Counseling

Two Phenomenal Recovery Questions That Will Save You $100

by Jeff Fisher on December 8, 2011

I want to save you $100 right now!

My counselor, Dr. Jerry Lankford, is fantastic and would love your business. But when I encounter new challenges to my recovery and new wounds he always seems to come back to two key questions he wants me to ask:

1. God, what are your teaching me?

2. God, what’s the truth of my situation?

The recovery process brings some of the most challenging situations to the forefront. You are confronted with the truth of your self. Many of your relationships are struggling with trust and anger issues. You are experiencing a wide range of emotions, among them: shock, grief, fear, loneliness, anger, hopelessness and despair. You are uncovering wounds you didn’t know you had, and feeling new levels of pain. You struggle to find the support you need and don’t always know what the next step should be.

These two questions are important to keep asking yourself.

GOD, WHAT ARE YOU TEACHING ME?
In the middle of recovery, it’s easy to lose track of the “Big Picture”. God has allowed you to get found out and for this pain to come for His divine reasons. Our hearts have not been fully devoted to Him and He is now trying to help us get to a better place.

Q: What is that better place?

A: How can we know without talking to God about it?

If you have a tough new circumstance, failure, pain, or a wound, talk to God about it. Ask this key question. Involve God in it and give Him room and time to speak.

GOD, WHAT’S THE TRUTH OF MY SITUATION?
We believe a lot of lies about our recovery and about our circumstances. When our circumstances get tough and the emotions get flying, we lose sight of the truth of our situation. Emotional reactions are not often based on facts, but on the way we feel. Many times the truth of our situation is much different from how we feel.

I’m worthless.
My situation is hopeless.
I’m all alone.
God doesn’t care about me.
My spouse is better off with someone else.
My marriage is over.
I’ll never be able to be free of my sexual behaviors.
I’ll never be able to change.
The pain is too great to deal with.
It’s easier to go back to the way I was.

God knows exactly what’s going on in your life, and He knows the truth. Ask Him.

God also works through others: mature friends, ministers, counselors, your support group. Share your struggle and your feelings with them. Let them help you separate truth from lies.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?
Q: What other great things have you heard from your counselor that would save us a $100 counseling session?

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Going to Counseling For the First Time – Fears and Truths

by Jeff Fisher on July 25, 2011

I wanted to share some of the thoughts and fears I had the first time I went to counseling.

I wasn’t forced to go to counseling. I wanted to go. I had confessed to my wife my struggles with pornography. Going to counseling seemed like the natural “next step” for me to get help for my problem.

I did go to counseling, but not without a handful of fears. Counseling can be a scary thing. It’s a huge step for people to step into a counseling office. Hopefully, sharing my initial fears will help you. I have also written down some truths that extinguish these fears.

Here are some of my fears followed by the truths I experienced:

I THOUGHT COUNSELING WAS FOR THE “REALLY MESSED UP” PEOPLE – I viewed myself as strong. I felt I was OK, but just had a weakness

Truth – Real people go to counseling. We are all “messed up” in a sense. The people who really have problems are the ones who don’t think they have any problems.

I WAS NOT BIG ON TALKING ABOUT MY FEELINGS – I am not a feely, touchy guy. I didn’t want to be all mushy in counseling.

Truth – Most of my counselors would say, “No problem.” Talk about your goals. Talk about your story. You don’t have to be something you’re not. Just be who you are and we’ll go from there.

I WAS AFRAID THE COUNSELOR WOULD MESS ME UP. PSYCHO ANALYZE ME.

Truth – My counselors mostly listen. They ask questions. They are skilled in knowing where to probe and prick, but only if that’s comfortable for me. I’ve not met a counselor yet who was out to impose his own stuff on me.

I WAS AFRAID THE COUNSELOR WOULD TELL ME TO LEAVE THE MINISTRY OR TAKE A MORE EXTREME ROUTE

Truth – This fear is more about me than my counselor. I wanted to keep my job. I wanted to fix my problems privately. Sometimes this is possible. But I realized that my private behaviors had already started affecting my public life. The counselor can only make recommendations of what to do. He can’t make me take any radical steps that I’m not prepared to take myself.

I WAS AFRAID OF WHAT MIGHT REALLY BE WRONG WITH ME – I thought something might be wrong with my background or my upbringing and I didn’t want to know about it. I didn’t want to be labeled as a bad person. I wanted to be a person who had it together.

