Day 63. Psalm 63.

My comments on Psalm 63 appear in the (parentheses.)

Psalm 63New International Version (NIV)

A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah.

1 

You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.

(King David is not speaking with symbolism. He literally thirsts. David has the ability to connect his pain to his relationship with God. No cursing here. No gnarly attitude toward God because of David’s suffering.)

2 

I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.

(David loved the ritual of worship.  The Psalms are his narrative of ritual. Rituals are vital for people who suffer. Rituals create order and bring soothing in chaos. What are your rituals? What are you teaching your family about rituals in traumatic events?)

3 

Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.

(The love of God is superior. Better than living is the life I live with you, Oh Lord. Trauma’s impact can be lessened by deep relationships after the painful event.  David’s sanity through the attempted murders, persecution, and betrayal by his own son, was nurtured  by the presence and love of God.  Note how David connects to God in the thirst.)

4 

I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.

5 

I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

6 

On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.

(Ahhhh…now he’s talking my language. One of the symptoms of trauma is sleeplessness.  Anxiety pumps adrenalin. Adrenalin is not a good sleep agent. David remembers and focuses on relationship with God in the sleeplessness of his pain.)

7 

Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.

(David senses both presence and protection from God.)

8 

I cling to you;
your right hand upholds me.

(I hold onto the Lord in the night watch of sleeplessness and worry.)

9 

Those who want to kill me will be destroyed;
they will go down to the depths of the earth.

10 

They will be given over to the sword
and become food for jackals.

11 

But the king will rejoice in God;
all who swear by God will glory in him,
while the mouths of liars will be silenced.

(Have you been hurt? Do not do life alone as a ritual. Consistently and passionately do the trauma of your story with others as though being together is a sacrament, something holy. Pursue strength in a group of loving people. Connect to your therapist. Seek the Lord. Your pain will lose its power in connection with healthy people who love God.  Hope. Is.)

References:

Trauma disorders represent a unique form of psychopathology; they cannot occur without exposure to an event(s). However, exposure is a necessary, but not sufficient criterion for the development of trauma-related disorders. “There is recent recognition that the larger family context in which children live and the amount of family support they receive following trauma can be a powerful mediator between trauma and negative outcomes (Banyard, Rozelle, & Englund, 2001, p. 74).

Researchers theorize that maintenance of rituals has healthy consequences for families, especially for children and, to date, have generated strong empirical evidence for this hypothesis. Studies clearly demonstrate that the constructive use of family rituals is reliably linked to family health and to psychosocial adjustment in children. Initial investigation of the potential mediating role of family rituals was with alcoholic families. In a series of studies, Wolin and Bennett found couples deliberate in planning their family’s ritual life and who then successfully followed through on those plans evidenced significantly less transmission of alcoholism into their family than couples who were not as deliberate (Bennett et al., 1988a; Wolin, Bennett, & Noonan, 1979). Deliberateness also included keeping rituals distinct from the alcohol abuse behavior. Furthermore, regardless of the presence of alcoholism in the family, children living in families low on deliberateness showed more behavior problems than children from highly deliberate families (Bennett et al., 1988a; Bennett, Wolin, & Reiss, 1988b). Several studies (Fiese, 1992; Hawkins, 1999) replicated these early findings.

”Protecting children from the dangers of urban poverty ☆ Laurel J. Kiser ⁎ University of Maryland at Baltimore, Division of Services Research, 737 West Lombard Street, Fifth Floor, Baltimore, MD 21201, United States Received 25 January 2005; received in revised form 1 May 2006; accepted 12 July 2006

Women’s and Men’s Online Relationship Recovery Support Groups

“I don’t think America should elect any President in 2016. We need to be single a few years and find ourselves.”-Anonymous

Let’s add another descriptor to this humorous but captivating comment. How about America stays single and “celibate” for a couple years?  During our break, we examine what healthy sexuality means for children, students, and adults?

What burns my grits about this media mess and the sexual abuse language of another politician is the normalization of sexual violence.

Who supports conversation on healthy sexuality?  The only words I have heard from politicians speak sexual assault and violence.

Where are words of healing and health?

Religious folk offer none. Politically correct have zero input. We fear healthy conversation about sexuality, and at the same time have normalized the cruelest versions of sex abuse.

Time for a break from the mess.

Sex is intimacy. Patrick Carnes states, “Sex is intimacy, into my partner I see, into me my partner sees.” Intimacy is beautiful, mutual, consensual, cognitive, emotional, spiritual.

Adam and Eve, naked and un afraid, walk intimately with the living-loving God in a gluten free, zero cholesterol, sans laundry world.  When Eve conceives, the Creator uses the term intimacy to describe their sexual union. The Hebrew word is YDA, to know experientially, spiritually, emotionally, cognitively. The latin word sexus did not appear until the middle ages to describe the difference between male and female animals. Intimacy is the original definition for sexuality.

