One’s childhood can be stolen through so many types of abuse, including sexual abuse. Childhood sexual abuse can happen through the overt actions of others or the failure to shield children from sexual content or behaviors.
I believe a negative pattern of worry is established in childhood, based upon life circumstances, experiences, and perceptions. So, in order to find a way out, you need to be able to backtrack along your way in, to where worry started in the first place.
Addictions are compulsive behaviors that take over your life. They can come through behaviors that charge up the body’s own feel-good responses. They are meant, initially, to bring relief, comfort, excitement, or pleasure. They do not provide control; they take control.
To help you understand if food has moved out of its God-given realm and into an inappropriate place in your life, answer the following questions, and be sure to explain why you answer the way you do.
Pornography addiction is like any addiction, in that it is progressive in nature. What began as exciting and arousing becomes less so over time, and there is a need to increase the amount, volume, and depravity of the images in order to achieve the same level of stimulation.
Now that you may have recognized help is needed in your life, how do you know where to go to get the right help? There needs to be an internal connection (trust) for this to work. Frankly, it can be quite a circuitous path to find the help you need.
Help is not always something you’re willing to accept. If you’re at the end of your rope, you have to drop that rope and grasp onto another one you’re not holding. If you’re up a creek without a paddle, once given a paddle, you actually have to start paddling, often against the current. If you’re in over your head, you have to decide to come up for air. Help is needed, help is offered, but help also has to be accepted. Help is a three-step process.
Big fears are a complex connection of smaller components. Fears generally have a timeline – a when. They have a reason – a why. They have a pattern – a what. They have an outlet, a venue for expression – a how.
Recent technology has presented us with a new, potentially devastating forum for inappropriately sexualized relationships. The Internet with its anonymity and wide-open content can tempt us to cross physical and sexual boundaries.