Truth – This was my pride. Really, everyone has “junk” in their lives. Things are wrong with all of us. Our backgrounds, families, experiences, and emotional makeup all contribute to who we are. So what if I ended up having a bad background. So do most people.

I WAS AFRAID OF GIVING UP CONTROL – I wasn’t feeling this at the time, but I later discovered this fear. I like to feel like I’m in control and that I can control my behavior.

Truth – This is pride again. There are plenty of things in my life that I can’t control. I have to learn to seek God for these things and seek the help of others (including counselors).

WHAT ABOUT YOU?
Q: Have you been to counseling before? What was it like?
Q: What were your fears about counseling? Was this what happened?

Leave a blog comment or email us a porntopurity@gmail.com

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Dads: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

by Jeff Fisher on June 18, 2011

Father’s Day is a holiday with a different flavor. Different than Mother’s Day. Nearly everyone loves their mother. Phone calls are way up, the post office is slower because of all the cards and gifts to mom, and restaurants are packed. Good luck getting a table on Mother’s Day.

Not so much on Father’s Day.

We have mixed feelings about our dads. Some of us have good dads, some of us are indifferent toward our dads, and some of us hate our dads.

Where are you with your dad?

NO DAD IS PERFECT
It doesn’t matter how good a dad you have or how godly your dad is, he’s not perfect. He is / was an imperfect individual and imperfect in the way he parented.

I used to think I had a great upbringing. Christian home, good parents who loved me and I was a good kid. Not so. The more I got away from home and grew my own family, the more I was able to see flaws in my own parents. Not only that, I had stored up anger toward my parents, and especially my dad.

DAD’S HAVE WOUNDS TOO
Just like you and I have brokenness, wounds, and unhealthy ways of dealing with life and family… so did our dads. Have you ever stopped to think that your dad may have had issues? Maybe your dad struggled with the same sexual sin, loneliness, low self-esteem or sense of rejection you deal with?

When I started to see my dad as a human being, like me with his own background, besetting sins, and wounds it helped me with my anger.

YOU’VE GOT TO DEAL WITH YOUR DADDY ANGER
We can’t just forget the things that have happened to us that our dads have brought on – some of the very undeserved. Stored up anger poisons our soul and breeds unforgiveness.

Our anger will come out in other ways. It’s too powerful and we can’t contain it. Many times it comes out in the way we deal with our own wife and kids.

You have to find ways to get it out, discover what’s inside, and deal with it. It’s often more than you saying to God “help me with my anger”. You probably need to chat with a counselor, your pastor, a wise buddy or your support group.

Most guys (if not all) in recovery have anger issues that revolve around their dads.

A GOOD BOOK TO READ
Last year our Saturday men’s group went through John Eldridge’s book Fathered By God: Learning What Your Dad Could Never Teach You. A tremendous read to help explore your father wounds and help you grow up emotionally.

Here are some of posts on the book and other posts that may help you work on your daddy issues:

Chapter 1 Summary - The Masculine Journey
Chapter 2 Summary – True Son of a True Father
Chapter 3 Summary – Boyhood
Chapter 4 Summary – Cowboy
Chapter 5 Summary – Warrior
Chapter 6 Summary – Lover
Chapter 7 Summary – King
Chapter 8 Summary – Sage

Deal With Your Daddy Wounds – Post & Podcast

–

A SPECIAL NOTE FROM JEFF TO THE DADS
I want to be at least one guy to tell you: Good job, dad! You’re doing good. You’re working hard on your recovery. You’re headed in the direction you need to be by working on your sexual sins and your sexual purity journey. We can be better than our dads when it comes to the issue of the hearts. But the real goal is to become more like Jesus. To be transformed and holy so we can glorify Him more.

Have a great weekend!

Jeff Fisher
Raleigh, NC
jeff@porntopurity.com
@porntopurity on Twitter

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I’ve Never Been to Counseling Before – 7 Cautions

by Jeff Fisher on June 7, 2011

Recently, I’ve heard several guys and couples mention that they’ve never been to counseling before.

“You know, in our 11 years of marriage, we’ve never been to counseling”

“I was never bad enough to need counseling.”

“God is my counselor, why would I need to pay someone for that?”

Some talk about counseling like it is beneath them, like it is for the “really messed up” people, but never them.

