The Seven Desires & Understanding Your Triggers w/ Debbie Laaser

Narrator: This is Pathway to Recovery, an SA Lifeline Foundation podcast featuring hosts Tara McCausland, who is the SA Lifeline Executive Director, and Justin B., a sex addict living in long-term recovery. We have conversations with experts and individuals who understand the pathway to healing from sexual addiction and betrayal trauma because we believe that recovering individuals leads to the healing of families.

Tara McCausland: Welcome to the Pathway to Recovery podcast. I am your host, Tara McCausland, and I'm so pleased to have here with me, Debbie Laser. Welcome, Debbie.

Debbie Laaser: Yeah, thank you. It's a joy to be here with you.

Tara McCausland: I'm actually really excited about our topic today. Could you give us a brief snapshot of what it is that we'll be discussing today?

Debbie Laaser: I know in working with many women who are walking through betrayal themselves, that one of the difficult things is managing triggers that come up in their lives. And I know that for me too, years and years ago when I was new to the journey, that it was always hard to be triggered by people or voices or situations or something we had seen that reminds us of disclosure. And I have come to realize there's a much better way of looking at triggers.

And of course, this is through years and years of counseling and education and writing a book with my husband called The Seven Desires. And in that, we also talk about Virginia Satir's iceberg model. So for any of you that may be in the clinical path of this, you probably know of her. The iceberg model helps us to look at the deeper issues that are going on for us when we're observing behaviors. How can we look at What a trigger is trying to teach us and what can we do about that.

Tara McCausland: Let's introduce you. Debbie Laser is a licensed marriage and family therapist and was involved in recovery with her husband Mark for over 30 years. She and her husband Mark co-founded Faithful and True, a Christian counseling center treating men struggling with sexual addiction and their spouses. Debbie has facilitated therapy groups, individual counseling, and intensives. For betrayed wives for over 20 years. She authored From Trauma to Transformation, Shattered Vows, and co-authored Seven Desires: A Toolkit for Growth with Mark. She also published research, Post-Traumatic Growth in Relationally Betrayed Women, available on their website at faithfulandtrue.com.

Since Mark's death in 2019, Debbie continues to counsel and direct the growth of Faithful and True in the Minneapolis area. We have talked here and there about triggers on this podcast. I appreciate though that I think you're going to kind of put a new lens on this for us. Could this also apply for those who are dealing with sexual addiction who are being triggered?

Debbie Laaser: Absolutely. And it can deal with anybody alive and walking on this earth, because what is true is if we're breathing and we're living, we will have triggers in our life. And so this is appropriate for anybody. Thank you for asking that question. Yeah. No.

Tara McCausland: And, and I think that's important for us to recognize that just being human means that we have some level of trauma. Sometimes it's big T trauma, sometimes little t trauma, but recognizing that we're all being triggered on some level because of unmet needs oftentimes. So I'm excited for this conversation. So I guess segueing into the first question here, we all have triggers, as you just explained. We do. But what really determines whether they lead to distress in our lives?

Debbie Laaser: Well, I think first of all, one of the things that leads to that is how we're perceiving the trigger that is happening to us. So in other words, we're having an emotional reaction about something, and we'll take something very everyday. For instance, when I was driving over here, I noticed that there was someone tailgating me. And so that created an emotional reaction in me because I don't like to be tailgated. And so that emotional reaction led me to feel things like anger, frustration.

And then the next level that we want to look at is what is my perception of why this is going on? And our perceptions are simply our judgments about life or what's happening or our interpretation or the meaning we're making out of something. Yeah. So when we make a meaning that is generally about something we are not doing well, or we've made a mistake of, or whatever, then our emotions probably get even harder for us. So for instance, I may assume that I'm driving too slow.

I'm a little older woman, so maybe I'm thinking he thinks I belong in the other lane, but the truth is I was turning left pretty soon and it was a he. So maybe I also have some perceptions that men are impatient, something like that. Yeah. Our perceptions are really what create our emotions. So if this kind of driving were normal for all of us, I probably wouldn't think anything about it. And yet the truth is also that we have learned to give distance in our driving to be safer.

So my perceptions are leading me to a lot of emotions. And really under that, there is a need, as you said. Right. We have needs that oftentimes go unexpressed, but when we can figure out what need is connected to our trigger, then we also have something we might want to do about it. So in this case, my need was to feel safe. And even though I was turning, I still felt like maybe he wasn't being real responsible and I didn't want to take that chance of getting rear-ended.

