A brief history of therapists

My husband and I saw our new therapist again yesterday. I am so grateful that he found her and grateful that she is in this city. She's the only certified sex addiction therapist in our area. She's been a therapist for 30 years and CSAT-certified for 10. She's been trained by Patrick Carnes. So far we have both been very pleased and encouraged that she will actually be able to help us both.

One big test of her ability came in our session yesterday. Without getting into any specifics, my husband's family has a story right in its center that would make a perfect true crime TV show or novel. In fact, at one point years ago, the true-crime author Ann Rule contacted the family about using their story for a book. The events that have occured with one particular family member of his are so larger-than-life and unbelievable that this story actually has almost become another member of the family. This family history has a lot to do with how my husband ended up where he is today--in good ways as well as bad.

Not only did my husband and his siblings have to live through some unbelievably terrible things as this story played out, and subsequently had to live with the fallout, but they have to live with the effects of having this story overshadowing their daily lives. They are constantly dealing with people who learn about the story, or knew the story and learn their connection to it. People become intrigued, but not because of them as individuals--rather because of the salaciousness of the story itself. They just want to move on, but the world won't let them. Just "moving on" is a difficult prospect anyway, as there is just so much to be dealt with that for all of them, it will necessarily be a lifelong process. Fortunately, they all turned out to be loving and wonderful people, and are all dedicated to making their lives better, and they are supportive to one another in the process.

Therapists, just like everyone else, tend to get sucked into the details that happened and they forget that they have a patient who is supposed to be getting treatment. This was the test of our new therapist, and she did well: she kept the focus on my husband and how these events have shaped him, and started to outline some ways that he would have to work through his memories and resolve some of the grief and trauma for him to complete his own recovery. She did not get sidetracked or overly fascinated, which was very encouraging to both of us. Our other two therapists, and every individual therapist my husband has seen, have not done as well. They hear the story and say something like, "No wonder you have problems!" And then they get back to learning the juicy details.

As I mentioned, we had two other therapists in the past. When I first discovered my husband had cheated on me, we went to a marriage counselor. He was a nice guy and to be fair, he was bamboozled from the start. Unbeknownst to me, my husband had not had an "isolated" single "mistake", he had an active sex addiction, and he was doing whatever it would take to save his marriage and convince me that it would never happen again. My husband is also very charming and charismatic, a trait he shares with many sex addicts, and he had the first therapist eating out of his hand. The guy had the wrong premise from the start. We were working on our communication, which felt so false to me, although at the time I didn't know why. We actually had good communication. And loving and respecting each other wasn't the problem, either. I ended up feeling blamed by the therapist for my husband's "indiscretion", and we discontinued treatment after 4 or 5 sessions.

The second therapist was the one we started seeing last month, before finding our current therapist. I was referred to him by my primary care provider. He told me that he had treated couples with sex addiction in the past, as well as substance abuse. I saw him once alone, then we both went a couple of times. We both really liked him, but during our second session together it really became apparent that he had no clue about sex addiction. He said some really unhelpful and infuriating things, like "Men have a high need for sex" and other things that made it clear he didn't understand or believe in the addictive process. He also showed himself to be a lot more Christian than we were comfortable with, even though we had already told him we were not Christians and we were attending a Buddhist temple. He talked a lot about being healed by the grace of God. We couldn't decide if he didn't remember what we had told him, or if he thought we should hear that anyway. Since my husband's past also included being a member of a very insular, fundamentalist religion (which, not surprisingly, also is a common feature of sex addicts), this seemed especially baffling, even hurtful. After our second meeting with him, we decided we weren't going back. He did other things well, and we otherwise genuinely liked him, but his attitudes about our central issues seemed like they would be more harmful than helpful.

We did pretty well, considering some of the horror stories I have read about on other recovery blogs about the behavior of therapists, especially when their clients are sex addicts. Sometimes it seems like sex addicts in recovery become easy prey for people who are looking to abuse their position of power. But finding someone who understands the problem and the things we are facing has been a huge source of hope and positive affirmation for me personally. The kinds of questions our therapist is able to ask, the things that she focuses on, the way she clearly lays out a treatment plan and a realistic timetable (2-5 years is the average) for treatment, makes me appreciate her so much. At our first session, I nearly wept from relief at finally finding someone who had real clinical experience and knowledge about what we were both going through and the kind of treatment we would both need individually and as a couple. A lot of people understand and can treat people with chemical dependency, but when it comes to sex addiction, a lot of what is available out there is actually harmful to recovery, and even that can be hard to find. I am really learning to appreciate the value of finding people who have experience and understand what it is like to go through this--people in recovery groups as well as therapists.

It is going to be hard work, but I am so grateful to have someone to guide us through.