I want to suggest a few things… some hunches for you to ponder.

1. You Probably Have a Pride Issue
If you think you’re somehow better because you’ve never been to counseling, that’s pride… that’s self-righteousness. None of us are better than the other person. All of us have junk but we may be too deceived to see our true condition.

Jesus told a story of a self-righteous person who came to church, sat next to a poor man and prayed, “God, I thank thee that I’m not like that guy!”

2. You Probably Misunderstand the Purpose of Counseling
Counseling is a lot like a private lesson for the musician. You take private lessons to get the skills to excel in your instrument. You need private lessons to learn new techniques or tweak what you’re already working on. But the most valuable private lessons are to help you get through a difficult part you don’t know how to get through.

Much like a private lesson teacher, a counselor has specialized training in areas that trip us up and we are having trouble navigating. A counselor has experience in diagnosing things we don’t know we’re doing.

3. You Probably Have a Stack of Excuses
The more we know we need to make a change, the bigger the list of excuses.

“I can handle it on my own.”

“Counseling is too expensive.”

“I don’t have the time.”

“I’m not that bad.”

“I’ll grow of this.”

“I don’t want anyone telling me what to do.”

“Those counselors are all secular.”

4. You Probably Have a lot of Fears and Insecurities
Often we’re afraid of sharing our junk. We’re afraid of what someone might say. We’re afraid of what the counselor might find or tell us to do. We don’t like to be out of control. We don’t want anyone telling us we’re bad. We don’t think anyone would love us if they knew what we were really like. We might feel that God doesn’t truly love us.

Counseling is too painful. It’s easier to keep doing what I’m doing.

5. You Probably Have Lay Counselors in Your Life and Don’t Know it
Counseling is about discipleship. People who are a little farther along in the journey helping us. Men and women who understand more about the soul and healthy relationships than we do.

If you took a risk and talked to some of your friends, pastor, your Sunday School teacher, or some older men in your church you’d probably find some good help. Perhaps you have a good friend that can help. Perhaps someone at work. Maybe one of your golfing or fishing buddies is the person you need to reach out to who can disciple you through.

6. You Probably Are Not Broken Enough
We don’t want to change. We don’t want to do something differently. We like what we’re doing too much. We have trouble seeing our true condition and our horrible sinfulness in God’s site. If you really knew how your heart, mind, and actions looked to God, you would cower away in shame. We don’t call out for help because we are not broken enough over our own sinfulness.

7. You Probably Need to Break the Ice on Counseling
My hunch that you need to break the ice on your first counseling session. It takes a lot of courage, but I think you’ll find a very safe place where you can get some help.

I wrote a post called “Going to a Counselor For the First Time” where I share my fears and presuppositions about counseling that all turned out to be lies. It’s a helpful post.

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Breaking Agreements – Some Lies Are Harder to Break (Marsha)

by Jeff Fisher on May 10, 2011

Marsha shared yesterday about breaking agreements, a concept she is learning from John and Stasi Eldredge’s book Love and War: Finding Your Way to Something Beautiful in Your Marriage. Agreements are lies that the Enemy tells us or that we tell ourselves. They are beliefs we have about our marriage our our spouse that tear down and turn us against each other. We need to ask God to help us identify the agreements we are believing about our spouse.

Not all agreements are easy to break. Marsha shares in today’s post how she was able to work through some of the tougher agreements.

SOME AGREEMENTS ARE HARDER THAN OTHERS
I also found that some agreements were much more difficult to break than others. One afternoon I was meeting with our Christian counselor who has been walking with us down the road of marriage recovery for the last several years. While it was just a regular maintenance visit, she touched on something that immediately hit a nerve. From early in our marriage, I felt like Jeff had not tried hard enough to win my father’s approval. As we discussed this, I recognized that I had build a skyscraper of agreements based on that one lie. Yet when I tried to break that agreement, even with my counselor’s help, I felt like I was in a spiritual battle zone. It was physically, spiritually and emotionally exhausting. I wanted immediate freedom from that burden but it felt like it had a lock on my soul. I did find freedom, but it did not come easy and I felt physically and spiritually bruised for several days after. I had never experienced anything that intense in my life and again I wondered, how could the Enemy have such a deep grip without my knowledge for all these years?

