#JointheConversation
During my 8½ year tenure at PCS (Psychological Counseling Services, Ltd) I sat in many sessions during the PCS intensives with some clients (most clients were from out-of-state) who expressed their reluctance to step outside their zone of familiarity. They were sitting in the middle of an extensive and extended outpatient treatment process with others and seemingly having strong insights and meaningful awareness as it pertains to their particular addiction or situation. Yet, these particular clients were expressly reluctant to plan on staying connected to their new peers at that time with whom they had been open and transparent and the peers themselves had been vulnerable and deeply honest about their pasts and painful choices. Equally these clients were adamant that back home they hadn’t been connecting with their peers outside of their regular recovery meetings either. These clients expressed various ways that they weren’t good at that sort of thing nor were they comfortable with that. Curious, I regularly inquired as to the hesitation to form bonds of support back home or with their new PCS peers beyond that current week, as this was often a recommendation for increased likelihood of recovery and accountability. These clients stated things such as, “I have tried inviting my peers to go out or to hang out after hours but they have declined or couldn’t. I am certain that if they would go with me then I would find that more comfortable for me to ask them to exchange numbers for continued contact after the Intensive we are in.” But due to their peers not taking these clients up on their offers, even for legitimate reasons, these clients would express that they had done their part and that was that, and nothing more could be done… and this was often about as far as they would try even back home.
“Oh really?” I would say. And in many of those moments I was struck with a memory of an old parable I would share of a man searching for wisdom from a great master guru and the lesson of fighting for your life despite limitations, doubts, and fears, culminating with the thought…
After recounting this parable and its message I would look into these clients’ eyes and say, “When you want your marriage, your integrity, your family, your health, and your recovery as much as you want to breathe… that’s when you’ll do whatever it takes, no matter the discomfort or unfamiliarity. To this they would typically sit there at that point, quiet and pensive… and eventually respond with something to the effect of… “Mark, that’s a hard truth to hear… and even harder to ignore. "I know what I need to do. But how do I do it?” To that I would say, “I’m so glad you asked, because there is hope!” And that is when the next level of their work continued.
These clients are no different from average citizens. As humans go we tend to stick with the familiar and comfortable. However, as experience has taught us, it is the adversity, the discomfort, and the challenge that pushes us to new and greater heights. This was so in my own healing journey, and so it has been for so many of my clients along the path of my career. Thus, I look forward to many more of them being encouraged and challenged to step beyond the familiar and into the initially uncomfortable recovery path.
Mark Bell, LMFT, CSAT: a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT) and a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) currently with Arizona Family Institute whose career includes almost 9 years at Psychological Counseling Services in Scottsdale, AZ as a member of the PCS Intensive Outpatient Program and nearly 3 years as a primary therapist in Hattiesburg, MS at Gentle Path, an in-patient treatment center for Sexual Addiction under the direction of Dr. Patrick Carnes. Most importantly, Mark has been married 14 years to his wife, Dyan, and together they are the parents of 5 kids… all boys!" You can find out more about Mark and his practice at Arizona Family Institute.
Blog Disclaimer
The Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health (SASH) sponsors this blog for the purpose of furthering dialog in the field of problematic sexual behaviors and their treatment. Blog authors are encouraged to share their thoughts and share their knowledge. However, SASH does not necessarily endorse the content or conclusions of bloggers.
Information in blogs may not always be complete, up-to-date, accurate, relevant, or applicable to all situations. Legislation, case law, standards, regulations, descriptions of products and services, and other information are often complex and can change rapidly. Always double-check and confirm that any information you find on the internet is accurate, current, and complete in regard to your specific situation, question, concern, or interests.
This website and its agents make no promises, guarantees, representations, or warranties, expressed or implied, and assume no duty or liability with regard to the information contained herein or associated in any way therewith. No legal or other professional services are being rendered and nothing is intended to provide such services or advice of any kind. The inclusion of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or approval of those sites or their contents. This website bears no responsibility for the accuracy, legality or content of the external sites or for that of subsequent links. Those who visit or use this website, links or any other information assume all risks associated therewith.
Many betrayed partners enter therapy in a state of shock and disbelief, reeling from the discovery of their partner’s extracurricular sexual behaviors. They sit on my couch and tell me they had no idea, not even an inkling, of what their significant other was doing. They have been caught off guard, unaware, and they can’t believe this is happening to them.
I listen to their stories, and I know that their shock and bewilderment is real and they truly did not know what was happening. But, at the same time, I also know that they did know.
I know this because in the weeks that follow they inevitably tell me stories about their relationship and various clues they overlooked. I hear about previous infidelities; about finding pornography, condoms, and secret Internet accounts; about changes in the nature of their sex life and their sense of emotional intimacy; about conversations, conflicts, accusations, and denials all indicating the presence of a problem.
