POSA™ Blog

Every day since autumn, I've peered into a gigantic construction pit which will eventually become the city's tallest residential building- directly across the street from me here in Manhattan. Breaking through granite to dig a deep enough foundation to support a 52-story highrise means non-stop noise from rock-breaking machines, cranes and bulldozers.

But my jangled nerves begin to calm down and I can feel the tension loosen it's grip as soon as I cross Park Avenue and see that just steps away from the insane construction cacophony, Nature could care less about all that: She is very busy herself, heralding the arrival of a long-awaited spring in the Northeast.

Here's a wonderfully researched article on the way pornography is affecting our young people. Some of you may remember the journalist, Sara Israelson-Hartley, from her interviewing me in The Deseret News here:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865582633/Second-hand-porn-the-spreading-circle-of-damage.html

This week, she explores the tragic facts behind how early the kids are that pornography is finding through subversive means....pop-up ads, mouse-trapping and using the most commonly mis-spelled words that kids type into google to then open up pornography teasers to get kids to click onto the actual porn sites.

If you are a parent, or are concerned about how our youth's sexuality is being hijacked by the commercial pornography market, this article will be of interest to you.

And here's a big shout out to Sara for her formidable efforts to keep us all informed about this gigantic elephant in our societal living rooms.

Thank you, Sara!

Since Posarc is a site dedicated to the partners of sex addicts, you may be wondering why we include some resources for the addicts as well. Here's why:
I frequently receive mail from partners (of sexual compulsives) who ask me for my opinion on everything recovery-related. My private clients as well, whom I do Recovery Coaching or Consulting with, ask me for my preferences in recovery materials for their addicted spouses.

I want to be able to direct seekers to help when they ask for it. And--please note:
I do not receive any benefits whatsoever for promoting the resources that I do. It's also the reason you'll notice my website is free of all advertising.

Therefore, if you find a resource on this site, be assured that it's here because I have personally road-tested this resource or watched the effects of said resource closely on those I know well who were using it, not because it's my uncle's company or because I'm getting a trip to Florida in January out of it. Though Florida does sound alluring this time of year!

So let me introduce what I consider to be a great online porn and sex-addiction recovery tool: CANDEO.

IT HAS BEEN SO VERY INSPIRING TO WORK WITH THESE POSAS

There have been at least five new POSA Meetings formed in this past year alone! It has been so very inspiring to work with these POSAs who took the initiative to begin hosting meetings in their local areas. Our communications in working together have energized and empowered all of us!

We know how treacherous life can feel in the wake of discovering that your life partner has betrayed you. One of the more extraordinary gifts hidden within this relational devastation is the power of POSAs to find and to support one another. To begin our healing process, we can learn to stop trying to bond back to the person who carelessly ruptured our bonds (at least until they've earned our trust back sufficiently), and to find new, supportive people to trust and to create healing community with.

One of the potential liabilities of doing counseling in this field is the susceptibility to feeling discouraged; consciously one has to work to offset the effects of feeling defeated by the depressing realities of sex addiction's rise. I am well aware that as the hypersexualization of our culture increases, PoSAs (partners of sex addicts) encounter more and more triggers, as do the sexual addicts/compulsives we share our lives with. That, in and of itself, can be incredibly challenging for all of us and asks us to maintain rigorous boundaries around how we live, what shows we watch, etc.

So, when I find news about someone who is making a difference by asking the mainstream public to question their consumption of sex as a commodity, I am incredibly heartened. To be honest, I'm overjoyed. When that person appears from outside the sex addiction recovery community, I'm highly intrigued (not that those inside the recovery community don't add a lot to the discourse happening more frequently). 

FROM EX MEN'S MAG EDITOR MARTIN DAUBNEY:

PoSARC Note: Presented by DailyMail.co.uk , By MARTIN DAUBNEY but we assure you it works the same everywhere !!!

The moment I knew internet pornography had cast its dark shadow over the lives of millions of ordinary British teenagers will live with me forever.

I was sitting in the smart drama hall of a specialist sports college in the North of England with a fantastic reputation.

Before me were a group of 20 boys and girls, aged 13-14. Largely white, working class children, they were well turned-out, polite, giggly and shy.

As the presenter of a Channel 4 documentary called Porn On The Brain, airing next Monday at 10pm, I'd been invited to sit in on a forward-thinking class led by sex education consultant Jonny Hunt, who is regularly asked into schools to discuss sex and relationships. To establish what these kids knew about sex - including pornography - he had asked the children to write an A-Z list of the sexual terms they knew, no matter how extreme.

FROM DAILY INFOGRAPHIC

Online pornography is a multibillion dollar industry where every second over 3000 dollars are spent and almost 30,000 people are fapping. Those are astounding numbers and the profits of the pornographic firms only prove those points more.

APSATS TRAINING JUNE 26- JUNE 29, 2013 DALLAS, TEXAS

I caught up with Dr. Barbara Steffens and Richard Blankenship (another APSATS Board member & sex addiction therapist in GA) after the completion of the first-ever training to certify clinicians in the new partner-sensitive trauma treatment model. We were exhilarated and spent, having come through a four-day training so intense there wasn't even enough time for breaks. At night, we "processed" with our fellow trainees and stuffed ourselves on delicious Tex-Mex food in the 100-degree + heat of the Dallas summer.

I couldn't help but often feel emotionally overwhelmed during and especially after our training: there was grief at all that had been lost to those of us who had Discovery in the pre-trauma-model days. Grief not just for our own selves and our own relationships lost, but for those of many of our clients.