Answers to Your Recovery Questions: SAL 12-Step Conference Q&A

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: Hello friends, welcome to the Pathway to Recovery Podcast. I'm Tara McCausland. I'm so pleased you're here with me today. I'm happy to share with you this last installment from our 2026 SAL 12-Step Conference that was just this past April. And this is our final Q&A session with many of the presenters of the conference. And I think that you'll find that the questions asked and the answers given will be very, very helpful questions that are challenging that many of you have asked.

And the people who are responding on this panel are seasoned individuals who have worked recovery for years. And also, before we get into our Q&A, I just wanted to remind you that registration for our 2026 SA Lifeline Women's Workshop is live on salifeline.org. And this will be held in Mapleton, Utah at the beautiful Croshaw Lodge on September 18th and 19th. And seats are limited. So if you would like to join us, please register. The workshop features therapist presentations and group discussions and opportunities to heal through nature and artistic expression.

It really is a unique healing opportunity. So please register at salifeline.org and you can also find a link in the show notes. So once again, Happy to share this Q&A with you from our SAL 12-Step Conference. Enjoy.

Moderator: We received a bunch of questions. We selected the questions that we felt like would apply to the largest, you know, body of the organization here, and also that would help maintain the, the safety of the group. So if you submitted a question that wasn't answered, we encourage you to take it to your sponsor, to therapists, to a trusted individual working in recovery. If it's for a specific individual, let's see if we can catch them for a minute after the conference.

But thank you all for submitting questions, and we'll do our best to answer them. We're going to kick off a question that came in for Amanda. So Amanda, the question is, your talk convicted me of the destruction I brought to my marriage and family. How can I own my part and show my partner I truly get it?

Amanda: Good. I'm glad it convicted you. That's hard because truly getting it is, uh, intangible. The fact that you want to show your partner that you truly get it will feel like a genuine feeling. So as much as you can convey, I really care about getting this, this really matters to me, Wow. Can I listen to this more? Is there more you want to tell me? What else? What else? What else? So those are the healing conversations where you, you really can convey this genuine openness to hearing the pain and witnessing the pain.

If you can stay regulated throughout that, and you might need help with that, that's usually the problem is like, oh, she starts actually sharing the pain and then that's— Yeah. Too much and then the whole thing crumbles. That's where a therapist can help facilitate those kinds of healing conversations. But yeah, it comes down to witnessing and having that genuine want and curiosity to know. And you can't really get there until you've done your own shame work.

So, but just saying that sentence, like asking this question, shows your heart. And yeah, conveying that sentence to your partner. That I really, if I could know how much this hurts, I would want to know because I love you. And it matters to me.

Moderator: Awesome. Thank you. All right. Question for all. How do you learn to sit in the uncomfortable, especially when it comes to thought and step work? I don't know if anybody's jumping at that. Otherwise I'll pick on people. Go ahead, Heather.

Heather: This one is good. I have been talking a lot about this lately. The uncomfortable. Learning to sit in it. It's not fun. The uncomfortable for me is— so again, I really don't believe in good or bad feelings. I don't. I believe feelings are. It's what I choose to do with them. Feelings communicate something to me, so communicate to my body. So if I'm sad, that's communicating something to my body. It's something I need to process, something I need to work through.

It's what I— how I choose to cope with that and use it. And those emotions can be very uncomfortable. I want to numb just as much as my addict sometimes wants to numb. I don't like feeling some of those feelings. And it's learning to sit in that feeling with my higher power, asking for help. Help me sit in this feeling, especially in step work. Yeah. When it comes to thought and step work, it's uncomfortable, but talk with my sponsor is— was something I would do often.

Like, I'm uncomfortable. Help me. Help me understand this. Help me process this. Like, moving through it, not just sitting in it. And so that's the difference to me. But that— this phrase uncomfortable keeps coming up in my life lately because I think I'm sitting in a lot of uncomfortable stuff right now in my life. Yeah. And I am having to get used to, and that's hard. It's just hard. But just know that, just know you're not alone in that.

Also, when God makes me uncomfortable, that means I'm growing. When I'm comfortable, that means I'm stagnant. That's bad. When I'm comfortable and I want that, that's a bad thing. Like, the uncomfortable means I'm growing too. So know that, know that uncomfortable means I'm growing. This is something new. This is change, you know, and Again, it's hard, but I'll stop talking. Anybody else want to jump in?

Josh: So we heal through pendulation, meaning we go from— we sit with the hard intentionally, and then we shift into something easier or distracting, something that we want to do, and then we shift back into the hard. So we do this pendulation, and that's ultimately what heals, but we have to be intentional about sitting with that hard for a period of time. And then pendulating out of that.

Moderator: And I'm going to lean in a little bit on that, Josh. As people are pendulating in and out of that, what actions should people take when they're pendulating out of the hurt?

