Episode 29 - The 22 Rooms (Part 1)

Welcome to the From Harm to Healing podcast. I'm your host Chris Jones and I'm a therapist who runs the From Harm to Healing treatment program, an online program for men who have engaged in infidelity or compulsive sexual behaviors within the context of an intimate relationship. I started this podcast to illuminate some of the common blind spots within the treatment fields for compulsive sexual behavior or sex addiction through the lens of the deceptive sexuality trauma model. I hope you find this resource enlightening, particularly if you're somebody navigating the pain of betrayal and deception for yourself. Thank you for listening to the From Harm to Healing podcast. I'm going to be beginning a multi-episode series of podcasts on something called the 22 rooms. One of the reasons I've decided to do this is because it's an important part of the model and it's also something that's been mentioned in various ways in different episodes. I've done particularly some of the conversations I've had with guests on the podcast and it's something that it seems like a lot of people have heard of or have maybe an idea of what it is, but it's not really explained very well or very clearly in really any resources out there. It seemed like a good idea to spend a bit of time on this and especially devoting a few episodes to it because there is a lot to get through. What I will say is that I won't be able to go into much depth. There are 22 different concepts to go through as the name suggests, but I would hope that people will be able to listen to these episodes and come away with at least an understanding of what we mean when we talk about the 22 rooms and the ability to simply articulate what they are. As a starting point, the 22 rooms themselves refer to a metaphor, another metaphor we use within this model to really highlight as best as we can the depth and scope of the traumatic impact of the secret sexual basement or deceptive sexuality trauma. Because it's easy to just say it causes trauma, but we need to understand it on a deeper level exactly what types of trauma and perhaps really consider as well how the trauma differs or is unique from other forms of trauma and what blind spots we might have if we're not able to name those things. And so when we're talking about the 22 rooms, we are talking about the 22 specific traumatic impacts over the various phases of deceptive sexuality trauma that were identified by Dr. Minwala and his team as they developed this model. So as we start going through this, it's good to picture the metaphor just like we've done with the secret sexual basement previously. And in this case, we can consider a hospital, a deceptive sexuality trauma hospital that's made up of three different wards. And each of those wards contains a variety of treatment rooms. Those three wards correspond to the three phases of deceptive sexuality trauma, which we've spoken about previously, but as a brief reminder, you have the covert phase, which is when the two realities are kept intentionally separate. So when the secret sexual basement is still active and is being actively hidden from the people in the home above, and obviously this can go on for a significant period of time, sometimes decades, we then have the exposure phase, which is when discovery or disclosure happens. And those two realities collide and we have the acute traumatic impacts that we often talk about. And we then have the symptom progression phase, which is that longer term outworking of the trauma as we move forward from exposure, as we perhaps move forward from disclosure, discovery, and work through those deep traumatic impacts that occur. So thinking of this metaphor of the hospital, again, we have ward number one, covert phase trauma, and we have multiple rooms of the specific impacts that occur in that covert phase that need to be understood, need to be integrated. We then have ward number two, the exposure phase, same thing we have the various rooms, treatment rooms, trauma rooms of the exposure phase, and then we have the third ward, the symptom progression ward where we again have those rooms, various rooms that describe those traumatic impacts that might occur. Now before I begin going through some of those rooms and breaking things down from here, it's good to just acknowledge why we actually use the 22 rooms. So illuminating this reality, the traumatic impacts obviously carries huge value. It's hugely important and significant, but there is that question of why we do it, how is it helpful to the work, how is it helpful to recovery treatment? And the two things I like to focus on there are the ideas of integration and then empathy. So you'll remember from the idea of the three eyes, you had integrity, intimacy, integration. And so for the men I work with, a huge part of the journey is being able to truly integrate the reality of what happened. And so a lot of ego development needs to happen. And as we've discussed on previous episodes, the 22 rooms become a really powerful tool for that of really being confronted by the abuse victim trauma reality that has occurred and having to integrate that as part of my ego story, part of myself. And in addition to that, we can think about the empathy that can develop. If we can truly understand the traumatic impacts, the devastating impacts of what has occurred, then that should have a direct impact on our ability to provide demonstrated remorse and empathy, which we know are so critical to healing. And of course, for the partners who have been impacted by this kind of trauma, it can be so validating to see this named, to see the experience named in this way. And it doesn't mean that it will be complete. There might be other specific rooms, not even mentioned here, that are relevant for each person's trauma story. There might be wounds we don't even understand or know about yet. But even just seeing what we have here as a way of really naming bringing the partner's voice, the partner's experience into the work becomes so crucial. And then to really name one specific challenge that sometimes comes up or a specific question that sometimes comes up with the men I work with is, I am trying to move forward now from what I did. I am trying to stop acting out, stop engaging in integrity abuse and trying to move forward to something new. Why would I want to keep looking back at the past? Why would I want to keep being reminded of what I did and the pain that I caused? It also sometimes raises the question of why does my partner want to keep dwelling on that stuff or focusing on that stuff, or even perhaps in a more insidious sense? Why is she pain shopping? Why