They begin healing their intimacy disorder by coming to understand their own worthiness a sense of self-worth and confidence that allows them to risk feeling vulnerable with others, the key to true intimacy and communication. They develop the ability to share their truths, including feelings of pain, sadness or ambiguity. Recovery and treatment for sexual addiction Written by Focus on the Family Canada What's inside this article The five components to treatment 2. Stopping rituals 3. Stopping fantasy 4. Healing despair 5. Healing shame There is hope for recovery from sexual addiction. Recovery is a process that occurs over time. 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). If you were indeed able to figure out the primary feeling, you will be able to validate it later in your day if it comes up. Often, it is easier to notice and think about others what they are doing, not doing, what we don t like about them, etc. Yet, if we find ourselves focused on and complaining about what someone else is doing or not doing; we likely have a need. This is the most important stage recognizing that what we are feeling is likely less about them and who they are and what they are doing and more about a need that we have. Another victory for me has been that I found the confidence in myself to apply for nursing school at age 34 with four kids also in school. I have found joy in following this dream that I thought I had given up a decade ago when I didn t get accepted back in 2010. Perhaps the best part of our story is that when our oldest child gets her first smartphone as a teenager next year, I know exactly the first app I am going to install on it to keep her safe from pornography. B: Advice Regarding Surrender Or Getting Over Hurt On Your Own Any therapist s expectation that a hurt, betrayed partner would get over it and make recovery less messy is not helpful. Advising them to seek out another therapist alone is not helpful. Requiring them to return fixed and ready to surrender themselves to another healing process alongside their unfaithful partner is actually harmful and unfair.