Josh: Yeah, good question. So, so the idea is to sit with that, either that thought or that pain. So if you're talking to the person that you betrayed, Hearing more about their story or kind of more about the impact that they're feeling or kind of more about what's coming up for them and sitting with that to some degree. And again, kind of sensing into your nervous system. Hey, am I starting to dissociate? Am I starting to check out?

Am I starting to go to shame? And that's where we pause and say, okay, we need to take a break. I'm going to go run around the block. I'm going to go take a breather. I'm going to go take a cold shower. I'm going to go eat something, but I need to go do something that's more— Yeah. Calming and relaxing, and then pendulate back into that.

Moderator: Awesome. Thank you. And I'll, if I can add to that list, calling a sponsor has been helpful for me. All right. The next one for the women. How do you feel balance feeling or seeming apathetic when surrendering? Ooh, I'm going to jump over here to Real because she talked about surrender today. So Real, Go ahead and take a stab here.

Rhyll: Surrender is actually very hard work. There is no apathy to surrendering. And so it— we have this mindset that surrendering is giving up. In the work that we do, it is not giving up. It is giving to the only power that can help me. I appreciated that Josh used a quote, and it said, the only place I could go was God. That was my surrender. And so I'm gonna go back to a little bit what the fellow, somebody asked about how does he show his spouse that he's concerned about her feelings?

I had to stop listening to that voice 'cause I could no longer trust it. And so when I surrender my will to the God of my understanding, Mm-hmm. then that very, very soft voice can guide me and direct me. It is not a giving up. It is actually, it's probably the hardest work I've ever done. Unmanageability is step 1. Step 2 is there is a power greater than myself. But step 3 was so hard for me, to give my will over and trust that his will was best for me.

And I had to trust him enough, trust that Spirit enough to say, whatever is best for me, you're going to guide me in. And so I, that's what I said to the ladies. There's an attitude of surrender, then there's a process of surrender. And that process of surrender often brings me to the attitude of surrender, which is, it's gonna all be okay.

Moderator: Thank you. Shayna, go ahead.

Shayna: Yeah, just to add to Real's excellent answer there, for me, It's, it's kind of like delegation. As we're working on this event and everything, I know like if, if Justin has something or Erin has something she's gonna do, I don't have to worry about that thing at all. Right. And in surrender, it's not like I don't care about that anymore. I realize I have to surrender a thing and then I give it to the person that I know is gonna do the best with it.

And then I don't have to worry about it anymore cuz there's nothing else for me to do. Yeah. And I trust my higher power that it's in the right hands.

Moderator: Awesome. Thank you. All right. Next question to everyone. I'm new to SAL 12-step. I hear people at their anniversary share about sobriety and recovery that indicate no relapses. Am I alone in my struggles with relapses? No. Does somebody want to jump in and take that? Go ahead, Steven.

Steven: There are definitions that are important of those of us that are working, say, at 12-step. And I would refer the person that wrote this question to the definition of lapse and the definition of relapse. When we choose to act out and we're honest and talk about it in a very timely way, that's a lapse. Living in recovery can include lapse. And so a lapse is I made a choice. I broke my sobriety, and I'm willing to be completely honest about that in a very timely way.

That's a lapse. I continue in my work of recovery. A relapse is when I choose to act out and then don't take responsibility for that and am not honest about it and appear as though I am still living in recovery. That is relapse. And relapse, I'm no longer in working recovery or living in recovery. So lapse, sadly, can be part of the work of recovery. Being completely honest about that in a very timely way allows us to continue to receive the help we need from others and from God.

A relapse, when I choose to keep that to myself, I lose that support. From others and God because I am misrepresenting myself and posing. So on a lapse, continue to work and set aside this idea that I'm a bad person or that there's shame here. Continue to look to a sponsor. Continue to look to others and their work of recovery as an example and work the steps and things honestly will get Thank you, Steven.

Moderator: And I'll say, if you're hearing, you know, birthdays and chips and stuff like that, you may not know how many times that sobriety date has been reset. Josh just shared his story coming up on 12 years in June. But as you heard, that wasn't, that wasn't his first sobriety date, right? I'll lean into this a little bit from a different perspective, if that's okay. Yeah, please do. From the women's perspective, how do you view and work your recovery as your partner is struggling with relapses?

Rhyll: Very briefly, as far as I know, Steven has not lapsed or relapsed in 20 years plus. However, I totally agree with the lapse and relapse. Because if a person made that choice and was immediately honest and humble and accountable— I'm working with a young man right now who checked in with me. He didn't have to check in with me. And he said, I lapsed, and then I lapsed again, but I'm back on track. I was like, good job.

This is a learning experience for this young man. But a relapse is all about the lies. And that is really hard for me. So that's just my personal issue. A relapse would be extremely hard for me. I'd have to ask the God of my understanding about what would be the next step for me after this many years of recovery work.

Moderator: Thank you. All right, the next question, again for everybody. What resources are there for women struggling through addiction? And I'm going to default to Josh and Amanda, as I'm sure you probably see this in your work.