In other situations, I have had to ask Jeff to come pray with me to break an agreement. Imagine how awkward that could be? “Honey, can you pray with me so I could break that agreement about you being a jerk.” “Sure sweety, be right there.” Fortunately, Jeff and I were going through the book study together and were both finding freedom through breaking agreements. So when we spent the morning tearing apart the house looking for my keys, AGAIN, Jeff joked that he was breaking agreements while he looked.

As we both began to break agreements about each other and our marriage, we began to experience healing in areas of our marriage that have been trouble spots for many, many years. I began to feel a closeness to Jeff that I had never felt, which says to me that “agreements” had been keeping me enjoying the emotional intimacy with my husband. But as those agreements were broken, the relationship that God intended for me to enjoy with my husband all along began to grow.

A SENSITIVITY TO NEW AGREEMENTS
Breaking agreements has been a life-changing, marriage changing concept for me. It has also led to another major shift in how I control negative thoughts towards my husband. Now, when I sense myself beginning to make an agreement, I remind myself that my husband already has an Enemy. I never want to stand in agreement with the Enemy, especially when he is attacking my husband. On the other hand, as Jeff’s wife, I always want to stand with Christ as his encourager, supporter and helpmate.

This mindset has begun to transcended my marriage and impacted the way I respond to negative thoughts about others that I encounter at work, in the community; even those who are hurtful towards me. No matter how angry I might be at someone, I still don’t want to stand arm in arm with the Enemy and condemn them.

I also take it a step further and ask, what does this agreement say about me? Am I being judgmental? Do I feel threatened? Am I feeling unloved? I have struggled all my life with self-righteousness and perfectionism. This technique is proving to be a very practical way to fight that tendency to put myself above others, by giving me a visual snapshot of who I link arms with when I’m tempted to past judgment on others.

I encourage you to check out John and Stasi Eldredge’s book Love and War and let me know if anything jumps out at you. Even better, read through it with a handful of couples. You will find out that yours is not the only marriage in the pew that is less than picture perfect, but thankfully there is hope for us all.

Q: What are you learning about agreements?
Q: How have you been able to break the lies you’ve believed about marriage and about your spouse?

marsha@porntopurity.com

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Breaking Agreements – Lies I Believed About My Husband (Marsha)

May 9, 2011

Jeff and I recently participated in a small group study of John and Stasi Eldredge’s book “Love and War: Finding Your Way to Something Beautiful in Your Marriage.” The book was great and hit on several concepts that were new to me and opened my eyes to why marriage can feel so impossible at times. [...]

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The Difference Between FAILING and FAILURE

April 21, 2011

There is a difference between FAILING and being a FAILURE.

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Help! I’m The Wife of a Sexual Struggler! – My Interview With Darrell Brazell of New Hope Fellowship – Pt. 2

March 27, 2011

TODAY’S EPISODE: Jeff of Porn to Purity interviews Darrell Brazell of New Hope Fellowship. Encouragement, hope, help and resources for the wife of a sexual struggler. Part 2 of the two part interview. Direct Link for the Podcast PART 1 PART 2 What should your reaction be to your husband’s sexual sin? What should you [...]

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What to Do if Your Wife Reacts Violently to Your Addiction?

March 22, 2011

Wives get very angry when they find out about the secret things their husbands have been doing. Sometimes they leave. Sometimes they get very irrational in the ways they deal with the “big reveal”.

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Help! I’m The Wife of a Sexual Struggler! – My Interview With Darrell Brazell of New Hope Fellowship – Pt. 1

March 20, 2011

TODAY’S EPISODE: Jeff of Porn to Purity interviews Darrell Brazell of New Hope Fellowship. Encouragement, hope, help and resources for the wife of a sexual struggler. Part 1 of the two part interview. Direct Link for the Podcast PART 1 PART 2 Darrell shares some of his story and how New Hope Fellowship emerged Encouragement [...]

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Dr. Mark Laaser, Faithful & True Ministries and the Value of Counseling Intensives

March 10, 2011

PORN TO PURITY PODCAST Hope, Encouragement and Resources for those who struggle with sexual sin. Direct Link for the Podcast: HERE Click here to subscribe to The Porn to Purity Podcasts on I-Tunes Top Tips For Sexual Purity on I-Tunes TODAY’S EPISODE: Jeff of Porn to Purity.com interviews Dr. Mark Laaser, founder and director of Faithful [...]

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