So I chose to move over. My need again was about safety, which happens to be one of those 7 desires that I was talking about earlier. And when we look at these desires that are also underneath what's happening and triggering to us, it also helps us understand more about why some triggers are even more hurtful or more prominent in our life than other ones. So it could be in my life, I've been in a couple of automobile accidents.

And so I have some trauma from the past that is really kind of shooting through my veins. And I've got some emotional reaction to that, a fight or flight. Yeah. And if I want to do it in a healthy way, my decision might be to move over rather than slam on the brakes and let them hit me or something like that. So again, it could be teaching me something over time to deal with these driving situations in a healthier way for myself.

So that's just an example of an everyday kind of trigger that we are all going to run into. They don't have to be super traumatic things. They're just creating reactions in us.

Tara McCausland: Yeah. So what I heard from you, just this idea of our perception, which very often isn't necessarily based in truth.

Debbie Laaser: That's correct. That is right.

Tara McCausland: And I think, and this is actually something that I've been trying to teach my kids, that emotions don't come first. There's usually something that's happening beforehand, like an incorrect perception, some type of a thinking error. Do you wanna expand on that at all? Right. Yes.

Debbie Laaser: I think it is really interesting how our beliefs about things— actually, there was research that one of our colleagues looked up that said about 2/3 of the time, our perceptions and meanings we're making are not truthful. That's a lot. You know, when you think about it and we're going through our life and we're creating perceptions of things all the time and meanings about ourselves, then we realize how many emotions we're creating inside of us that Maybe you're there and they don't even need to be there.

You know, we could assume, for instance, that he and his wife in the front seat was pregnant and they were rushing to the hospital because she was overdue. Now, if we perceive that to be the situation, maybe I wouldn't make it about myself at all. And I could just agree with me that I am a basically good driver and this guy is in a need to rush and that's okay. So I will move over on his behalf.

But looking at other possibilities helps us sometimes to not personalize everything that's coming along to us. That's not our normal tendency, however. I think personalizing what's happening out in the world, especially when we have a difficult emotion that gets attached to it, generally creates pain inside of us. And so we live with possibly A lot more pain than we need to because we haven't really looked for what is the truth, or we may not know what the truth is for a time.

Tara McCausland: Yeah. Well, to encapsulate that, just because you think it, it doesn't make it true.

Debbie Laaser: Hey, hey, that's much better said in a lot fewer words.

Tara McCausland: If we could reframe it, we can be empowered and bypass so much pain. So I love that. So let's go into that a little bit deeper. How can we then begin to examine our triggers in a way that helps us learn from them instead of just reacting to them. We already started talking about that, but let's talk about that more. Yes.

Debbie Laaser: Well, I think one of the things that we find is helpful is to consider these 7 desires, which are also a deeper way of looking at things. And why do some people get more triggered about events than others? We might ask ourselves sometimes. So I could briefly just describe the 7 desires. Our book goes into a lot more explanation, but I think most people will connect to what I'm saying, that we all tend to— and by the way, desires are for both men and women, even children.

We know that they're not just for certain people and not for certain others. We all have this need to be heard and understood, for instance. Yeah. We believe we have a need to be affirmed. And to be noticed for the good things that we do in life. We believe that there is a huge need to feel blessed, and we describe that as being loved unconditionally. In other words, this is a desire that is not connected to how much you do in life, because so much of what we do often gets connected to whether we believe we're lovable or not.

But really, in God's message to all of us children is that I love you just for you. We don't have to do anything to prove that. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. And yet I think for many of us, while we long for that desire, the truth is we often may only experience getting love from people when we do the right things. And so that's a really Big one. Another desire is that desire to feel safe.

Now, I was talking about that with someone who was tailgating me. Safety is about a lot of things— having enough food for our life, having a safe place to live and sleep with a roof over our heads. It's about having finances to pay our bills and feel safe that way. It's about health issues. It's about death, mortality. It's about Not wanting to be all alone. That's probably one of the bigger desires actually about wanting to feel safe is not wanting to feel alone and left out.