Amanda: I wish we had more. That's the answer. I wish we had more. Um, and I know we've tried to, yeah, you guys have tried to get a few groups going. I've seen several female addicts and definitely a handful of betrayed men. And it's, it's really kind of a different treatment. It's similar, but there, it's got its own flavor. I mean, trauma work, that's the answer there. It's going to be harder to find a group. They can still participate in SA, right?

But do the therapy work. And if you have, if you have a qualified therapist, that therapist can still do everything that they do.

Josh: Well, and SAL is resourced to have addict groups for women and betrayed groups for men. We just haven't had enough and it hasn't been consistent to keep a group going. But that would be something that would be nice to be a permanent fixture. But since it's not, yes, SA would be the place to go. Individual therapy is beneficial. And kind of to that point, it is a little bit of a different flavor. And for women, it seems to be that shame is even more prevalent and a little bit harder that way.

And so. Sometimes harder for them to come forward to some degree. But yeah, at least doing some type of therapy is critical. All right.

Moderator: In terms of building a support system, again, it's for everybody. How do you know who is safe to disclose to? Why is disclosure to safe people even important for the betrayed? So I'm gonna look at the betrayed first, Lisey, if you don't mind. And then Nikitas or Justin, if you don't mind taking it from the addict's perspective.

Lisey: I really would only disclose to people in group. I haven't really found that many people outside of group are capable of holding what I have experienced, what I have felt, and who I am and who my spouse is, right? And so for me, the safest place for me to disclose was in group, to sponsors, and the therapist. Yeah. But I don't think I told family members or friends for a really long time. And that, that just kept me safe, really.

And for me, it was a burden to tell people that weren't in group that didn't understand. And so, because then you have to defend your spouse, and you have to defend yourself and all your behaviors, and you don't need to do that in a group setting.

Moderator: So I'm going to keep you on the hook for a minute. The second part of that was why is disclosure to safe people important for the betrayed. So I think that's so key, identifying who's safe. And you said you found safe people in group. What did you find when you did disclose to safe people?

Lisey: Yeah, I found support and help and an understanding that I couldn't find anywhere else, right? Because we're all in the same place, in the same boat. And so when I did disclose and Every, you know, every woman in group that I ever spoke to about it was understanding and could support me. And that's what I needed. I needed other women to understand where I came from and to not judge and just support where I was.

Moderator: Awesome. Thank you. Yeah.

Shayna: Just a slightly different perspective because, um, I'm a single mom, so I had to disclose to my community to get better, like, physical support. And as far as, like, knowing if someone's safe, I think it was more about, like, changing me and not caring whether, like, how they were going to receive that. Because you're right, like, sharing with people, sometimes they can't hold it, and that's okay. And I just learned not to care about how they held it, but just to say, hey, this happened to me.

And I need to be reaching out to my community. So I love my SAL sisters, but also like my, my literal neighborhood has become like my spy network. They help watch over my kids. Like my community is so important. So I had to get over that fear.

Moderator: Awesome. Thank you, Amanda. And then we'll jump to—

Amanda: Oh, I was just going to say, like, I, I've always felt really strongly that these are not My secrets, and I'm not responsible now to keep your secrets a secret. That's a burden when it's affected my entire life. So just because something's gotten disclosed doesn't mean now I have to be so silenced, and it already is pretty isolating and silencing. Uh, sometimes couples put rules on each other too, like you can't tell so-and-so. And that's not right because I have this burden now and it's not owned by you.

And so that— but it is my responsibility now to do this, to sense the safety and be wise. Just have wisdom about how you disclose and you'll learn very quickly who is safe and who is not. Thank you.

Nikitas: Hi, I'm Nikitas. So my support group, I realized that the more I share, the more vulnerable I get, the more vulnerable men get with me. The light goes in and out of my heart. I also brought this into my work environment. I'm in construction. I build houses for a living, and there's a lot of men there, and it's a lot of water cooler talk. It's mostly about sports and women, and I try to change that narrative whenever I'm in that moment.

And I've brought other men into SAL in these construction crews and been able to speak to them. So the way I look at it, the more I speak about it, the more opportunity I have to bring other men into this and acknowledge that. And that's like a living amends for me, to make other men safe as well. That's my 2 cents. Thanks. Love it.

Moderator: Thank you, Nikitas. Thank you all. All right, for Josh, Step 4 is supposed to be the good and bad. How can we get a more balanced picture of who we were versus who we are and who do we want to be? That's a good question.

Josh: Yeah, that is a good question. So part of it is we have to look at our faulty core beliefs and where did we kind of get those faulty core beliefs? Where did we start buying into those? Part of the character defects, so kind of shifting to 6 and 7, I like to use the word defensive accommodation rather than character defects. And what that means to me therapeutically, Is defensive accommodation is, this is what I did to try to protect myself or to try to adapt as much as I could, especially when we were a kid.

It's not like we can just leave our house and go live somewhere else. We're kind of stuck where we're at. And so we just, we had these defensive accommodations that kind of come up for us. And so we have to kind of weed out what are my core values? That's one thing that I think a lot of addicts have to kind of define of who am I really? What are my core values? What do I believe in?

