Recovery Nation

Exercise 18: Three Filters: Time, Intensity and Frequency

II. Consider one of your own compulsive rituals. Identify circumstances when each of the three filters (time, habituation and intensity) have come into play. Make sure that you understand each filter to the point where you are able to identify them as a ritual is being performed.

I'm having a little difficulty with some of the concepts here, but I'm going to try for what I believe the goal is. In viewing my compulsive ritual above, I am trying to see some of the various elements through the 'filters':

Time
My ritual develops over the course of many hours, stretching the whole experience across many hours and culminating in a few minutes of direct self-stimulation after hours of fantasy leading up to it.

Intensity
Not only did the intensity increase in each 'episode' of the ritual, as days and weeks go by, the need to find more and more explicit and 'harder' porn would increase. This mapped pretty closely with frequency: as I began doing this more and more, until I was doing this 3-4 times a week, I would find myself looking at more and more 'off the wall' things: things I normally would find repulsive or deviant.

Habituation / Frequency
While starting slowly, beginning at once every few weeks, my rituals would gradually increase -- again, mapping with the increase in intensity -- until I was at 3-4 times a week. Then I might slow down, or stop altogether... only to resume the increase in frequency.

There is a lot of interplay of these three filters -- they make a very complex lens to view the elements through.

Lesson Twenty-One: Recovery Goals

A. What large goals have you attempted in your life and failed? Why do you suppose you failed?
- I wanted to go to college. I have not yet gone, although I've developed a successful career without it. This failure was largely a result of external forces (had to quit school to support my mother financially), and simple lack of motivation (I could have gone to college, but I was fine with the status quo).
- I wanted to have a stable, monogamous marriage and not get divorced. While I haven't gotten divorced yet, I'm on the precipice. This failure has largely been a result of my attempts to fill an addiction void inside of myself, acting out outside of my marriage.

B. What large goals have you attempted in your life and succeeded? Why do you suppose you were able to succeed?
- I had a goal of buying a house. I was able to do this before I was 25 years old.
- While not a goal, I have built a very successful career over the years through sheer determination and perseverance. As mentioned above, I didn't go to college, and wound up just working my way up from entry-level IT grunt to director of IT and software engineer for a publicly traded company.

C. List one recovery goal that you have and break it down into as many smaller, measurable tasks as necessary for you to manage it successfully. If you find this difficult, then you are probably starting off with too general of a recovery goal. Make it specific.

I'm going to make two recovery goals, but with multiple smaller tasks:

1) Complete the Recovery Nation workshop

I will spend 20 minutes each day working through the Recovery Nation lessons.

• Complete Stage Two: Addiction
  - GOAL: July 18th
• Complete Stage Three: Life Skills
  - GOAL: Mid-August
• Complete Stage Four: Urge Control
  - GOAL: Late August
• Complete Stage Five: Health Maintenance
  - GOAL: September

2) Complete Facing the Shadow workbook
- GOAL: Complete by end of July 2012

Exercise 22 - Measuring Compulsive Behavior

This is a pretty tricky lesson. I'm going to re-read it a few times, but I wanted to take a first step at 'categorizing' my ritual from lesson 17.

Ritual Measured:
Masturbation Ritual from Lesson 17

Primary Elements Involved:
Sensory Stimulation (visual and touch); Fantasy; Suspense; Orgasm; Danger; Accomplishment

Values assigned:
Sensory stimulation (visual): 2
Sensory stimulation (touch): 2
Fantasy: 3
Danger: 1
Accomplishment: 1
Orgasm: 2


Filters applied:

1) Sensory stimulation (visual)
Time: The longer I am able to keep the visual stimulation up, the better the fantasy will be later. 7
Intensity: Being able to apply this to build the fantasy improves with each recurrence. 5.
Habituation: No real effect. 1.

2) Sensory stimulation (touch)
Time: Progressively increases the stimulation to a point; then significantly decreases that stimulation. 5
Intensity: Very small variations over the years. 2
Habituation: Engaging in the ritual more and more frequently gradually dulls the feelings. 2.

3) Fantasy
Time: The longer the fantasy develops in my head, the more intense the feelings become. At some point, the fantasies reach a critical point and diminish. At it's height, 9.
Intensity: As the fantasy develops, it becomes clearer and more 'real' to me and increases the stimulation. 8.
Habituation: As fantasies get 'played out', they decrease the overall stimulation that fantasy produces. I respond by expanding those fantasies. 4.