Another desire is to have healthy touch that is different from sexual touch. It's just touch like a hug, a rub on the back, a pat on the back, you know, just someone to touch your face gently without it meaning, I hope soon that might lead you to want to be sexual with me. And I think one of the things we find really happens in our sexually addicted relationships is that the need for healthy physical touch gets wired with the need for sexual touch, which is also another broader area that I'm not going to talk about in terms of the basic 7, because we know that that is also a part of our life and how to create a healthy relationship.

It's just when there is not healthy touch, just like there sometimes isn't for premature babies when they're born and there's a failure to thrive. We talk about it. It's often because they're needing that human touch. And it's why sometimes they stay in the hospital and they're given all kinds of extra attention and touching to help them thrive. Same way in our relationships. I think it's interesting how many of them that we work with Are starving for healthy touch because those wires have gotten crossed.

The last 2 desires are cousins, we say together. One is the desire to feel chosen, and another is a desire to feel included. And so when you think of those 7, when you are triggered in life, if you really want to dive deeper for yourself to figure out why is this causing so much emotional reaction for me? It's interesting to tag which desire is not getting met. And what can be the case is there are actually several desires that may not be getting met in a certain triggering situation.

And therefore, what we know is the more desires that are being triggered in a situation, the more pain it produces. Mm-hmm. Let's take an example, for instance, of one that usually comes up in our field of trying to go out to a restaurant and eat. early on after disclosure. Okay. And what I hear oftentimes is that a wife who has been betrayed is sitting across from her spouse and this lovely waitress comes up and she's noticing that there are eyes kind of looking at her and there's some fun chitchat with her from her husband.

She might be already perceiving this to be a little bit flirtatious perhaps. She's probably already perceiving that he maybe has more interest in her than he does in their conversation. And so what do you suppose the emotions are that are coming up for her just as she's looking in this very quick situation?

Tara McCausland: Resentment, jealousy, frustration, even betrayal.

Debbie Laaser: Yeah. And so We could stop at that and just say, well, how am I going to take care of that? One solution for many people is we're just not going to restaurants anymore. We're going to eat at home, you know, which is a solution. And it doesn't help her look at some of the deeper desires of her heart. And so I would want to talk with her more about these 7 and which of these maybe are triggered for her in this situation.

Well, when I think about it, it's probably first and foremost about not feeling heard and understood herself. You know, if they're there to have this conversation between the two of them and now somebody else is in there, I can think that's the very first one she probably doesn't feel is being met. Another one might be not feeling safe. Like, what happens if this turns into something more? Or this is about some of the other acting out that he had done.

And recognizing that, well, this is maybe how it starts and it could continue, or maybe they're going to exchange phone numbers. I don't know. And all of that leads to this whole idea that I'm just not safe. I don't know that he is going to be faithful to me. Of course, another one would be chosen. I think any of our sexual acting out behaviors lead to a wife not feeling chosen, and that's a really big one for her.

Included could be another one. I'm not included. This is unless I want to be a, you know, kind of a threesome in this conversation, but I don't really want to get to know this waitress after all. I want her just to take our order and go get it. But included might be another So you can see there are already at least 3, 4, maybe 5 even desires that are not getting met in this situation, and therefore her emotions are going to ramp up even more.

There are actually some triggering situations where we're 7 for 7 not getting met, and our spouses would say the same as they're led into looking at their triggers as well. They are very big. Triggering situations. And it makes sense. The hope is to say to ourselves, no wonder I'm feeling this way and I'm starting to feel out of control, or my emotions are so big because so many of my desires don't seem to be met right now. If we want to take this even deeper, what we like people to do is also look at their past.

And what are those desires were met in a regular way in their past? And which ones weren't? I had a woman, for instance, one time who grew up in a very unsafe home. And she was not safe really with her dad, who was an alcoholic, and her mom, who withdrew a lot and refused to talk. And what was interesting is how many situations, triggers in her life revolved around the need to feel safe. And it made sense when you knew her past.

Many more things than maybe what I would have been triggered by because my past was so different. And so what we learn is how our past really feeds into how deeply we resonate with certain triggers today. If we don't go back and look at some of that, then sometimes what is important to me or you or someone else doesn't seem to make sense to, say, our spouse or another person looking on. Yeah. And so it's so important to include our history when we're looking at how to make meaning out of these triggers.

One example I might give from my own life is that I was born a twin and we were fraternal twins. I say were, unfortunately my sister passed away from cancer a number of years ago. When we were small, however, she was this, in my perception, beautiful blonde curly hair like yours. I had this straight brown, we called it mousy hair. Mousy hair. When I was young, we looked very different. And of course, as a child, I pretty much wanted what she had.

