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At Center for Healthy Sex, we find inspiration from many sources to treat sex addiction, love addiction, and sexual dysfunction. Meditation and affirmations are helpful tools that build esteem, create procedural memories, reduce anxiety, slow the heart rate, and increase blood flow to the brain.
Attachment theory is a component of our philosophy -- behavioral patterns imparted in infancy affect the way we grow up to live our lives. Because this early programming becomes so ingrained, it takes consistent and sustained effort to rewire the neural pathways.
These monthly meditations are similar to the affirmations we use with clients. They are intended to provoke deep thought about core beliefs and inspire open communication with a partner. (You may sign up for our free daily meditations here.)
Meditation for Week 1 -- SEX PREOCCUPATION
“The tragedy is when you've got sex in the head instead of down where it belongs.”
~ D.H. Lawrence
Preoccupation is a hallmark of addiction, as it’s a great way to distract the mind from painful feelings. It’s often remarked that our society is sexually preoccupied, which similarly points to unresolved sexual issues or trauma in our shared history. Of course, mental concentration can be very healthy and effective for uncovering real truths, but the same process can slip into preoccupation or obsession.
While healthy concentration invites in new ideas, preoccupation holds hostages. Healthy concentration focuses awareness on a mental object in order to suspend self-consciousness and integrate content from the subconscious mind. Conversely, preoccupied persons become overpowered by subconscious content. Whatever self-awareness they possess gets projected onto the mental object of their attention, turning it into a “fetish”--an object which contains their own subjective properties. When there’s excess pain or trauma and it’s no longer safe to be feeling one’s subjective feelings, when there are no tools to process and regulate difficult feelings, they have to be objectified, dissociated from, and cast out onto something. This is the root cause of preoccupation.
Preoccupation always seems to promise that good can come of it and that by indulging in it, it will resolve itself. But a preoccupied state in fact perpetuates a negative cycle. The only way to bring healing in such a situation is to leave the preoccupied state, either in the short-term through some kind of disruption, or by developing present awareness over time.
Daily Healthy Sex Acts:
- Observe your thoughts today. What thoughts are productive, and what thoughts are the echoes of stress, anxiety or escapism? What physical sensations accompany such thoughts?
- Breathe into your dissociated thinking. Send oxygen to your brain. Feel your body.
- Choose one or more areas of your life that could benefit from concentration, such as a specific issue in your love life, your sex life, or another area. The next time you find your mind drifting into random sexual, romantic or relational preoccupation, harness this energy to focus on these chosen issues, and to invite greater meaning into your life. Actively engage in brain play!
Meditation for Week 2 -- CONSEQUENCES
"My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Whatever you do becomes a part of your pattern. Whatever you fix your attention upon is your choice for where you want to go next. For some, the thought that their acts have real consequences can be paralyzing. In an effort to escape this paralyzing fear, people often tell themselves, “It doesn’t matter,” or "I can get away with this." But this message is very much an illusive, destructive mode of addictive thinking. Only being able to self-regulate in order to soothe your paralyzing anxiety--to let go of fear and to trust in the restorative power of your life--can bring healthy consequences.
Sometimes people consider only the external consequences of their deeds: "Will I get caught? Will I get yelled at, fired, left behind?" They might very well get away with their little dramas and escape reprimand or rejection. But in the most important context--the status of their inner spirit--they never get away with anything. And that’s the real tragedy: not to care for and value their own being and spirit enough to safeguard against losing inner status. People often shortchange integrity and values to earn a better place in their exterior, visible life, but in the act they lose their place of honor within. You are your own witness, jury, and judge. Only right actions lead to feeling right.
Daily Healthy Sex Acts:
- Reclaim your inner place of honor. Write a list of what actions you honor in yourself today. Write another list of the actions in which you've lost your integrity. Now use clear, concise and vivid terms to describe the qualitative differences between these two lists. Underline, memorize, and imprint these differences in your mind, because they mark the qualitative difference in the life you will lead depending on which list you choose as your direction.
- Quickly brainstorm three actions you can take to restore your honor... to yourself. This is not about anyone else. You cannot escape the consequences of your past actions, but you can always take a new action to begin to heal. Take right action today.
Meditation for Week 3 -- BLAME
“The enemy of a love is never outside, it's not a man or woman, it's what we lack in ourselves.”
~ Anaïs Nin
In our weakest moments or when we’re operating out of the worst parts of ourselves, we have a tendency to blame our partners for our every discontent. When we fault someone else out of our own anger, we’re doing our best not to confront ourselves. To avoid getting pulled in to this process, take a look at your complaints, and then turn them back around on yourself. Take stock of your own short-comings and start to focus on what you can do differently to change aspects of your relationship that make you unhappy.
If there are issues in your relationship that you need to talk about with your partner, but s/he refuses to talk about them or remains unwilling to accept any responsibility for these difficulties, simply take note of that. Ask yourself, “What part of the problem belongs to me, and what part depends on him/her?” Remember that, ultimately, the relationship game is about you making yourself okay.
Daily Healthy Sex Acts:
- Try for one day to take responsibility for all that happens in your emotional life. If someone cuts you off in traffic, or doesn’t say hello, or fails to deliver on a promised action–just for today, explore staying out of the blame game. Instead tell yourself, “I am the only one responsible for my reactions.”
- What happens if you just smile despite disappointments, and let everyone off the hook–including you? We’re all doing the best we can with what we’ve got, and perhaps if we all receive love and kindness instead of shaming and guilt-tripping, we might do better.
Meditation for Week 4 -- SEXUAL ENERGY
"Someday, after mastering the winds, tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of sexual love. Then, for the second time in history, we shall have discovered fire!"
~ Teilhard de Chardin
A lot of people use sex to feel better about their sexual energy--the life-making energy that we give and receive from the world. But we can feel better about our sexual energy all the time; it’s not a matter of whether we’re having sex or not. In fact, it’s hard to define exactly where sex starts and ends. Does it start the moment you take your clothes off? The moment you perform one of your favorite sex acts? At penetration--is that sex? Does it end at climax? We all have a sexual energy within that interacts with our world. To exist is to touch life and to experience the glow of that interaction.
Many people experience deprivation when it comes to healthy sexual energy. Even if people are sexually active, they can still experience deprivation because they’re often thinking "I want sex now--the way I want it." Whether or not one is in fact having sex does not determine one’s sexual energy, just as if one is an honest person, one is honest even when not actually in the act of telling the truth. One’s status as “honest” gets to coast on one’s general actions and doesn’t need constant proof. There are times where one is graced and can actually tell the truth in words, while at other times one is graced by the knowing that one is truthful. Try to see sex in these terms: There are times when we are graced with relational sex with another, and there are other times where we may feel content and fulfilled knowing that we are healthy sexual people.
Daily Healthy Sex Acts:
- What would it be like to think you just had the greatest sex right now? What is that energy like for you? Carry yourself with the real result of this thought in your body and emotions today.
- Cultivate this feeling of both healthy and abundant sexual energy all the time. Sex comes in many colors, shapes, and sizes and at many levels. Know that--regardless of past or present circumstances--the deepest part of you is a healthy sexual being.
Sign up here to receive free Daily Meditations by email written by Alexandra Katehakis and Tom Bliss of Center for Healthy Sex to help you develop sexual and emotional intimacy.