4) Danger
Time: The longer the process takes, the more likely I am to be caught, increasing the level of danger. 4.
Intensity: The more 'open' and exposed I am during the ritual, the higher the stimulation. 5.
Habituation: Engaging in this more frequently escalates the level of danger. 4

5) Accomplishment
Time: No real effect. 1
Intensity: No real effect. 1
Habituation: No real effect. 1.

6) Orgasm
Time: Occurs spontaneously; leaves spontaneously; no control over length of orgasm. 1
Intensity: Increases overall intensity of urge, but ultimately not necessary. 6
Habituation: No real effect. 1

Exercise 23: Practical Uses for Measuring

In your recovery thread, share a brief summary of what practical uses the skill of measuring compulsive rituals can have in your recovery. Don't just copy the headings of this lesson, take a minute to see how you can practically use this information in YOUR life.

The largest benefit I can see as a practical use of these skills is being able to identify how these rituals come about -- what emotional circumstances cause them to begin to manifest -- and try to zero in (initially) on these starting points. If I can get into the habit of identifying these emotional circumstances when I'm not actively involved in them, I may be able to 'teach' myself to identify them 'in the moment' and begin to modify my responses.

As time goes by, I hope to use these skills to identify where these responses came from and how to migrate them to a 'value-based' response instead of immediate gratification.

Exercise 24: Identifying Your Compulsive Elements / Mastering Your Elements
I. Create your own Wheel of Sexual Compulsion that is more closely related to your behavior. This can be done by simply listing the cumulative elements involved in your compulsive behavior. This shouldn't take you more than five minutes. List these elements (associated with no particular ritual--but more your addiction in general) in your recovery thread.


These are the general elements I see threading through the rituals I have considered so far:
Fantasy
Sensory Stimulation (visual)
Sensory stimulation (self-stimulation)
Voyeurism
Suspense
Danger
Orgasm

II. Choose a real-life example of EVERY major sexual ritual that you engage in (these should be compulsive rituals, not healthy) and break each down into their smallest elements (based on the elements identified in your wheel of sexual compulsion).

Most people will identify two to four such Major Rituals. If you can identify with more than five such rituals, just list the most common five.


Rituals I'm looking at. I have not made a complete listing of the elements yet, I'm just trying to flesh out the basics for these few rituals.

1) Sexualizing and fantasizing about people in public
Key Elements:
- Fantasy and sensory stimulation (visual) from 'spotting' someone and latching on to them, beginning to generate fantasies in my head.
- Suspense at whether or not they will continue walking the same way I am, allowing for more 'scanning' time
- Generally leads to later self-stimulation and masturbation and potentially orgasm

Itemized parts of the ritual:
- While commuting or otherwise moving around in public, would spot a particular woman to watch
- Would keep an eye on that woman for as long as possible, trying not to stare
- Began to generate fantasies about asking the woman to go have coffee, or something innocuous
- Would follow the woman from a distance if she were going in the same general direction as I was, changing my route to work to match hers
- Initially, would focus on different 'innocent' specifics: hair, clothing, shoes, what bag they were carrying
- If the process continued, began focusing on body parts: calves, arms, legs, knees, breasts, butt
- Later in the day, would look at pornography (moving into ritual # 2), generally trying to find porn that closely matched the woman from earlier
- Would try on other days to see if I could find this same woman, always generating more fantasies
- After a while, would get bored with those fantasies or would 'latch onto' another woman

2) Masturbation at work
Key Elements:
- Danger of being caught
- Visual stimulation from pornography or fantasy
- Fantasy leading to self-stimulation/masturbation
- Orgasm

Itemized parts of the ritual:
- Feeling stressed out or angry or bored
- Decide to masturbate later in the day
- Begin browsing pornography earlier in the, bookmarking or saving things for later
- If a particular fantasy was in my head, I would choose porn that matched it
- Would contact my wife and tell her I would be home late
- After everyone went home, would lock all the doors and make sure blinds were shut
- Began reviewing porn that was collected earlier or mentally reviewing the fantasy in my head
- Leads to masturbation, orgasm
- Cleaning up, erasing computer cache / etc.
- Afterwards, guilt and shame from lying to my wife and for being disgusting at work


3) Hiring an escort
Key elements:
- Danger of being caught, physical danger
- Fantasy of what the experience will be like
- Suspense over whether or not things will go the way I plan
- Orgasm