Because we've, we've kind of railroaded our core values through our addiction. And so we have to kind of redefine ourselves to some degree. And I would argue part of step 4 is that process of weeding out these resentments and these fears that we have to say, who am I really? Like, what's, what's left after I kind of tear all this down? And then what do I do to kind of rebuild myself and start living from these core values and start living a more congruent life?

So the bad is facing through all that and and diving into that crap, so to speak, and then kind of figuring that out and then kind of redefining who you are.

Moderator: Awesome. Thank you. All right. Next question to everybody. What can I do if I feel like my partner hasn't disclosed all of his betrayal to me? That's a big one. Anyone want to take a stab at that? Real— go ahead.

Rhyll: Find a good therapist. I'm truly, you can't make 'em. You can't make 'em. And maybe they won't even go to the therapist. And so maybe you're never gonna know. But you're going to know in the SA Lifeline circles models. I hope all of you have seen them. If you look at that, the addict circle, those behaviors are so typical of sexual addiction. And so when you see that, You don't even have to know if he's an addict.

You just see the behaviors and go, well, that's what I'm seeing. Therefore, this is what I'm going to do. I'm gonna have self-care and boundaries and have a sponsor and do all those things in my healthy circle on the other side. So if he hasn't disclosed, in my experience, It didn't. It doesn't really matter now. Steven disclosed. I didn't have to really ask him. He was basically caught. But from my experience of working with so many others is that sometimes that's not going to happen.

But I will tell you that the healthiest thing for a spouse to do is work her recovery, and it can get messy, but it will work out because when When I work my recovery, the honesty, humility, accountability, and the working my own recovery will bring some clarity to me. And I always say light attracts light. So I work recovery, I will have more light. If he chooses dark, he will go away. That can be sad, but it's not gonna be awful.

Because I still have more light and more light. And so my own recovery is critical. I can't make somebody else disclose. And so if I find a good qualified therapist, I do my work, I do my recovery work, things will work out. Not maybe exactly the way that I wanted it to, right? But it will work out. And I— some of the The ladies that I admire the most have worked their recovery, worked their recovery, and husbands left it.

But these are some of the strongest women I've ever met, and that recovery has blessed their life and another generation.

Moderator: Thank you. Appreciate it. And I'll just add one thing because I can, because I have a microphone. So for me, I had a really hard time getting honest, and I was As my therapist later put, like, honest as I was capable of being in that moment, but I had to do more work to understand, like, what full honesty was. And both Amanda and Josh talked about it earlier, the full therapeutic disclosures. We went through that. And for me, that was critical to, like, get to the point of really seeing my full harms and be able to be capable of honest, to do, to disclose everything.

Because I didn't initially. Several times. All right, for the men. When I lapse, I tell my wife within 24 hours. Her response is to shame and lecture me. How can I continue to ensure openness and honesty while protecting myself from that shame? Justin, I'm looking at you first, brother.

Scott: I'm kind of a jerk. Stop lapsing. No, but that's, that's harsh. It's true, but it's harsh. But how do I protect myself from that shame? Once again, the only way is to work your program. I've got to work my program. If I lapse, I've got to work my program, continue being honest, tell my wife about it, tell my sponsor about it, reset my sobriety date in my group, and keep working my program. How my wife responds or treats me or talks to me in that moment, once again, I can't control it.

Right. I cannot control it. I can't change it. The only way to change that is by working my program, living Step 12, practicing these principles in all aspects of my life, not just in recovery, but in everything I do. And that's my take on it.

Nikitas: So first, when it comes to an addict, it's really courageous to actually say something. So you did some courage work there. Second is just to be A safe container so your partner could actually express themselves without trying to fix them. 'Cause a man, like, they want to fix. And this is what I was sharing about in the breakout room. It's like, just hold the space without fixing. We're not Dr. Oz. We're not supposed to fix it.

You married your wife for a certain reason because she's intelligent and knows how to— she knows what she wants. All you need to do is just hold space moment by moment, every time it comes up. Basically, I know it's said before, but Be the sky and just let the clouds pass by without closing the old narrative that you should live in that shame and that you're not enough and you don't matter. It's really difficult for addicts to just get out of their own way.

And the best thing to do is just hold space and just acknowledge the feelings, validate, empathize, and make it safe for them to be able to come back so they could open up to you exactly what you put them through. Without fixing. Without fixing.

Moderator: Thank you. All right. Uh, for everybody, when my addict partner responds with chronic defensiveness, it gets in the way of connection, empathy, and safety. How do we navigate this? So a little bit of a kind of the flip perspective. Amanda, you wanna take that one?

Amanda: Yeah. Combining the last one too, I, I would say like in the previous situation, both partners need more. Because they could do that dance for the next 20 years, um, where he lapses, he tells her, she shames him, he lapses, right? And, um, and so that's progress, right? There's honesty, and that's very hard to do, but you could just do that for a long time. So it just shows the need for deeper work for both. Yeah. Parties.