Yet they still did not know. Even though they knew.
How does this happen? How do betrayed partners know but not know? And where does the part of them that does know go?
In the past, this type of behavior has been labelled “denial” and addressed as a form of codependence on the part of the betrayed partner. Today, thanks to an enormous amount of research on attachment, affect regulation, and the mind-body connection, we have new models that help us dig deeper and better understand the function and purpose of these knowing-but-not-knowing behaviors.
Jennifer Freyd, PhD, one of the seminal researchers on the topic of betrayal trauma, has spent years investigating why people don’t allow themselves to see the betrayal that is unfolding right in front of their eyes and why they do not remember the traumas after they have happened. In short, she has explored the question, “What would make someone literally not see and not know that which is easily seeable and knowable?”
To answer to this question, Freyd has connected what we know about the nature of human attachment with what we know about the ways in which humans are hardwired to respond to traumatic events.
When we pair up and enter into a long-term relationship, we begin a process of bonding with one another that is a beautiful and profound intertwining of two lives. In this mysterious attachment, we start to physically operate as one biological organism. As attachment experts Rachel Heller and Amir Levine write, “Numerous studies show that once we become attached to someone, the two of us form one physiological unit. Our partner regulates our blood pressure, our heart rate, our breathing and the levels of hormones in our blood.”[1]
As our bond grows through perhaps getting married, combining our homes, having children together, and working toward common goals, we become more and more interdependent with one another. And this is not codependency. This is healthy, normal, mutual dependency – the basic interconnectivity that makes relationships fulfilling and sought after.
If it is true that when we attach to someone healthy and functional, it feels good and provides a sense of security, grounding, safety, and wholeness, then the opposite is also true. When we attach to someone who is less than healthy – sexually addicted, for example – it can affect our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health in teeth-rattling ways.
Instead of grounding us, it puts us in freefall. Instead of security, we experience fear. Because our partner has caused us such deep pain, that individual now feels like a threat to our wellbeing rather than a source of comfort and safety. This danger is often experienced as a primal threat to the our emotional, psychological, and perhaps even physical survival.
When we experience events that create a sense of threat or danger, whether physical or emotional, the threat center in our brains (the amygdala) lights up and we react to the threat in one of three hardwired ways. We fight, confronting the threat in order to remove it and return to safety, or we flee, withdrawing from the threat to a place where we are safe, or we freeze, staying in place while our body shuts down and our minds go numb. Generally, if we can fight or flee, we will. When fight and flight are not available (or are perceived as unavailable), our freeze response kicks in.
Based on her research, Freyd has argued that the behaviors of not seeing and not knowing in those dealing with betrayal trauma are forms of the freeze response.[2] Rather than confronting the cheating partner or withdrawing from the relationship, betrayed partners go numb and fail to witness and process information about the betrayal. This allows them to continue operating in the relationship as though it remains safe. It allows them to preserve the relational bond that they often unconsciously believe they need to survive.
When we bring together what we know about attachment theory and how our threat response system operates, it creates the following equation for betrayed partners:
Freyd has called this survival-based form of not seeing and not knowing “betrayal blindness.”[3] One of the most important things to note about betrayal blindness is that it is an unconscious process. Betrayed partners are not consciously saying to themselves, “I don’t think I’ll let myself know about that.” Instead, their bodies register danger before the information moves into conscious awareness. Their coping strategies instinctually move to protect them by blocking out the information, rationalizing it away, or in some way keeping it from landing in conscious awareness where they would have to deal with it. This instinctual survival response ensures that one plus one does not ever add up to two in ways that would rob them of their primary relationship and the sense of safety and connection it provides.
Understanding the internal unconscious mechanisms driving betrayal blindness is imperative in order to treat betrayal blindness effectively while avoiding further unintentional, traumatization of the betrayed partner. Betrayed partners need active intervention balanced with empathic support to move out of the state of simultaneously knowing but not knowing into a state of fully integrated conscious awareness.
My experience working with betrayed partners has shown that clients come out of betrayal blindness as their internal capacity to cope with the information they have been avoiding grows. Often, the initial therapeutic task is to grow the person’s internal strength, confidence, and sense of self to the point that they are able to look fully at what is happening in their relationship and survive it emotionally, even when it is incredibly painful. This is a slow and gentle process, requiring a skilled therapist who can balance challenging the client’s defenses with nonjudgmental empathetic support.
This process begins to move the client into a more conscious form of knowing but not knowing. They become aware of the not knowing and the purpose and function of that coping mechanism. With support, they are able to consider what it would be like to allow themselves to know and they start to imagine a world in which they can tolerate the information, survive it emotionally and begin to integrate it fully into their experience.