Jesus, single and celibate, had more to say about love and intimacy with God than any other historical figure I know.

Hmmmm. No scandals for Jesus but his sacrifice on the cross where he was sexually abused bearing my shame. No videos or hot mics declaring junior high locker room vocab. His followers…sexual integrity. Paul the Apostle too was single and celibate. Rome paid historians to tell biased tales. No lurid words from the great Apostle portray private parts or the star power to abuse victims. Extant blogs feature neither blue nor purple dresses from  first century Christian leadership.

It’s time for a break, America. Let’s take a time out from normalizing sexual assault. Porn abuses. Boundary violations assault.  Neglect is abuse.  The assassin I fear…silence.

In my family’s faith story, we believe in hope, a new beginning, a resurrection from death.

Time to resurrect truth for the greatest crisis in our nation’s history…the politicizing and normalization of sexual violence.

Hey friends, North Coast, Peninsula, and West Michigan Centers for Healthy Sexuality now offer two Sex Addict Anonymous Therapy Groups for both women and men.

We work from the SAA Green Book and Patrick Carnes’ A Gentle Path Through the 12 Steps.

Our online groups use HIPAA technology and are of course completely anonymous. Contact us by cell phone or email for a confidential invitation.

Shame and Hope: Sexual Anorexia Part III

Vocabulary: 

Theist- One who believes in God with a textual narrative, The Bible.

Meta Theist-One who believes in spirituality without textual narrative.

Sexual Anorexic- One who feels the terror of sex resulting in avoidance of physical and emotional intimacy. (SX)

The video entitled, The Still Face Experiment, illustrates the power of connection and conversely the shame of disconnection. Did you see it?  When the mother emotionally hid from her baby, the child went through anxiety and finally a meltdown into shame.

Shame and the sexual anorexic (SX) weave a tapestry. Fear networks crafted through traumatic events or childhood experiences leave the SX with reservoirs of shame.  Unattended by healthy conversation and relationship shame becomes toxic and integrates among fear networks causing feelings of terror and avoidance of sexuality.

Shame hides. We become partners who cannot be transparent, we lose empathy, relationships lose their richness and…intimacy.

Patrick Carnes says this in his ground breaking work, “Sexual Anorexia”:

“Sex seems to be the area of life that most deeply touches our personal issues. Whatever problems we face in life sooner or later impact our sexuality. If we are chronically angry, the anger will eventually become sexualized. If we cannot tolerate closeness, we will fail at sexual intimacy. If we need to be in control, passion will elude us. If we have experienced trauma, we may repeat it compulsively through how we express our sexuality. If we are perfectionistic, sexual response will elude us. And, if we are so overextended and driven that all of our important relationships are abbreviated, sex will seem brief and overrated. To put it in another way, we can hide with sex, we can hide from sex, but we cannot be fully ourselves sexually and hide.”(Carnes, 285-291)

I love that statement, we cannot be fully ourselves sexually and hide. He speaks of shame. How do we unravel the tapestry of shame and sexuality?

For theist clients and friends of faith, the Book of Genesis Chapters 1-4 speaks clearly of sexuality and shame. Post pride and failure Adam and Eve make themselves clothing and hide from the presence of God. Loving Creator seeks them out and surgically addresses their shame with truth, the gift of pain, and then…He covers them. God covers shame. For my meta theist friends, your higher power must have the capability to remove your toxic shame, or your higher power isn’t and shame becomes part of the system of fear.  How do you assess the ability of your spirituality to unweave the tapestry of self hatred and shame?

Let’s talk, reflect richly on truth, accept pain as a gift, and release your shame to the One who rewires fear with love and tender compassion. 

I am a grateful follower of Jesus. He is safe. Jesus, single and celibate with neither sexual scandal nor political agenda, experienced no shame.  Intimacy with God the Father wove the fabric of His narrative. The death of Jesus on the cross bore the full weight of our story of shame. He is my higher power with the ability to cover that which I hide. I love this hope.

Notes:

Carnes, Patrick J. (2009-08-07). Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred (Kindle Locations 285-291). Hazelden Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

Sexual Anorexia Part 2 (You will need to read Part one to track this series with Genesis 1-4)

“…and they were both naked and unashamed.”

The beauty of the Genesis creation account climaxes with intimacy between man and woman. 

God’s garden mandate cast the vision for healthy sexuality. Adam and Eve were the very first Naked and Afraid contestants…ever. Except, they were unafraid of their sexuality and each other. No shame. No fear of sexual intimacy. God commands them to be sexually intimate. He uses the euphemism, “Be fruitful and multiply.” The meaning is sonic.

Enter the hubris of being God. I wonder if the first family’s shortfall had more to do with the addictive mentality of firing God and worshipping themselves than the fruit of the tree?