So here, when there's defensiveness or a trauma response from the betrayed, number one, I would say naming what's happening, saying it out loud. So if this is the betrayed and the addict is being defensive, Sure. that's where she can say, oh, okay, this is what's happening. I'd really like to have a vulnerable conversation with you. But, uh, I think we both need to get regulated to be able to do that. So we're gonna end it here.

I'd love to do that with you, but I need to see that we're both gonna be in a space that we could do that. That's the first part of, yeah.

Josh: Here's my weird analogy. If the addict is being defensive or if the betrayed is in a trauma response, I tell my clients, imagine we have 2 heads. We have our authentic head. And we have our addict head, and our spouse has their authentic head, and they have their betrayed trauma head, right? And so if they're mad, if they're yelling and shaming us, it's their trauma response head, not their authentic head yelling at our addict head. And so if we can both kind of step out of that and say, I totally agree with what your betrayed side is saying to my addict side, I agree with all of that, right?

Instead of us internalizing and saying, that's who I am, or that's who, um, where I'm at. Yeah. And again, on that defensiveness piece too, that's usually more the addict speaking than it is the authentic self. So if I'm going to defensiveness, why is that? What makes me feel unsafe that I feel like I have to protect myself or defend myself? Why can't I just be that container like Nikitas was talking about to just kind of hold space for her pain and being able to kind of take a look at what's going on with me?

Because if I'm If I'm dysregulated, something's wrong with me, right?

Moderator: All right, for men, if your recovery journey included a shift from simply attending meetings to actually working the 12 steps, what caused that change for you? What counsel would you give your past self? Steven, do you want to take that one first? What was the shift for you from attending meetings to actually working the steps?

Steven: The interesting thing about 12-step is when we talk about working the steps, there's this tendency to want to say, I'm, I'm going to go to a meeting and that means that I'm involved in my recovery. I'm working my 12-step program, just working recovery in meetings. And that's a really common thing because it's easy. The real work of recovery is done outside the meeting. And I think the shift for me actually, I don't know, a tiny bit about my story.

I went to 4 12-step meetings the second time that I came forward and I didn't acknowledge that I was dealing with an addiction and I judged everyone there as being really weird people. And that was not too cool of me. That was very prideful. And I actually take responsibility for that level of pride. When I finally went to a went to 12-step, and I started with SA 20 years ago, and for which I'm incredibly grateful. I think that the thing that will really change that attitude is get a good sponsor.

It has— and that good sponsor is going to say, here's a pathway that you need to work recovery, and I will give you my experience in doing so. But then the sponsor needs to say, I can express my experience to you, but I can't do the work for you. So that shift came for me as going to the meeting willingly because I was so in so much pain, finding a really good sponsor who I could relate to, who I recognized his determined effort to live in recovery and what it had taken for him.

And then his advice to me was, work the steps, work the steps. And he was there also to help me understand concepts associated with surrendering my will, and part of that was communicating with him on a regular basis. Maybe we can say the shift came for me when I really wanted to work in recovery, and that the third time around I was determined to because there was everything on the table that I was going to lose if I didn't work recovery.

But maybe the indicator is going to be, am I willing to work recovery with a sponsor? And then with that sponsor, am I willing to listen to that sponsor, his experience, strength, and hope? So a person's just going to have to look at their situation and say, I can't work the steps continuously without a sponsor. Everything comes down to willingness, and a willingness includes honesty. And honesty in 12-step means I will work the steps, I will live the steps.

And that is where the benefit for me comes. So let's make it, am I willing to get a sponsor? And that can be my indicator.

Moderator: Love it. Thank you.

Nikitas: I love that you said willingness, but humility is where I get to willingness. And what I would tell my past self is, you're not a know-it-all. Shut up and listen. Become teachable. And I can't do that without humility.

Moderator: Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, Amanda and the women, how have you reframed the holidays since your discovery happened around the holidays? Do you still have heavy emotions?

Amanda: Yeah, I love this question. Yeah, so you heard this, this all came out the 23rd. We were at my in-laws' house. So then we, we ruined Christmas for everyone. So The next year, the anniversary, I was really— I felt a lot of things on that first year. And I'm very symbolic, and I very much wanted to take back the power. And so I now, for 8 years, have hosted— this is gonna sound crazy to some people because some people would want to, like, crawl in a hole and do nothing that day, which would be totally appropriate.

Yeah. I have hosted a huge Christensen party at our house, and I have the whole family there on the 23rd. And I did that the first year as a distraction. I was like, I don't wanna wallow around. We're in a really good place. We had worked so hard that year and had a new baby. And anyway, so I do that every year. And some years— Yeah. I just go through the motions. And I will say every year, and this means a lot to me, my husband, sometimes it's really on my mind and sometimes I've forgotten like, oh yeah, this is that time.

And every year my husband asks the night before, the day of, or that week or something like, hey, how you doing? I know it's the 23rd coming up. That matters to me. So that's been huge. But yeah, I just had to decide how I wanted to actively experience that day. Thank you.