I suppose at times she wanted what I had, but I never talked to anybody about that. And I think that as a child is not unusual. We carry hurts around because we have created beliefs about ourselves just by how people treat us. Or she was very athletic, very social. I was more withdrawn and introverted. It makes sense that she seemed like the popular one. And I was, I don't know what I would have called myself, but it was never as choosable as my twin sister.

And so it makes a lot of sense to me when my counseling helped me look at this piece as well, is when Mark betrayed me, that it clearly affected that desire to feel chosen and the one and only. Yeah. Yeah. What is true is if I hadn't done some work on understanding also the old hurt in my life, which wasn't somebody doing something to me, it just was life as it would be for many of us.

But if I hadn't done that kind of work, I probably would have put all my eggs in that basket and blamed Mark for everything I ever felt about not feeling chosen. And therefore I would probably personalize it a lot more that way. And I would have a harder time letting go of some of those triggers knowing that that wasn't true. And so it really helped me to get into some of that deeper work of understanding how this old desire of feeling chosen had been affecting me my whole life.

So in many ways, exploring those desires and how old they are can be very helpful to understanding ourselves today.

Tara McCausland: So we have both the present issues that may have been caused by betrayal, and then we have these past issues that could make the trigger even more painful. And so maybe walk us through, we'll go back to the example of being in the restaurant with the waitress, right? Mm-hmm. How would you counsel someone who has been betrayed And also has some things they haven't worked through in their past that may be contributing to the level of the trigger.

How would you encourage them to work through that maybe within the 24-hour period? Does that make sense? Yes. Past and present.

Debbie Laaser: Yeah. If it's possible, one of my first encouragements is to slow down our response because typically our initial response is going to come from the height of our emotions in that moment. Yeah. And oftentimes when we're responding in that timeframe, it's going to be more of a fight or flight response because it's hitting that emotional part of our brain that just wants to take care of ourselves when we don't feel safe. And oftentimes, especially early on in recovery, how we respond in that moment doesn't look too pretty.

And generally it's not something we like about ourselves if we respond in that way. So I'm just saying, It takes some practice because it's understandable why we would be so reactive. And yet I keep wanting to help women work on their responses so that they love themselves as well. By slowing it down, we actually have a handout that we give to our clients about, would you take some time and just write through what I kind of just talked about here?

What was happening? What were you feeling? Yeah. What were you thinking? What was the story going on in your head that you were creating perceptions and beliefs about yourself? What do you think you were needing? What was that deeper soul desire that you really wanted? And what is really the truth here? Mm-hmm. And so when we walk through that by writing out our examples, then we might be able to share that and be heard. More so by our spouse than if we have a big reaction or we run out of the restaurant or whatever we do.

We kind of sabotage the very thing we want, which is to be heard about our pain. So that's what we work on. I'm saying it's not like flipping a light switch. There's a lot of practice needed, but I really encourage women to write out their triggers. And so I have them tape our worksheet in the front of their journal and I go, when you're triggered, open that up. Look at those questions, answer them over here. And first of all, I want you to notice, are there some themes that show up for you?

Are most of your triggers about feeling unsafe? Are they about not feeling chosen? What is it about not feeling heard and understood? So that's also information for ourselves that helps us grow when we start noticing things about ourselves. I want to make sure though, as we're talking here, that your audience knows that I know none of this means that a wife is responsible for her husband's behaviors. Right. I'm just saying, I guess being further along, obviously 35 plus years and all of this, that there is always the potential of learning from these hard things.

And in fact, it's moving through traumatic experiences and embracing the suffering that with resources, the right help will lead to What we call post-traumatic growth at Faithful and True, and so that's the main reason we want to explore some of this stuff. Why waste a hurtful situation and not let God use it somehow to grow us up? You know, and make life better really than maybe it ever has been. And so that's our desire for our clients, and we know we need to embrace the front end and how hard things are.

We also want to learn how to depersonalize things. And also, as you said earlier on, there are a lot of things that actually someone struggling with an addiction and someone who has been betrayed have in common. They have a lot of desires that maybe have been unmet. They also have a lot of trauma in their life, both of them. And, you know, we want to be sure that we give each of them separately, probably on the front end.

their time to grieve and talk through and be heard about that pain before we try to do too much teaching. So one of the things I'm sharing here, I might say to some of my clients is this is a little bit advanced. You might not be ready for this. If not, just tell me. We'll close the book on that till later. Yeah. But if you want to, and I think it could be helpful to help you not carry so many big emotions.

