Someone suffering from both substance abuse and mental health issues, including sex addiction, is defined as having a co-occurring disorder. KeyStone Center ECU understands the importance of treating individuals with co-occurring disorders and takes this into consideration when developing an individualized treatment plan. That intimacy then ripples out into every other aspect of the partner s life. This allows the betrayal trauma response to calm as you gain the ability to be present with the natural normal distress resulting from the discovery that the addict has betrayed them. Your reactivity decreases and your distress acceptance takes the charge out of the fear equation. To do that, we ll need to spend a bit of time understanding the early wounds that created our intimacy disordered behavior (addictions). So sex addiction recovery is about far more than one-day-at-a-time abstinence; it s real work we do on who we are, how we were formed and how we communicate with others. It assures her that you have not forgotten, nor are you in denial. It makes sense to me that looking at our Memorial Day picnic pictures causes you great pain Validation of Her Feelings Using the Five Primary Feelings It can be difficult to ascertain how she is feeling, so it is helpful to focus on her primary feeling (and see if you got it right). This is the science behind the tsunami of feelings betrayed partners so often experience. Getting Attached When we pair up into long-term relationships we begin a process of bonding with one another that is a beautiful and profound intertwining of two lives. In this mysterious attachment, we actually start to physically operate as one biological organism. In other words, it can take over the human will and influence how a person thinks, feels, and acts. This state is known as addiction. It is a state where the physical-chemical brain demands or compels one towards a specific behavior regardless of what the mind or conscience says. There appears to be something inherent in the human family that feels it is wrong to view the private sexual acts of others.