Michelle Mays LPC, CSAT-S is the founder and Clinical Director of the Center for Relational Recovery with offices in Leesburg, VA and Washington DC. She has spent the last 16 years specializing in treating sex addiction, betrayal trauma, relationship issues and childhood trauma. She is also the founder of PartnerHope, an online resource for betrayed partners and has recently published the book, The Aftermath of Betrayal.
References
[1] Levine, A. & Heller R. (2010). Attached: The new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find—and keep—love. Penguin.
[2] Freyd, J., & Birrell, P. (2013). Blind to betrayal: Why we fool ourselves we aren't being fooled. John Wiley & Sons.
[3] Ibid.
Blog Disclaimer
The Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health (SASH) sponsors this blog for the purpose of furthering dialog in the field of problematic sexual behaviors and their treatment. Blog authors are encouraged to share their thoughts and share their knowledge. However, SASH does not necessarily endorse the content or conclusions of bloggers.
Information in blogs may not always be complete, up-to-date, accurate, relevant, or applicable to all situations. Legislation, case law, standards, regulations, descriptions of products and services, and other information are often complex and can change rapidly. Always double-check and confirm that any information you find on the internet is accurate, current, and complete in regard to your specific situation, question, concern, or interests.
This website and its agents make no promises, guarantees, representations, or warranties, expressed or implied, and assume no duty or liability with regard to the information contained herein or associated in any way therewith. No legal or other professional services are being rendered and nothing is intended to provide such services or advice of any kind. The inclusion of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or approval of those sites or their contents. This website bears no responsibility for the accuracy, legality or content of the external sites or for that of subsequent links. Those who visit or use this website, links or any other information assume all risks associated therewith.
A new conversation is happening in educational circles, with many speaking up about the need for kids and teens to become ‘porn literate’. It is increasingly evident that kids cannot cope with the onslaught of pornographic images they can openly access at the click of a button. Some kids mimic what they see in their behaviours towards others; some are traumatised when attempting to understand images their immature brains can’t process. Kids need to have protection and resources made available to them.
However, ‘Porn Literacy’ may fail to effectively address porn culture, particularly if it’s the version advocated for by UK voice Jenni Murray, who recently suggested carefully chosen examples of pornography could be shown in classrooms to teenagers from the age of 15.
Proponents of this approach may need to better understand neuroscience. The brain, particularly throughout adolescence, is still under construction and at higher risk of developing unhealthy patterns of behaviours. The ‘brakes’ of the developing prefrontal cortex need strengthening through continual ‘smart choices’ as young people mature. Given the existing evidence of risks associated with internet porn use, showing porn in classrooms could cause more harm to young minds at risk.
Other versions of ‘Porn Literacy’ would increase access to sexual information, encourage young people to study media literacy, and engage them in conversation about gender, race, consent, and power. These versions promote sexual pleasure and productive solutions to sexual harm. Students would ponder questions such as ‘What role does porn play in your life and relationships?’; ‘What messages about yourself or about potential (or current) sexual partners do you receive from porn?’; ‘How do these messages align with your values and real life actions?’; and ‘What feelings come up for you before, during, and after you watch porn? Is it a positive, entertaining experience, or does it cause you some level of distress?’
These approaches seem rational and reasonable; however, they only tell part of the story related to sexual health education of young people and the broader community.
To raise kids to make autonomous choices, we need something much stronger than ‘porn literacy’. We need ‘Critical Porn Analysis’, which is a much tougher conversation. This approach asks how porn is impacting the health of individuals, relationships, families, communities and nations. And it asks kids and teens to play a conscientious role in healing any harms done thus far.
Critical Porn Analysis teaches kids online protective behaviours including: the impact of pornography on the brain and arousal physiology of the body when viewing ‘scenes’ that are not part of most sexual relationships; the addictive potential of internet pornography; the potential for erectile dysfunction and arousal disorders; body image issues and performance anxieties; the possible correlation between pornography use and relationship dissatisfaction and divorce; discussion about violence within mainstream hardcore pornography; and consideration of the cultural impacts of sexual exploitation.
Educating our kids and teens about the impact of porn on sexual health is important and advocating for ‘porn literacy’, requires a few more questions be answered.
A portion of this article was originally published by Generation Next
Liz Walker is an accredited sexuality educator, speaker, author, and Director of Health Education at Culture Reframed. Liz is a passionate advocate for children and young people. and Chairs the Australian organisation Porn Harms Kids, addressing the harms of children and young people accessing online pornography.
Here's a look back at our successful 2015 SASH conference!