Itemized parts of the ritual:
- Feeling angry or stressed out
- Begin looking at escort ads and review boards
- Find an ad, begin doing research -- read reviews, search the web, etc
- Contact the escort to get verified
- Email back and forth with the escort to make an appointment
- On the day of the appointment, tell my office that I had a doctor's appointment to go to or something similar. Tell my wife that I'm going into a meeting.
- Head over to the escort's hotel or apartment
- Begin smalltalk, make payment
- Physical stimulation, followed by orgasm
- Brief euphoria
- Chat for a while, clean up, then leave and head back to the office
- Disappointment that it wasn't that great, shame over lying and cheating on my wife

4) Masturbation at home
Key elements:
- Danger of being caught by wife
- Visual stimulation from pornography used
- Self-stimulation
- Orgasm

Itemized parts of the ritual:
- Felt angry, unheard or stressed out
- Rationalized / justified that I deserved to look at pornography because I was under stress and not being supported
- Waited until my wife was asleep
- Started looking at pornography or chatting / webcam sites
- Used mental fantasies about the porn
- Masturbation
- Orgasm
- Cleanup, deleting history, hiding things, etc.
- Felt guilty for looking at porn and masturbating, ashamed
- Went to bed, feeling tired

5) Online chatting with women, web-cam sites
Key elements:
- Fantasy
- Suspense of whether or not they will be receptive and joke/talk back, being able to coax pictures out of them
- Voyeurism from 'stalking' behavior, searching for the person online, looking for photos, etc.
- Can lead to self-stimulation/masturbation and orgasm

Itemized parts of the ritual:
- Felt angry, unheard or stressed out
- Would go to web-cam chat sites or find online chat rooms to talk with other women, either at home or at work
- Would generate some rapport with a woman, joke around, ask for pictures
- Searched google, photobucket, other sites for pictures and information about the person
- Would generate fantasies using the pictures and talking to them
- Masturbate to fantasies, either using ritual #2 or #4 above

Exercise 25: Identifying Compulsive Rituals

I. Develop your own compulsive ritual. Make this relatively simple. List the primary elements in a similar fashion as exampled above in Compulsive Ritual: Exhibitionism.

I'm going to pull forward one of my rituals, which I outlined fairly well in lesson 24:

[b]Compulsive Ritual: Masturbation at work
1) Feeling stressed out or angry or bored
2) Decide to masturbate later in the day
3) Begin browsing pornography earlier in the, bookmarking or saving things for later
4) If a particular fantasy was in my head, I would choose porn that matched it
5) Would contact my wife and tell her I would be home late
6) After everyone went home, would lock all the doors and make sure blinds were shut
7) Began reviewing porn that was collected earlier or mentally reviewing the fantasy in my head
8) Leads to masturbation, orgasm
9) Cleaning up, erasing computer cache / etc.
10) Afterwards, guilt and shame from lying to my wife and for being disgusting at work

Exercise 26: Mapping Compulsive Rituals



I'm not really clear on the difference between this and the last exercise, since I mostly labeled everything in the last one. I'm going to move forward and use that as the basis for ex. 25/26.

Hello Plant.
Looks like you are doing great work so far! I reviewed your vision from lesson two. It is well stated, and is full of good things. I encourage you to periodically revisit your vision and look at the things that you have worked towards, and think about your connectedness to those things. Other than that, keep up the good work!
Lud

Lud, thanks for the reply. I'd actually been thinking about revisiting my vision. Honestly, I've been meaning for a few weeks now to print it out and keep it with me -- everytime I go to do it, I think "Huh, I should move things around a bit" and wind up not doing it. It's such a bizarre block. I'm going to take a few minutes now to revisit it and make some comments on my life, just for my own purposes. I'll edit this post a bit in the coming days.

Vision Statement for my Life


I'm still pretty happy with this. I have been going to a new therapist lately, and we have been doing a very exhaustive personal history. Previously, I had been seeing a very good CSAT, but my insurance won't cover it and the cost became too great -- the therapist I moved to spent a lot of time earlier in his career working with sexual addiction and was a former colleague of Patrick Carnes, so I've been fairly happy with him as a new choice. In my past experiences with therapy (a counselor who was decidedly unhelpful, the CSAT who was good and some time in couples therapy), I had never given a full life's history. As I've been stepping through my childhood and early development -- sometimes only covering a few months around significant events during a session -- I've really begun to remember and reflect a lot on what my life was like in that earlier time, and it's bringing an interesting level of clarity that I hadn't had before about my childhood.








Recently, my grandmother passed away. In the process of her last days, I spent a lot of time on the phone with my sister and mother, people who I'm referring to above. I have distanced myself from my father as well, but I am no where near close enough to try to rebuild a bridge to a relationship with him. However, this new contact with my mother and sister has been very rewarding, and I hope to continue nurturing this over the weeks to come.