Moderator: Any other comments? Heather?

Heather: So my D-Day was July 3rd, which is right before July 4th, which isn't a huge holiday, not like Christmas. When you— I heard you say Christmas, I was like, whoa, I could— yeah. But yeah, that, that holiday, that first, I remember the next morning I was like, I'm gonna pretend like everything's okay, but just know it's really not okay. 'Cause we're gonna be with family and friends and people. And anyway, and then the next year came around and it was still hard.

I remember that, especially that first year. And I was like, again, I'm pretending everything's okay. It's really not. Just know that. But every year got a little bit better. And then I created new things to do. Instead of the parade that we used to go to, I started doing, we started going to baseball games. That was, you know, I kind of just reinvented it. And now that's what we do with our kids. We'll go to a baseball game for 4th of July instead.

And just kind of reframing it. I liked how Amanda said it, taking the power back. Yeah. just reframing it, but also giving yourself grace if it takes time. I just had to give myself grace every year. It's just going to take some time. And my anniversary also became kind of a painful thing, and I had to redo that. And same kind of thing, just taking it back and reinventing it. So I just think that was really important for me.

Amanda: And have a good cry too. Yeah. I don't want to make it sound like I just distracted myself away from the pain because, yeah, sometimes different years, Because we've had further disclosure, yeah, drama after. So some years have been really hard, actually. And, and I still do the party, but I need to be sad for a while too.

Moderator: Thank you. And for those of you that don't know, this is my wonderful wife, Erin.

Erin: So I'm married to the guy with the mic, so I get the mic too. Um, I actually, my comment was going to be with a question that just came in. How do you honor wedding anniversaries? How do you create new anniversaries? My comment was that I know holidays can be hard, even if you're, um, just disclosure or discovery didn't occur, and like adjacent to a holiday, all the big things and all the big family traditions that you created as a couple have just been blown up.

For me, our anniversary was really difficult because I didn't wanna celebrate our marriage. So instead, I reframed it as a celebration of the children that we have, and it became our family's birthday, and I made a birthday cake, and we did, we went to dinner together as a family, and we just celebrated our anniversary with our children.

Amanda: They loved it.

Erin: We love them. I'm so grateful. grateful that our union created these children, and I can celebrate that. And so that's what we did for many years. And our disclosure was about 7 years ago, and it's been the last like 3 years where anniversaries could be lovey-dovey again. And that's fun and a celebration that we've, we've made it to that point. So it's okay to redefine whatever you need. Like Heather redefined her wedding ring. We got new wedding rings, and I picked my own because it's my commitment to my relationship.

I didn't want it from him. I wanted to pick it because I'm choosing to stay. So you can reframe it however you need, and talking to people can give you lots of ideas of what they've done.

Moderator: Thank you. And kind of going— we'll stick with this for a second with that question that just came in about anniversaries for the women. Any additional thoughts around that? And I'm going to add in another question. As the addict, there were several times where I considered disclosing but thought, well, but Christmas is coming up, but The— her birthday's coming up, but this— and so I'll wait until next month. And oh wait, but then we've got a vacation, so I'll wait till after that.

And you see how it goes. So if you're responding to an addict who's considering disclosing, do they postpone disclosure because of a holiday or an event?

Shayna: Okay guys, let's be honest. Women, we all know when something's up. And I don't know what it's like for men if you can tell that we know or not, but we know. So time to disclose is when she's asking you, because she's going to drop a thousand hints, or she's going to come straight out and be like, are you okay? What is going on? Something's going on. That's when you disclose. So I don't know what it's like to be in the head of an addict, um, but whatever you're telling yourself, like, now's not right, now it's not right, now's not right— listen, and she will give you your opening, and she'll absolutely tell you.

Lisey: Disclose today, right now. Be honest today. My former husband did a full therapeutic disclosure and still held back the most important traumatizing aspect of his addiction. And it broke me all over again. And if he had just been honest in his first therapeutic disclosure, we probably could have saved our marriage. But he held back. He did not want to be honest. And there's just no way to explain to a wife why you continue to lie and why you continue to act out.

Just please be honest. If you would like to save your marriage, I would just say, please be honest immediately today.

Amanda: Yes. Amen. All of this is like, uh, the addict is still trying to manage the fallout. So cue into that. Oh, I'm trying to manage how this goes by saying it's for her. It's not for her. You're trying to manage it.

Rhyll: About December 24th in the morning, Steven had asked me what I want for Christmas. I could plan on it 2 days before. What do you want for Christmas? Oh, and I— this is what— but the, the thing is, is this is what I always said. I said, I don't want anything. I want an honest husband. And he'd roll his eyes and like, just what do you want? I said, I want an honest husband. That's it. That's it.

Thankfully, he came around. Took a while.

Moderator: So no ambiguity in those responses, right? Like, very clear. Thank you all. Appreciate it. All right. Our next question is, I am working to understand God and how to really connect. I feel like I've been checking the box, but I desire to move past a to-do and find true connection with my higher power. How do I do this? That Justin, I can see him jumping out of his seat. That's Scott, isn't he?