is she constantly focusing on all of the bad things that happened? Why aren't we moving forward? And this is where we need to remember that at the heart of trauma, we often have this sense of the past and the present being blurred together. You'll remember that some of the most common trauma responses are things like triggers, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and re-experiencing physiological, emotional re-experiencing of what occurred. So it is about experiencing what happened in the past, in the present. So it's not about dwelling on the past, it's about re-experiencing it. And beyond that, when we think of this kind of trauma, there is so much stuff to process because it's a trauma that's based on a false reality that the person was living in. So it's not like it's just a one-off thing that happened that I now need to process. I perhaps now need to put the puzzle pieces of my life back together from the start. There's so much to process and work through and put together. And so rather than thinking of this as we are going back into these rooms to do the work, whilst that is true in a sense, I think it's more helpful to think of the partner in many ways is often already in these rooms, is living these rooms, is living these traumatic experiences. So it is not like we are taking the partner back into this trauma when we talk about the rooms. It's more like we are actually opening the door on that room that that person might already be stuck in in a sense and we are going into that room to support them and to process that trauma with them. And so this actually really links closely with that holding and healing episode I did recently. The idea of trauma healing happening when we can truly hold somebody in the experience that they're having, the distressing material can be brought up, voiced and processed. That's what we're talking about here with the 22 rooms. It's the same thing. We are going into those places where the distressing material still resides and we are able to hold. We are able to name it the partner. there is able to use her voice to describe that experience. And it's such an opportunity for healing when the conditions are right. Now I would like to spend the rest of the episode today breaking down the covert phase ward particularly and the three rooms that are contained within that ward. And I just want to say first of all that these are naturally going to be very brief explanations. There is so much depth to each of these rooms, so much that we could work through. The goal here is for people to have a basic understanding of what the rooms are. And it's really important to acknowledge at this point that some of this could be really difficult to hear. It might be very validating but that doesn't mean it's not painful to see it laid out like this. So for those who have experience or going through this kind of traumatic journey, please take care of yourself, slow down if you need to, pause it if you need to. And if things really come up for you, know that that is normal, that is to be expected in some ways. But please prioritize what you need for yourself in those moments. Now with all that having been said, we now enter that first ward, the covert phase trauma ward. And we have three rooms to look at. And room number one is the covert phase integrity abuse shaping that occurs. If you've listened to many of these episodes, you'll probably be aware with this core idea that is so highlighted by this model of complex trauma shaping. The idea of the drops of water on the rock where no individual drop is necessarily particularly impactful. But over time, enough drops of water in the same way on the same rock start to shake that rock. And we really highlight here that the integrity abuse, those patterns of integrity abuse behavior that are occurring during even the covert phase. So before the secret sexual basement is discovered or known about, those drops of water on the rock, those integrity abuse behaviors can be having a significant traumatic shaping effect. So what do we have when those two realities are being kept separate? We usually have patterns of lying deception and manipulation of the truth. In fact, it's essentially a requirement. I can't keep those two realities separate. I can't hide the secret sexual basement. I'm engaging in from my partner if I'm not lying and deceiving. It might include things like managing my partner so that I have opportunities to act out. Deceptively hiding evidence or removing evidence of the basement. The gas lighting or crazy making, which is so insidious in this particular phase when maybe suspicions come up or questions are asked and that crazy making occurs where I put it back onto my partner. I make her think she's the crazy one for imagining these things. So there's many behaviors there that occur around hiding the basement. But during this covert phase, it's also common for other harmful patterns to be occurring like relational neglect or emotional withdrawal or sexual withdrawal or rejection within the relationship. Largely, perhaps because of the presence of the secret sexual basement, which the partner doesn't even know about at this point. I might also be cultivating negative narratives about my partner and about the relationship in order to internally justify what I'm doing, justify the fact that I have a secret sexual basement. This will so often extend to social misrepresentation of the self and the relationship also. So I might be a very different person in public or to people we know to who I am behind closed doors. I might use threats, anger, intimidation, even passive aggression as ways of suppressing or silencing my partner especially if she is sensing that something isn't right or asking me difficult questions. And so very often, despite not knowing that the secret sexual basement exists, the partner is being actively harmed by it, is being actively shaped by these patterns of integrity abuse. And so that is what we are specifically naming with room number one, covert phase integrity abuse shaping. That is a specific traumatic impact that is often occurring for partners who are living unknowingly above a secret sexual basement. Room number two, still staying in this covert phase, then looks at one of the specific traumatic injuries that occurs because of the gas lighting, because of the manipulation, the crazy making that is often occurring. And that is the second brain injury or the erosion of the interic system. Now we all tend to have an intuitive sense of what we mean by the second brain or the gut feeling, that gut sense that we sometimes have about someone or something or a situation. And it comes from