My heart has healed over these last 6 years as we have each grown into stronger, more compassionate people. The biggest victory for my husband has been his success at work. Before Covenant Eyes, he had started watching pornography at work multiple times each day. His boss was asking him why he spent so much time on his phone in the bathroom, and there was simply no excuse for his lack of productivity. The secondary gain is that you begin to apply this constructively compassionate mindset to others as well. The Early Recovery Couples Empathy Model incorporates these skills to help you to become less reactive to your environment and the reality of the betrayal. You replace the fear with a constructive compassion that is reinforced using the Ford Isomorphic Path to Self-Intimacy. The quality of recovery is directly related to how much effort is made to get well. We can never underestimate the power of prayer in the healing of addictions. The five components to treatment According to Mark Laaser,1 author and recovering sex addict, there are five components to treatment and recovery for sexual addiction. In another six-month period, the sex addict goes through a type of grief. She feels terrible about the damage she has caused to herself and to others. She also grieves the loss of her addiction because she used it like a crutch for a long period of time. Finally, whatever she used her addiction to cover up begins to emerge. It quickly becomes the only way to reduce stressors; the person struggling with addiction ends up doing and saying things they will soon regret but cannot seem to stop on their own. Carnes aptly refers to this as the hijacked brain. Once the brain is hijacked, the downward spiral of craving more and more dopamine affects higher-level thinking and reasoning. I'm kicking him around because that is how I feel about my addiction. I hate it and want to kill it off, that is why I am here." As the other addicts nodded their heads, something in their attitude struck me as wrong. I realized then that it is impossible to "kill off" the addiction, and that hating and controlling the addict part of themselves could only lead back to shame and problems.