Recovery

Recovery is still a bit hard on my ears -- even a year into my recovery.  Thinking I need to recover when I am not the one in addiction sat heavy on my heart in the beginning.  Looking back on this last year to the places I've been and the steps I have taken, it has indeed been a recovery for me.  Or at least the beginning of one.

In the early years the only thing I knew to do when my marriage felt 'in trouble' was to seek out professional counseling.  That never worked for me because it never really addressed the issues.  In all fairness to the counselors, it couldn't work when issues were buried deep within me and within my husband.

Early 2013, while on a business trip with my husband, I was sitting at the little desk in our hotel room reading email.  I happened upon an announcement for a free online class on Betrayal Trauma.  I remember reading through it rather quickly and hitting delete.  Then some where in the middle of the next couple of e-mail that phrase 'betrayal trauma' hit me like a ton of bricks.  Scrambling back through the places I had been I found the email with the announcement, clicked on the link and signed up.

What happened after that change me forever and set me on my path of recovery.

The course I took was offered by Addo Recovery (http://addorecovery.com).  I can not recommend it enough.  The terms Dr. Skinner taught me set me free.  The tools he taught gave me something to hold on to in tough times.  The education I received from those eight weeks saved me.   The women I have met because of Addo offer me connections to women who share similar experiences that bond us together in a sisterhood I have never before experienced.

After my eight-week course ended, I was given an opportunity to continue with Addo via an online group counseling.  In these sessions I was able to continue to work through the tools and concepts taught during the original course and talk through them with a therapist and group members.  It was during these group session I was introduced to the Healing Through Christ 12-step program.

I have benefited greatly from a combined effort of spiritual (HTC) and temporal (Betrayal Trauma) programs.  The HTC program fit well with the foundations of my faith.  Helping me to apply principles of the atonement as I worked my recovery.  Betrayal Trauma therapy provides me the language and tools to better understand logically the addiction's affect on the wife.

As I look back on this past year at what I have accomplished I need to state that I am in no way recovered.  Truth be told, I have just begun to uncover the damage of 24 years of living with an addicted spouse.  I am now comfortable with the thought of being in recovery and knowing that process will take years.  As I study more on betrayal trauma and work my 12-steps I am getting to know me, I'm learning better coping skills, better communication skills.  I am learning to set boundaries.  To have a personal bill of rights and to hold on to my non-negotiables as things I need to feel safe.

My husband in not currently in any recovery program.  In fact,  he has never admitted to being an addict.  I'm not sure if he ever will.  That doesn't matter to me.  What does matter is taking care of myself.  What matters is what happened to me because of what my husband did.  What matters is being able to get real with all of that for me -- regardless of who knows or who agrees with what I went through.  I was there -- it happened to me -- and that is enough for me to give myself permission to seek out a path of recovery.

Why do we need recovery?  All of us, the addict and the family members affected by it?
Here's the best answer I have seen:


(taken from a post at www.rowboatsandmarbles.com) According to the LDS Church, education is key to protecting families from pornography. The sooner members of the LDS Church come to understand sex and pornography addiction as it really is, the sooner they can take their rightful places on the front lines in the battle for the souls of God’s children. Rather than being helpless spectators, they can save lives and marriages.