Your Trauma Has Found A Voice!

September ‘09 Target Release Date for
Through A Trauma Lens:
Sexual Addiction’s Traumatic Impact On Partners

by Marsha Means, M.A.

Trauma. You’ve undoubtedly felt its excruciating pain as a result of your husband’s sex addiction. And you’re likely intimately acquainted with the roller coaster emotions that follow sex addiction’s discovery; the careening emotions that can plunge you into depression’s darkest recesses or catapult you to heights of anxiety you’ve never before experienced. We’ve heard women express it in thousands of ways. Listen to a few of them describe it in their own words:

• I threw up; couldn’t sleep; couldn’t eat. I cried constantly. I felt horror, anger, rage, terror, fury at God.
• You know that picture of the airplane hitting the tower in New York City? That’s what it’s like in my life.
• I have been having daily Migraines and I’m terrified. I know this will sound silly but I am even sleeping with my Bible.

When I first discovered all this I went into the bedroom where his clothes were hanging and ripped them off of the hangers and threw them, screaming “Who were you?” Am I mourning the death of the man I loved, or am I mourning the discovery that the man I loved never existed?

It's like hanging upside down and not being able to right myself. It's being stabbed over and over again and trying to find solid ground under the slippery pool of my own blood; most of the time it's laying in a shallow grave as most of me dies.

Trauma. You can feel it in these women’s words, can’t you? But what many of you haven’t felt is true understanding and empathy from others who recognize and understand your trauma; others who are equipped and willing to help you heal from it. And that’s why we are so excited to make this announcement about our next book, Through A Trauma Lens: Sexual Addiction’s Traumatic Impact On Partners. Our book has found a home with New Horizon Press and has a target release date of September 2009!

This means that if all goes as planned you will be able to buy your own copy just eleven months from now. It also means that my co-author, Barb Steffens, PhD, and I—along with New Horizon Press—will be doing everything possible to get the word out so that more clergy, counselors, doctors, and ordinary people begin to “get it.” Our passion is to represent you and the pain you’ve experienced to those who can help you feel understood and heard, and who can then walk you through your healing journey to wholeness, whether the man in your life decides to change or not.

We invite you to participate in this project with us by praying for us as we work hard to meet a very short January 2nd completion date while continuing to respond to hurting women via email, phone calls, support groups and one-on-one sessions.

We also invite you to participate by taking part in our anonymous trauma survey. You will find the link to the online survey at this end of this article. Because our book will be filled with women’s trauma experiences we need anonymous stories from women like you that we can weave into the writing. So if you would like to help the world understand the traumatic impact sex addiction had on you—and by sharing help people understand it’s traumatic impact on partners in general—click on the link below and pour out your heart. For women around the world we say “Thank you.”

] Participate in Trauma Survey