Scott: This is my question. This is where I live. If I'm checking the boxes to get to God, I'm not getting to God. I'm getting to the ceilings and the walls just by checking the boxes. I have to be willing to lose everything I thought I knew about God. Everything. I need to be willing to lose my relationships, my, my faith, my everything in order to learn who God is. And when I'm in that place where I'm willing to say, hey God, I know nothing about you, show me who you are, show me who I am, tell me.

And what I do is I take a pen and paper and I listen and I write whatever comes to mind. I don't judge. I don't filter. I write. And that's how I learned who God is. And it's without checking the boxes. I think there's a verse of scripture somewhere that says something like, I am willing to give up everything to know you. For me, that's where it is. I have to be willing to give up everything.

And that's where God comes in. That's my take on that.

Moderator: I'll pass. Thanks. Any other comments on that?

Steven: A very short comment, and that is My perception of God, I need to accept that it is what it is at the moment, rather than say to myself it needs to be something else than what it is to me right now. And I need to say it is what it is right now. This is where I am, and this is where I'm beginning. I would just commend chapter four of Alcoholics Anonymous to every person here. It's written by Bill W.

and it's called We Agnostics. And essentially what he says is that ultimately we are where we are. We start there. I start there where I am. And I can honestly say at this point, I see God differently in my life today than I did, let's say, 20 years ago, because in living and working and living in recovery, I'm really more observant of how I see God's hand in my life. And every day there's something that comes on that's, I can see God's hand in my life.

I can see God's hand in my life in this event and this event. That confirms to me that I am a believer. And then I begin to count my blessings. And what does that say to me? My story where I saw God's hand most evident in my life is the most difficult day of my life. On the day of August 25th, 2005, I was arrested. Was that a coincidence or was that God giving me a chance to come to myself?

That was God giving me a chance to come to myself. Did that help me in my belief at that moment? No, I wasn't even thinking about that. I was thinking how much trouble I was in. I look back on that event now and I say, I know that God is aware of me because of that moment. So I think my reflection on what has actually happened in my life and continues to happen in my life gives me strength and a desire to know that indeed God is aware of me.

And then my growth and understanding of who he is, and I see him, the God of my understanding, is I see it more clearly. But it takes effort on my part to want to know and then look and see what's happening in my life.

Scott: One more, one more thought on that. Sorry, Justin. Step 11, we sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God. We often talk about steps 10 through 12 as our maintenance and improvement steps that we work through our entire lives. It's not a checkbox. I get to improve my conscious contact with God as I understand him every single day. And in that aspect, God evolves. Not that God evolves, but my understanding of God evolves. And it changed.

It can change. And I think it should change every single day.

Moderator: Thank you. All right, for everyone, why is Step 4 so dang hard? I love the honest question. What can I do to get help past this roadblock? I just heard Shayna say it, so I'm gonna go to her and then we'll jump to Aaron.

Shayna: Oh, sponsor. Use your sponsor.

Lisey: Um, I would say before I started Step 4, I just started praying. I just started praying to God to reveal to me what my positive and negative qualities were. And I learned through stories. So actually what came to my mind was little stories of experiences that I'd had throughout the years. And because it came to me in a little story, and because I had been asking God for it, it didn't hurt as bad as what I thought it was gonna hurt.

When I remember reading, I came into my first group with Step 4, and you always tell the newbies like, we're so sorry you came in on Step 4, right? And I did. I came in on Step 4, and I remember everybody saying, it's okay, it's okay. You don't have to do this till later. But because I didn't just start tearing myself apart and thinking of all of my awful things, I first prayed a lot of prayers to have God reveal to me the character qualities that I needed to focus on.

And then that really limited— like, I didn't try to come up with 100 different things. I just let God give me top 5, top 5 good, bad, And the unknown. And so I felt like that was helpful for me. That's how I was able to do it without it being overwhelming and significantly painful.

Erin: Okay, my comment: we do it one day at a time, like one little piece at a time. You can't eat an elephant all at once. We just start, and we're going to make mistakes and realize, oh, maybe that wasn't quite it. And for me, it helped to realize that there was more than one way to work a Step 4. Like, there's no This is the way, which would've been nice maybe, right? But our recoveries are all different.

And what worked for my sponsor didn't work for me. I tried it. That wasn't the way that my Step 4 was gonna work. And so I had to get creative and I had to ask questions and find out how other people had done it. And there's such a wealth of experience and knowledge and strength and hope. And being able to do that, I found what would work for me. And Step 4 unlocked— for me, Step 4 unlocked real recovery.

Until then, I was just—

Amanda: what did it—

Erin: what did Josh call it? The first 3 steps are enlightening. Yes, that enlightenment period. And then when I was finally ready to run my step or do my Step 4, that's when I was finally ready to work the hard work of recovery.