I'll help you with how you might look at this differently. Remembering this has nothing to do with you causing any kind of behaviors in your spouse. It's just for you because I want you to live better with wellbeing in your life, no matter what's going on.

Tara McCausland: Thank you so much for addressing the fact that we have a varied audience here. Some who are just beginning this path of recovery, some who have been doing this work for a while. And in those early stages, as you expressed, it's so painful and So raw for a betrayed partner. And so we can expect that those triggers are going to be, or the responses to triggers might be big or even explosive. I liked though how you said that can be self-sabotaging.

And I know for these folks that are really early on, that can be hard to hear and understand. In a previous episode that I did with Tammy Gustafson, It came up that betrayed partners need to pump the well of their soul is the phrase she used to really feel all of the hurt in order to heal. And while I believe that's very true, I appreciate what you're saying, that we need to have healthy ways to offload the anger, the resentment, because we do have to feel in order to heal.

But in order to get to this post-traumatic growth that you're talking about, we have to get to a point where there's this self-reflection and never blaming ourselves for his behavior, but recognizing I am empowered when I use my empowered voice. If I'm going to use the words of Michelle Mays, what's your comment about that?

Debbie Laaser: Well, I think my comment is, yes, there are always reasons when our reactions get really big. And I also believe that it is our responsibility if we want to love ourselves well, is to figure out how to offload some of the intensity of our emotions in safe ways. Yes. So for instance, I mean, I have women go out into the woods and throw eggs with a companion. And I have people beating trees with wiffle ball bats.

And I had one client who had a dumpster because she was moving and she was able to do anger work while she was heave-hoing stuff in there. And, The point is there are a lot of ways to offload some of our emotions other than just on our spouse. We take it all in there, then you can be sure we're like a prickly porcupine. And what do any of us want to do when someone is coming at us and attacking us with that kind of anger?

We shut down and we want to run away, or sometimes we do, or we shout back to protect ourselves. And then we might be called defensive. Is that really fair? You know, our bodies are built to respond that way. Right. I think thankfully in my early years of recovery, I was led to some very safe ways of offloading anger. And I really appreciated that because I didn't want to be that kind of person who was totally out of control with my anger.

I hated myself. I have women that say to me, I don't even like who I've become, you know, how I'm reacting to all of this. And I go, well, that is a good place to start for your recovery because I want you to like who you are. Yeah. And there are other ways we can do things. I love Maya Angelou's saying. She said, you know, we all need to learn how to be in pain without being a pain.

I really like it too. And it's difficult. It takes a lot of emotional awareness and maturity to be able to do that. And then as we move along in our recovery, we can learn more and more skills about how to do that. So powerful. I'm just curious, what were some of those healthy ways you learned how to offload early in One of the things that ended up being a blessing after Mark was fired as part of the discovery of his behaviors from his work.

So he was brought home to me by 2 of his colleagues, Christian colleagues that he worked with. And they basically told me they brought him home to make sure he was telling me the truth. They were using horrible words to describe him. And it was really almost kind of like a beating up, which I didn't know what to do with. Yeah. Unfortunately, because I love this man and it was hard for me to even believe there was a part of me that went to the other side of being sympathetic because it seemed like the whole world who now knew because it was a story in our newspaper.

But I would say what happened for me because he was fired is what I was beginning to do, which was develop my own company with a friend. We created artwork for the gift industry. We had to kind of ramp up what we were doing fairly quickly to support my family. And so in doing that, it required me to travel a fair amount, 3 days or so every week, where I traveled around the Midwest where we lived. And I think what was really helpful was I had my best friend with me.

I was on the road in a car, and I was away from Mark so that I, I could talk about whatever I needed to. I could scream and yell whatever I need. And so I had a lot of chance to be away from everything that bothered me enough so that when I came home, you know how the absence grows you fonder sometimes, and that I was looking forward to being back home. And we did a lot of counseling together, separately with some wonderful therapists.

So it was a both and, but it gave me a place to leave and do what I, what I needed to do in terms of talking, journaling about that. In my own counseling back in those days, we Beat up pillows with tennis rackets and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes I'm like, I can't even believe I'm doing this. So now my character, and it helped, you know.

