btr.org - btr.org has daily, online Group and Individual Sessions for victims of emotional & psychological abuse and sexual coercion. For women experiencing pain, chaos, and isolation due to their husband’s lying, gaslighting, manipulation, porn use, cheating, infidelity, emotional abuse, and narcissistic abuse. Labeling a victim as "codependent" is a form of victim blaming. Pornography addiction / sex addiction are a domestic abuse issue. Narcissistic abuse is not a communication issue. We help women who are married, separated, or divorced heal through establishing emotional safety. If you suspect your husband is a narcissist, a pornography addict, or emotionally abusive, this podcast is for you. Every woman on our team has experienced betrayal trauma first hand. To learn more about Betrayal Trauma Recovery, visit BTR.ORG
https://www.btr.org/podcast/
Learning To Surrender To Heal From The Effects of Betrayal
Made A Decision To Turn Our Will And Our Lives Over To The Care Of God The surrender process enables us to accept the things we cannot change. And with God's help, know what we can and should change. For most of us, the only peace we feel is when we live in the present moment, since the past is too painful and the future is too scary. Having lived with the affects of infidelity or pornography in our marriage, we have experienced a lot of pain. Our recovery depends upon our willingness to adopt new ways of thinking about ourselves and our problems. Overtime, we learned to accept . . . 1. Sexual addiction is a true addiction. At first, many of us could not accept this idea. We thought it meant that sex addicts were somehow not responsible for their behavior, or that we were not entitled to our feelings of anger and hurt. But it does not mean either of those things. For us it means that we see sex addicts as sick people, not bad people. They are powerless over lust and related behaviors. 2. The actions of the sex addict are not a result of something we did or did not do, and we do not have the power to control their behavior. 3. Our attempts to control or ignore the sexual addiction and the related behaviors such as gaslighting or narcissistic traits led to a decline in our emotional health. As we work toward full acceptance of these ideas, we begin to see our problems in a new light, and the awareness dawns that we do have choices concerning our own behavior. This is the beginning of our recovery. We remind ourselves that we are powerless over the behavior caused by sexual addiction and all actions and reactions of other adults. We ask god to hep us stop blaming and trying to control the sex addict and the acting out behavior. Knowing and using the surrender process helps in this endeavor. Because betrayal causes trauma, and betrayal trauma is similar to PTSD, we can get caught in obsessive thoughts that harm us. The surrender process helps us to recover from the betrayal trauma. We heal as we begin to rely on God for comfort and support.
The surrender process has four steps.
1. Write down what you would like to surrender to God. For example:
- I want to surrender my husband's perceptions and behaviors to God.
- Or put another way, I trust God to worry about and deal with my husband's perceptions of me.
2. Pray and surrender these concerns and worries to God.
3. Call your sponsor and leave a message about your surrender.
4. Put the paper you wrote on in your "surrender box". This box can be anything you want. My surrender box is my husband's old sox drawer. When he moved out, I started putting my surrender papers in it. When I'm not at home, I use the trash as my surrender box, signifying that I am letting go of these worries and trusting God.
Repeat this process over and over until you feel the weight of the worry lift from your shoulders and onto God.
Some days I surrender multiple times. It is way of retraining my brain to put God in my center rather that my husband or any other person. Keeping God in my center is how I maintain my emotional safety.
APSATS coaches can also help you figure out what things to surrender to God, while setting boundaries to establish your emotional and physical safety.
Schedule a support call today.