Nikitas: Yeah, I'd like to say something about this also. For me, I just looked at the people in front of me and how— what they had, and I wanted it. And by the time I got to Step 4, I became the buffalo. And I just wanted to charge right through it. I didn't want that pain anymore. And it was all about my perspective and my attitude. Like, I get to do this, and I was willing to do it.

And I wanted to do it with my sponsor and just get through it. Like, it's all about the perspective of it. 10% is what circumstances are around me. 90% is my attitude and my perspective. And I wanted it.

Lisey: And I will add to what I said before. I've done step 4 several times since that first time, right? So also for me, Knowing that the first time I did it, you know, I'm kind of down here at the bottom of the mountain doing it. And then a year later, I'm a little bit higher and I'm doing step 4 from a completely different place than where I originally started. And now, as I'm 7 and a half years into recovery, I'm at a completely different place and I'm still ready.

And I'm constantly actually talking to my sponsor like, I have got to work on this again. And she's like, yeah, you do. And so it's just also knowing like, how slow and steady wins the race with this process of recovery for me.

Moderator: Thank you all. Nikitas, I love that you mentioned the buffalo. And Josh, when this question came up, I thought of that. It's, you still have to go through the storm, right? There's no, you can't skirt around it. It is just so dang hard. Um, we're at time, but if I can take some liberties, if you'll pass the mic down to Steven Reel, since you founded SAL, we'll close with you. And I'm going to take a page from Pathway to Recovery podcast.

What would you say to someone coming into the rooms of recovery for the first time? And what would you say to someone who's been in the rooms of recovery and they're in a good spot and, do I really need to keep going with this? What would you say?

Rhyll: I just admire every single one of you. This is a hard place to be, and it's one of the best places you'll ever be in your whole life. We've been working at this for I say Lifeline for 17 years. There have been many days, many, many days when I said, really, I wanted to just go dig wells in Africa because that sounds cooler. And then I go, this is my calling. And then when I meet some young couple and they're brand new and I'm thinking, yes, there is hope for the future.

People will change. Families will change. That's why we said in the SAL book, Recovering Individuals, Healing Families. You are not just doing individual healing. Even if you're single, you are healing other people by your influence. So if you're brand new, don't give up. Keep listening. Finding that God of your understanding on a daily basis, listening to that voice, not the 100 voices out there that just— there's so much noise. It's this voice that I will listen to because I trust this voice.

It was hard. It was really, really hard for 32 years. But there were really good things in those 32 years of our marriage. We've now passed 53 years of marriage. That is a miracle, and I'm extremely grateful. So if you're further along and you think you've got it, go back to a meeting and sponsor somebody, because that will change your life and it will change theirs. And as we do this, this very tiny little army, Of courageous, brave men and courageous, brave women will change the world.

And you are part of it. In 12-step, we know we can make changes. So blessings on all of us as we strive to continue forward. Don't quit.

Steven: We're grateful for all of you. We were in meetings yesterday. The service council directors were in meetings, and one of the directors, we were just talking, and he said really what was important to him about SAL and SAL 12-step. So the men are segregated on one side, the women are on the other. There was, I don't know, 15 of us in the room. But he pointed, he said, the thing that's so great about SAL 12-step is— then he pointed across the room and he said that We're working recovery, both SAL 12-step for addiction and SAL 12-step for trauma.

And we both get to understand each other's language together. That's really unique about SAL 12-step is that we're recovering individuals, but healing families and healing relationships. That happens in different ways for all of us. But when we first started SA Lifeline and then sometime later SAL 12-step, I think that we never thought it was in any way about us. It just was not about us at all. It just was kind of happening. We just are so appreciative of what's happening because so many people are stepping up, carrying the torch, making it happen.

It's really God's work. I want to give credit to God in Always. We've all had our first meeting, right? We all know how we felt when we went into that first meeting. First meeting I had, I just told you that I went. This was like the second time when I was not a humble guy and I judged, was judgmental, and how prideful I was and how much that didn't help me. Well, once I finally decided, it was the third time that I was on my knees in humility, like, "Help me, God!

I've got to change my life." I went to a meeting then with my heart in it, and I'll tell you what, I loved those men from the moment I stepped into that room because I was humble. And last night we had a meeting, 25 men sitting in a group. I didn't know really hardly any of them, but I knew every one of them because we all share similarities in our story. I loved that meeting. 20-something years after that meeting that I went to with my heart in it, that I loved.

You know what? What an incredible opportunity and blessing it is to go into those rooms. The first one, yeah, I was scared, but I was humble. And then with that humility, I thought, I can be here and be happy. And I knew that from the moment because I had some humility. Last night it was like, I love these guys. I love these men because they really, really, really want to be better. And they're willing to come.

They're willing to acknowledge their faults, their follies amongst others who will not judge but embrace. And God was in that meeting.

Heather: He's in Every meeting.

Steven: I know that. Thank you all for being here.

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 We offer in-person trauma-sensitive 12-step meetings. Meeting times and locations can be found at sal12step.org.

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