Tara McCausland: Oh yeah. Well, for our listeners, I might encourage you to find your safe ways to offload as we're being taught here by Debbie, because I do think that in order to really be able to examine these triggers, we're going to have to feel all the feelings and grieve. And in order to get deeper into those triggers, we won't be successful if we haven't really grieved.

Debbie Laaser: Yeah, that's true. And I would also add with any trigger, there's always a need. And so we can also figure out a practical way to reduce that trigger possibly for the next time. If I'm sitting in a restaurant and we're fairly early on in recovery, I might just say, you know, it's, still really hard for me to come out in public and to have you have any interaction with somebody. And I know that's not realistic. That's not a truth.

You know, it would really help me if maybe you faced the wall and I faced out and that I talked with our waitress and you basically didn't unless you needed to. So I could have a very specific need and say it in that way that I think he could hear that and probably understand my need at that point. And it would be so much better than a reactive response, which would probably be included with a lot of anger, a lot of huffing and puffing, or in my case, shut down, run out of the restaurant, whatever.

So we can learn how to ask for our needs also in a very practical way. Or it might be that he doesn't want to leave that or doesn't want to do that. And then I could say, you know, I, I'm just really needing to leave because I'm starting to become somebody I don't want to become here. So. Mm-hmm. If you don't mind, can we just take out our food and take it home tonight? You know, there are lots of ways to figure out how I can serve myself when my peace is disturbed, as I said.

Tara McCausland: Yeah. And I don't know that you would be able to make those boundaries without having done that self-examination work up front, right? Like if you had that experience where you had been in a restaurant, you had that interaction with the waitress, and if you kind of self-sabotaged and you just ran out of the restaurant really angry. It would be hard, I think, to come back to the restaurant with enough self-awareness and the ability to communicate what you needed the next time versus if you went home and you wrote it out like you had described and asked yourself all of those questions.

And then later on when you had the capacity to talk to your spouse, like, this is what was happening. Right. It just seems to me like going through that process that you had described would then puts you in a position for the future to create appropriate boundaries. Does that make sense?

Debbie Laaser: Yes. And I just like call them a need because some, and I think sometimes we do have walls we need to create that I call boundaries, but I get a little triggered by boundaries. My trigger is, my perception is it creates this visual of putting up a brick wall with somebody. It cuts off intimacy we're trying to create with them. Whereas a need is just, we all have needs. all the time. They're often very practical needs and ones we can serve each other with.

And so we can create that need and we can talk with our spouse about it. And usually if it's not a big brick wall, they're fine with trying to meet our needs, you know? So anyway.

Tara McCausland: No, I'm glad that you said that. We talk a lot about boundaries for safety at SA Lifeline. So it's good to get a different perspective. On that. And sometimes the word boundary could be a trigger. So educating yourself or even reframing that, expressing it as a need. We call a boundary something to keep you safe, not as a punishment or as a wall, but something to keep you safe. But I like that idea of calling it a need.

I think people can understand. Okay. So I love what we've talked about so far, and I love these 7 desires. And I think we would all do well to sit down with these. 7 desires, these 7 needs, and consider, you know, where do I see myself being most needy? But I wanted to just repeat them for our audience. So number 1 was to be heard. 2 was to be affirmed. 3, to be blessed, meaning that you are loved unconditionally. Okay. 4 was to be safe.

5, to be touched through appropriate loving human contact, wanted to emphasize that. 6, to be chosen, and 7, to be included. I would love for you, as we're kind of closing up here, to talk a little bit more about what work can you do on the day-to-day as an individual to maybe better come to understand yourself and find yourself within these 7 desires so that when you are triggered, you can move forward in positive ways?

Debbie Laaser: Well, first of all, I would just say, you know, it is a process. It's not something we can kind of sit down and understand in an hour or two. It might help some of your readers if they would like to read our book called The Seven Desires. This isn't meant to be a marketing thing, but it does lay out more examples of what each one of these desires is. And then it also helps you to see how you can look at those in a deeper way for yourself.

How were they served to you in your lifetime? And my hunch is that some of them that maybe you least experienced in your life by both a mom and a dad figure, or a grandma, grandpa, whatever the situation was of your caregivers. Our belief is that you needed those things from both of those people. And let's just say for the majority of those, you got them a lot from your mom, but your dad was pretty absent in your life.

