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First Steps for Partners

If you believe someone you care about has a problem with sexual addiction, or you’re already certain you need help yourself even if your person doesn’t admit to a problem, here are some first steps you can take.

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Couples Counseling

While we strongly insist that both partners do their individual work, we also introduce couples therapy early in the process. The addict/partner marriage is in extreme crisis, and we believe couple’s sessions can help the partners stop the bleeding in the relationship.

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Twelve Step Recovery

Bethesda Workshops strongly supports the Twelve Step program of recovery, and we believe it is vital to an individual’s success. These programs are rooted in Biblical principles and dovetail cleanly with Christian faith practices.

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Treatment Model & Planning

We use an eclectic theoretical approach which draws on the best of several treatment modalities. In simplest terms, we use a trauma-based model, which means that we believe trauma (in its broadest sense) is the root of compulsive sexual and relationship behavior.

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Sobriety and Abstinence

In simplest terms, Bethesda Workshops defines sexual sobriety as no sex with self or with anyone other than a spouse. A fuller definition of sobriety includes freedom from fantasy, freedom from sending out sexual energy, and freedom from inappropriate emotional relationships. Sobriety is deeper than mere physical activity.

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Program of Recovery

Attending a treatment program, including one more long-term than a Bethesda Workshop intensive, is only the beginning of the journey of transformation. Getting help is an important first step, but if that’s all someone does, he or she won’t recover successfully. Genuine, lasting transformation requires more.

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Disease Model of Addiction

Is this sin or is it an addiction? That’s one of the most frequently asked questions about sexual addiction. Our immediate answer is “Yes!” Sexual addiction is both.

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Common Mistakes in Treating Sexual Addiction

Unfortunately, many Christian helpers are ill-equipped to address sexual addiction or to help partners of sex addicts. Standard approaches like cognitive-behavioral therapy and using scripture alone are rarely effective.

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Disclosure

Few things in recovery are as difficult for the sex addict as disclosing the secrets about his or her acting out, and probably nothing is as hard for the partner to experience.

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Going for the Gold

Like millions of Americans, every four years I become a total couch potato and watch dozens of hours of televised sports I know very little about (curling, anyone?) and don’t

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New Every Morning

When I considered what to share at the beginning of 2018, I read through some prior New Year’s greetings and found one from a few years ago that still seems

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Ready for Advent

This week I’m sharing a blog by one of my favorite thinkers and writers: my son-in-law, Chris Cox. He serves as a youth minister in Nashville and often stirs my

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Choose Thanksgiving

Choose Thanksgiving The idea behind the Thanksgiving holiday is so simple: Spend a day focused on gratitude, and share it with those you love. Most years I welcome my family

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Helping Hands in Hell or High Water

The expression “come hell or high water” likely originated in the American West of the late 1800s in reference to cattle herders who crossed large prairies in the scorching summer heat (“hell”) and forged raging rivers (“high waters”) to get livestock to a railroad. It generally means a determination to accomplish something despite tough odds or difficulties.

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When the World Is Too Much With Us

Too often lately, I feel paralyzed and exhausted by all the pain in the world. Whether it's hate-mongers, an unstable political landscape, or the individual traumas that affect us all, sometimes "the world feels too much with us." Most days, I'm a hot mess. With alarming regularity, I realize I, too, am part of the problem. How do I respond in reflection of the mercy of a loving God?

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Three R’s

Sometimes life has more to teach me than the standard three R's I learned in elementary school. These lessons are both simpler and harder than "reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic.."

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In Sickness and In Health

Two wives from past Bethesda Workshops’ intensives have contacted me within recent weeks. Each was swirling in a vortex of equal parts pain and gratitude, and they were reaching out

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Two Sides of Tenacity

Last summer shortly after Bethesda Workshops had first contracted for our building, David and I spent most of the Fourth of July weekend pulling the green growth from the back

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To Need or Lend a Hand

Compassion and courage were all it took to rescue a family caught in a deadly rip current recently in Panama City Beach, Florida. Nothing else was available, and it turns

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Notice the Signs

The sign is clear. Sitting in the middle of the road, with only a narrow lane available for local traffic into the small condominium complex at the edge of the

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Crappy Lessons

When a participant at a Healing for Men Workshop asked for a plunger one Friday afternoon, I knew it was a bad sign. I declined his offer to deal with

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Showing Up

Somehow when I saw the caller ID, I knew my brother Larry had bad news. “Miss Ada,” a beloved family friend, had died at almost 100 years old. Her son

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Enough for the Moment

Perhaps it sounds odd, but sometimes the pressure and pulls of a good life can be taxing. It doesn’t take so-called “problems” to create stress. Even good things — a

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