Equipping - Understanding the Why

It is especially important for men who have fallen into the trap of problematic sexual behavior, intimacy disorders and pornography addiction to understand many new things in life that they never learned as a child.  Due to early childhood abuse and neglect from family, friends, church or school the adult finds ways to soothe the unresolved pain that is activated by life's struggles.  

Dr Eddie Capparuucci book "Going Deeper" chronicles his work with hundreds of addicts and answers the question everyone who falls into the unhealthy destructive behavior: 'why'.   His book outlines a series of steps that describes the connection to early childhood trauma, how this trauma manifests itself in our inner child that remains present throughout our life and to become familiar with how our 'inner child's' core emotional triggers influence our adult behavior.  

The steps outlined in the book are 1) Childhood wounds - reveal and discuss the negative and traumatic events from childhood (e.g. neglect, abuse, modeling, access, death), 2) Core Emotional triggers - identify the core emotional triggers (use this survey to help) which are a specific set that are the most potent that tend to cause the greatest discomfort, 3) Inner Child profile - craft a profile of your inner child (Going Deeper describes the nine most common) to gain a deeper understanding of your kid and why he mis-behaves, 4) Find the patterns - connect the past to the present by learning mindfulness techniques to recognize when your kid is being triggered today, 5) Notice - manage your core emotional triggers (click here for that process), and 6) practice these techniques and integrate the insights and lessons into your life.

Past work has focused primarily on arresting the behavior, Dr Capparucci's work answers a question for both those committed to recovery as well as the spouse.  .  Though stopping the behavior in the short term is critically important, the true freedom comes through continually investigating the root cause, learning to understand learn how to soothe your special unique inner child.  The book then goes one step further and identifies the key ingredients for becoming intimately familiar with your inner child, and how to help him though the struggles of life.