And so what you might notice is that I've been extraordinarily desiring to marry someone who could give me or serve me these desires of my life, particularly a man that shows up with a number of these things that I need. And it's one of the ways we can make some sense about why do we choose the person we choose when we marry? Because I think my husband used to say this, we kind of hand each other a list at the altar of our desires.

I'm going to need a lot of affirmation. I'm going to need a lot of touch. I'm going to need a lot of this because I didn't have all of that. And we don't talk about it, but it's unspoken. And then when we don't get it, we have this ache inside of us or this anger that really starts to show up. And I think for a lot of people, they start to think that they're just not fit for one another, or they are too different from one another.

And the truth is they are different and they have probably different needs around these desires. But once you're able to name them, I think it becomes a lot easier to talk about them and figure out how best to serve each other with things that you need. Again, this is not early recovery. When we talk about betrayal, we talk about a lot of just hearing, understanding, grieving. But this is part of where we would want to take people who want to find meaning out of the suffering.

So that this has not just been a waste of time, but God is actually going to teach us some things. And we can, I always say, ask that question every day when something hurts. What, Lord, do you want to teach me today? What do you want me to learn? And there are so many things that come by that. I think ultimately what God wants us to know is he wants us to know that if we seek him, he will give us all the desires of our life.

And I think ultimately that is where we will find our joy and our peace. Because as so much as we keep seeking those, especially from our marriage partner, 100% of the time, I think God is sitting over there rather disappointed saying, yes, but what about me? I told you I would deliver these desires to you. And so I think what is true is we can learn to serve each other better. Yeah. And we need to accept that none of us are perfect enough that we could do that all the time.

We're not created that way. And I keep thinking, well, God was so smart if he created us so that in our marriages we could give each other everything we wanted. Why in the world would we need him? And so it would really paralyze our spiritual growth. And so I know this more than ever, Tara, especially since my husband passed away. Yeah. We were able to do a lot of things for each other once we were able to work on understanding each other's life, grieving, forgiving, accepting we weren't perfect partners for each other, that that's just the way it is.

When I finally didn't have him at all in my daily life is when I began to see how God was continually starting to serve these desires to me. So I wouldn't hope that for anyone. And I'm really committed and devoted to seeing how that will continue to play itself out in my life, because I know it's true. And I think the more I can do that, the less I carry my needs about these desires from other people.

It's nice when I get them and I love that. And it'll be enough, whatever comes to me. And the rest I will continue to look to God for. So that is ultimately our big belief here at Faithful and True.

Tara McCausland: Yeah, I love that. And actually, that really resonates with me because we talk about having God at our center. We have what's called our Circle Models at SA Lifeline. And if you're interested as a listener to find those, you go to salifeline.org and go to the Who We Are tab and the Circle Models. But we find that unless we have God at our center, anything else at our center will leave us feeling a void. Or a God hunger, as, you know, some have called it.

And, you know, regardless of whether or not— and I don't want to diminish the intense pain that comes when there has been betrayal and addiction in relationship. I don't say this diminishing the hurt at all. However, we have to recognize, just like you said, Debbie, that marriage relationship is never, ever, even in the best case scenarios, going to meet all of our needs. And so God at our center and seeking to have those needs filled by the God of our understanding really is the answer regardless of the outcome of our marriage.

Now, I know this may not feel like it really goes along with the idea of triggers, but we know that again, as you had talked about at the beginning, triggers are showing us places where we need some healing. Yeah.

Debbie Laaser: And they could, you know, one of my desires that was really missing was being included. Again, some of that was the twin stuff or whatever, but one could say, now that Mark's not here, God's serving you all your desires. I go, yes, but I go to a wedding, let's just say. And it's really hard to feel included when all the couples are out there dancing on the dance floor and they're hugging and oh, what a sweet marriage couple.

And I'm sitting there by myself. And so the triggers still come. It's just that I go with, I take them to a different place. I can take them to God in that moment and just share my sorrow or my sadness or say, there's some way you can include me in this, this event tonight. I would just love that. And it never fails. Later on, a whole group will say, come on over, dance with us or do this with us or whatever.

And it's like, oh, I know you showed up again for me. So the triggers continue, but we also Don't get so angry, I think, at others for not noticing that's what we would need. And we're able to take it to the place where God can do something about our need.

Tara McCausland: Yeah. So beautiful. Well, I love this conversation.