Scene change. Adam and Eve…hide from God, cover their guilt filled conscience. Dopamine transfers. Shame reinforces fear circuitry. DNA changes. Enter spiritual entropy.

God seeks man and woman, redeems, covers, and gives boundaries including the gift of pain. 

The Eden Garden ends, civilization’s cradle crashes. Thank God for intervention, we would have certainly nuked round two of paradisal perfection into a mushroom cloud.

Then, strange words. Genesis 4.1 “The man knew his wife and she conceived and bore a son.”  The word “knew” is the Hebrew term for intimacy, yada. Yada means to see, to know sexually, emotionally, cognitively, spiritually. Patrick Carnes defines sex in the same manner, he states, “Sex is intimacy; into my partner I see, into me my partner sees…intimacy.”

After man and woman defy, hide, and blow up a perfect world sans laundry or high triglycerides,  God still refers to their sexual life as…intimacy.

Sex is intimacy. The porn industry leads the way to teach sexuality. Porn profits on the degradation of women focusing on orgasm as the ultimate act. No intimacy. No relationship. No honor. No loyalty. Porn projects the hubris of worshiping self.

Recovery from sexual anorexia begins with a healthy view of sexuality. More, sexual anorexia conversations must participate in a transcendent vision of wholeness emotionally, spiritually, cognitively, and physically. 

Let’s begin here. No shame for your fear of sexuality. Let. It. Go.  Start with emotional and spiritual intimacy. Talk. Write with your partner a vision of healthy sexuality for both of you. Is the vision beautiful, mutual, consensual, emotional, spiritual, cognitive?  Is there a place of common ground where you can meet in the middle of the garden? Can you start the healing process with transparency and trust?  Talk and pray…together. Hold hands. Take walks. Trust. Love your partner’s story. Invite your higher power into the most intimate relationship on earth. Sexual intimacy begins with spiritual intimacy.  

“…and they were both naked and unashamed.” Beautiful.

Love this video and…bacon. Check out the little man and his reaction to the first taste of…bacaawnnnn! This video shows the dopamine transfer of a boy’s first taste of pure awesomeness.

Counseling numerous clients right now…their concern?  They don’t do sex. Can’t put together the desire for healthy sexuality.  We call this, Sexual Anorexia and the sufferer a Sexual Anorexic, (SX).

Can’t. Not won’t. Can’t be sexually intimate.

Numerous reasons cause SX.  Let’s start with this. Dopamine transfer. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that streams through neural pathways.  Just as bacon causes dopamine transfer in reward networks in the brain, dopamine also transfers  in fear networks. This is a Diffusion Tensor image of reward and fear neural pathways in the brain.

Technology now allows us to see both reward and fear architecture in the white matter of the brain. The smell, texture, and pure awesomeness of bacon trigger (cue) powerful reward centers. We remember and love bacon…forever.

Add trauma to sexuality like abuse, abandonment, fear, or pain  then sexual neural pathways form connecting to “terror” rather than pleasure.  Instead of reward pathways forming for sexual intimacy, fear dominates the sexual matrix. Sexuality becomes fear based, disgust responses emerge, and the result? Shame. The SX cannot sustain healthy intimacy, relationship deteriorates. Shame reinforces fear networks. In fact, as the SX becomes more preoccupied with the terror of intimacy, dopamine transfers. It is possible then to become addicted to avoiding sexuality. The SX now pumps dopamine through neural pathways that feel like… reward. The SX can become addicted to avoiding sexuality. Like the boy who will never forget the reward of his first mouthful of bacon, the SX has unknowingly created neural memory to avoid sexuality. The shame of broken relationship without intimacy reinforces the terror of sex. Sexual intimacy becomes the cue for terror.

How do we find hope for SX?

Belief. Join us for part 2. Hope is.

God can change fear. Over 90% of my clients have a high priority for spirituality, God-consciousness. 87% of people in recovery say their higher power is helpful.  Jesus is my higher power. The word “proud” does not describe my faith, I do feel ongoing gratitude for the belief that has changed me for 30 years. The content, object, and power  of faith changes neurology. Fear neural pathways can change through belief. What are your greatest fears? Double click and print these graphics and I will walk with you through a deep process and together we will ask God to change your neurology.  This is new/old tech. God has been in the phobia morphing business for millenia. Now, science has finally caught up. Message me and we will start. Do you need support? I have several online groups to support you. Hope is.

Announcing our first Healthy Sexuality Summit for Families April 16, 2016 at NCFF. In this summit we will look at healthy sexuality for adults, students, and children. Our staff will introduce the work of Jim Burns a talented author who has written age graded titles for children and students. This Summit will end with small group focus groups to talk through the needs of children and parents. I will also give the latest stats on cybersex and our families.