this interic nervous system. And so it is our bodies threat detection system if you like, that looks for incongruencies, looks for potential threats out there that we might not even be consciously aware of. We might not know why we feel uneasy in a certain situation. But it is the communication between that interic system and our brain that is bringing that up. And these signals from the second brain or the gut have a significant impact on our emotions, our thoughts and our beliefs. So we can say that the concept of trusting our gut does have a scientific basis. And during this covert phase that we're talking about, when the realities are kept separate, the partners gut might be telling her that something's off, something isn't right, something doesn't feel right here. And then each time he chooses to deny that, to gas light, to crazy make, to put it back on her, she is then faced with this dilemma. Does she trust her gut, her own internal threat detection system, or does she trust her partner, the person who is probably her main attachment and should be her main source of safety. And so that is an extremely painful decision to be faced with even on a subconscious level over and over again. And the sad reality is that whichever one of those two options is chosen, the relationship with the other is damaged. So if I persistently trust my gut, I have to face the fact that my partner is lying to me, my main attachment is lying to me or gaslighting me. If I choose to trust my partner, which is so often the case, often for a long period of time in this covert phase, then I am choosing to ignore and suppress my own internal system. And so I might be eroding or damaging that connection with myself. And so there we have another form of complex trauma shaping that over time I might be eroding gradually, my connection with myself, my trust in myself, perhaps even my trust in my own sanity. So we have a deeply painful wound there. And often a huge amount of work to rebuild that trust in the self, rebuild that connection with the self. So we see a lot of overlap there, perhaps room one and room two. But again we can think of the general shaping that happens in room number one, covert phase integrity abuse shaping. And then a specific injury that might also occur because of the gaslighting, because of the reality manipulation, which is that erosion of the interret system or the second brain injury. And then that brings us on to room number three, which again somewhat overlaps, and the idea of erosion of relational integrity. If we define relational integrity as the degree of authenticity, the degree of integrity that exists between two people, we can think of that again on an almost energetic level. So we can think of the vibes between two people. And this tends to be fairly intuitive for people. You can just sense when the vibes are right, when there is authenticity, when there is genuineness there. And when the vibes are off, when you know you can't trust in that attachment or that person. When it's good in a relationship, when there is that connection, that good vibe there, then those intangible nutrients that we all want from a healthy relationship can be transmitted. The frequency is right to transmit that. We can think of things like being nurtured, being cared for, being supported, being loved. The ability to depend on that attachment to find security, respect, loyalty in that attachment. However, when the relational integrity is low, when the vibes are off, then the people within that relationship are likely to experience negative relational symptoms. They're likely to be unable to receive those intangible nutrients. nutrients. And we might see things like weakening of the ability to depend on the partner, decreased security or stabilization in that attachment, maybe feelings of isolation within the relationship, less nurturing within the relationship. There might be less physical touch, there might be less time spent together, increased feelings of emptiness. And even perhaps a growing sense of aversion to each other or to the relationship. And this can once again become a form of complex trauma. So you have room number one, which looks at the integrity abuse patterns that are occurring and a shaping that might be happening to the partner because of that. In room number two, we look at this internal sense of complex trauma that might be developing as my relationship with myself, my relationship with my second brain, my gut feeling is eroded. And then we perhaps have a situation where the person is also living in a relationship where they're not able to get the nutrients, the security they need from that attachment, which again shapes the person over time. And so that is really the heart of the covert phase we've talked before about complex trauma versus acute trauma. And everything we're looking at here really just names that complex story drops of water on the rock over time. So those are the first three rooms, the three rooms of the covert phase trauma ward. The next two wards or the next two phases each contain a lot more rooms than these three rooms of the covert phase. But one thing to keep in mind is that whilst we only have three rooms here, they can be extremely significant large rooms because we might be talking about the longest period of time. So we might have more specific injuries that occur in the exposure phase, for example, but this covert phase might have lasted 20, 30, 40 years for some people. They might have been living with these shaping injuries, this integrity of you shaping, this relational integrity erosion for a huge period of time. And so whilst they aren't always acute traumatic impacts as we've identified before, these shaping injuries can go very, very deep. And there can be so much to work through to undo, if you like. After the reality of what was really occurring that whole time is discovered when the secret sexual basement that story becomes illuminated. So we will bring it to a close for there today. Those are our first three rooms, room number one covert phase integrity abuse shaping, room number two, the second brain injury and the erosion of the interic system, and then room number three, the erosion of relational integrity. And we will continue forward from there in the next episode moving into the exposure phase trauma ward. Thank you for listening to this episode of The From Harm to Healing podcast. If you'd like to find out more information about the deceptive sexuality trauma model itself, you can visit minwalamodel.com. If you're interested in the services that I offer, in particular The From Harm to Healing treatment program, please visit chrisjonestherapy.co.uk.