Debbie Laaser: Thank you for teaching me questions.

Tara McCausland: And before we leave this conversation, 2 questions. If people want to connect with you, where's the best place that they can find you?

Debbie Laaser: Our website is probably the best. It's Faithful and spelled out True. And there's a place where they can put in a question or a need or whatever, info@faithfulandtrue.com. So they can reach us through that, or they can call our office number, which is 952-746-3880.

Tara McCausland: Wonderful. And we can put both of those in the show notes, but before I let you go, We gotta ask these final bookend questions. So we have a varied audience here. What would you tell someone who's just begun their work of recovery? And what would you tell someone that's been doing this work for a while?

Debbie Laaser: For those very new people into discovery, get help as fast as you can and include professional help in that. Groups serve a wonderful purpose of support for you. And I also think it's the professionals who will help you To explore your, what we call schema, your belief systems, your expectations. And a lot of times support groups aren't capable of taking you in that direction because that is in fact that whole layer of perceptions, meanings, and core beliefs that are creating a ton of pain.

One of the greatest gifts Mark and I received was fast help. It was like we crashed in the middle of the highway and the ambulances showed up and we had help from day 3. And so I would want that for anybody. Don't sit alone. I know many men who struggle with their addiction are isolating, lying, hiding because they're of shame. You are maybe for the same reasons, or you don't know what to do. As soon as both of you can get help, the better.

So do that right away. Find a good place where you feel that it's a right fit for you. There are a lot of people out there that work in different ways. Some are good fits, others not. Yeah. You need to know that it feels good for you. The other category, what if you've been in it for a while and you feel kind of stuck, or maybe you don't sense the growth that you would like, or you're still focusing so much on this betrayal and it's been 3, 4 years?

I would say that probably there's something missing from your program of recovery. We notice that for men who are struggling and can't seem to stay sober. I noticed that for women who just still don't have a spark in their life, they're still depressed a lot of times, anxious, sad, that there is probably something missing is our belief. And so a couple of those things might be you have an individual counselor, but perhaps you don't have any group.

You don't have community around you of other women who know what this is like. I don't mean just people who you share studying with the Bible, for instance, or good neighbors. I mean people who can talk about any And those are so important people to find, which is why your organization is so great, because that's what you're helping people to do. Also, we believe in kind of a legged approach to recovery. Your help and support, his and yours together, all 3 pieces.

And ideally, eventually, all 3 are going to be important. It could be you want to especially attend to yours and his in the beginning, but eventually you want to be able to do all 3. And then add couples work as you are ready, you the woman. Often I see it happening opposite, and not usually is that working very well when you only do couples work. You know, our belief is you cannot work on a marriage before, first of all, there's sobriety and total truth telling in the marriage.

If you don't have that, you're going to just keep stumbling over those issues every time you go in, which gets very old. We want to make sure he's on a program of finding complete sobriety, which we honestly believe is very attainable. Doesn't mean it doesn't take hard work, but we hold a high standard for that. And we want to make sure you've had enough support so that you feel heard and understood and embraced and loved and touched in healthy ways and safe, that you have people to go to continually to talk to.

Then we can start looking at coupleship things or marriage. So figure out what's missing. You know, sometimes I have some recent clients I'm working with that their husbands have been working for 4 years. They're sort of sober, which my husband would always say is kind of like sort of being pregnant. Either are you or not. Not one or the other. You're here. I always liked that about his approach. And the wives have just been kind of waiting at home, hoping and hoping and hoping that would change.

Getting a little too involved and probably looks like control to him about what he needs to do. I say, whatever you want him to do, you go do yourself. And you'll find that it's going to reap much greater benefits for you.

Tara McCausland: Wonderful counsel, Debbie. And so fun to meet you. Thank you again for the wonderful work that you're doing in this field and appreciate your time today. You're welcome.

Narrator: Thanks for joining us. We invite you to subscribe to this podcast so that you don't miss new episodes. And while you're at it, will you please leave us a 5-star rating and review to help us spread the good news that healing from sexual addiction and betrayal trauma is possible? We invite individuals who are struggling to join our virtual or in-person trauma-sensitive 12-step meetings. Meeting times and locations can be found at sal12step.org. You can find quality education at salifeline.org, and we hope that you will follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

SA Lifeline is a 501 nonprofit organization, and we welcome donations. SA Lifeline. Come heal with us.