At the Relationship Recovery Center, one of our primary missions is to help families heal from the damage of addiction. While almost everyone is familiar with chemical addiction (drugs, alcohol), until recently sexual addiction has flown “under the radar” and gone under reported and untreated for the most part. 
Primary reasons for this include: 1) lack of understanding of the illness (or the belief by many mental health professionals that it isn’t an illness at all), 2) lack of treatment resources (paucity of mental health professionals trained to treat the illness), and 3) failure of the mental health industry (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual or DSM; insurance companies) to recognize and legitimize the illness. AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) groups began in 1935, and the DSM did not recognize alcoholism as an illness until 1968. SAA (Sex Addicts Anonymous) groups began in the mid 1970’s, and DSM, as of this writing, has still not recognized sexual addiction as an illness. The overreaching opinion of the staff of RRC is that the participants in these groups are indeed “pioneers.”
The staff at the Relationship Recovery Center has taken steps to meet the needs of the community by initiating treatment programs for both sex addicts and their spouses. On March 25th a small group of brave spouses came to the first meeting of the Facing Heartbreak Spouse Treatment Group. Our group focuses on helping spouses heal after they have discovered that the person they loved and trusted the most has been hiding a secret life as a sex addict.
The group uses a 12-step, task-oriented, recovery model based on the book “Facing Heartbreak” by Stefanie Carnes, Ph.D. The group will offer practical therapeutic advice and specific tasks to educate and empower the partner of the sex addict through the recovery process. The group will be limited to six participants, but currently there are openings remaining. Please call the RRC at 770-676-7748 if you would like to schedule an assessment with one of our staff.