger” for drugs or rewarding experiences;
  4. Diminished recognition of significant problems with one’s behaviors and interpersonal relationships; and
  5. A dysfunctional Emotional response.

 

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