Episode 3 - Integrity Abuse Disorder

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. In the last episode, we looked at the hybrid concept of compulsive entitle sexuality as a way of defining the pattern of behaviors that happen inside the secret sexual basement. In this episode, we're going to start looking at the second pattern of behaviors that we identify in this model, which are the behaviors that help to keep the basement hidden and compartmentalized. The term we're going to use for this set of behaviors is IAD, which stands for Integrity Abuse Disorder. To explore this idea effectively, I'm going to break this down into two parts over two episodes, because there's a lot of important things we need to consider. Today, we're going to look at the specific behaviors that might be involved and what those patterns might look like in an overall sense, and then in the next episode, I'm going to go into more detail about the really critical part of this, which is the A word itself, abuse. Why do we call this Integrity Abuse Disorder? Before today, as a starting point, in the first episode, where I explain the secret sexual basement metaphor, the simple way that I framed these behaviors that we're going to look at was the image of the person going into the basement and locking the basement door behind them, then when they come out of the basement, closing the trap door, rolling the carpet over it, and doing everything they can to hide it. And then responding to any questions or doubts at the part that might have such as, where have you been, what have you been doing this whole time, what are those strange noises coming from the basement, responding with crazy making with manipulation, and really responding with anything they can to keep the secret sexual basement hidden. And the first crucial part of this that I want to look at today is the idea of integrity abuse behaviors as a system. So we're going to start our definition by identifying integrity abuse as a pattern of behaviors that are part of a system which has a specific objective. Again, that's going to be really, really important as we develop this idea more, a pattern of behaviors that are part of a system which has a specific objective. And the objective of the behaviors is to avoid the negative consequences of the sexual behaviors that are occurring, by intentionally keeping the secret sexual reality of the basement and the intimate partner's reality separate. I'll say that again, the objective is to avoid the negative consequences of the sexual behaviors that are occurring, by intentionally keeping the secret sexual reality and the partner's reality separate. That means it's a system that prioritizes the protection of the self, the protection of the person who's maintaining the secret sexual basement at the expense of the partner, of the relationship and of the family system. You'll hopefully see that this is bringing us right back to that DCSR concept that we discussed in the first episode, the deceptive, compartmentalized sexual relational reality. So without this system of integrity abuse behaviors, we might well have a sexual relational reality occurring and perhaps one that's still significantly impacting the relationship, but it wouldn't be deceptive or compartmentalized. It would be something that's known about in the relationship, which is a different problem than the one we're exploring here. I now want to start looking at these specific behaviors themselves and what we will often do with this approach is break it down into phases. For the purpose of today, I'm going to discuss two specific phases. We have the covert phase, which is when the basement is still hidden. The reality of the secret sexual basement and the partner's reality are still successfully being kept separate through those patterns of deception and manipulation. And this can of course be for an extended period of time, sometimes even decades. We then have the exposure phase when discovery or disclosure occurs and the two realities collide. We will often see the patterns of behavior change at this point, but nevertheless we'll generally see a continuation of various harmful behaviors in an attempt to try and maintain control of the situation or to avoid dealing with the consequences or the fallout of the discovery and its traumatic impacts. So if we start with the covert phase, it goes without saying that we'll see lying and/or lying by a mission as one of the primary behaviors. That can be in the form of explicit lies, as in I'm asked a question and I lie in response to that. Or it can be lying by a mission. This occurs especially in situations where the partner has no idea, no suspicions about what's going on. So they never ask the questions that require the other person to tell an explicit lie. So in that scenario, the person is still implicitly lying by a mission. Both of these are forms of gaslighting when done in a systemic way, because by lying or lying by a mission, the person is either actively or passively manipulating the partner's reality by maintaining that separation. There will also generally be other patterns of behavior to hide any evidence of the basement. That could be deleting browser histories, hiding financial transactions, coming up with cover stories for where I was or what I was doing, all of the things that I might do in order to hide the basement, which are of course other forms of deception. And then as we move on to look briefly at the exposure phase, so this is where the partner is now aware of the existence of the secret sexual reality, but probably doesn't know the extent of it, and is probably in a state of shock, confusion, and desperation to know the truth. Here we'll often see partial or staggered disclosures, or what we sometimes call trickle truths, where the person that maintain the basement will own up to as little as possible upon each new discovery, or will continually trickle out new bits of information as a way of continuing to control the narrative. We'll often see a lot of defensiveness, minimizing, rationalizing, justifications, or playing down what happened in the past in some way as a way of avoiding the consequences in the present. There might be continued manipulation of the truth, continued lying, lying by a mission again, the revising of facts and history, perhaps denying things that the partner knows to be true, there might be blaming of the partner, or the relationship itself as a way of justifying the basement, or a sense of the person who created the basement, assuming the role of the victim somehow. We might also see pathologizing of the partner's reactions, so when the partner is understandably getting angry or is experiencing traumatic symptoms because of the discovery, those reactions themselves might be seen as evidence of the partner being the problem. We'll frequently see a lack of demonstrated remorse or empathy, often because the person who's been discovered is in a state of shame and panic and is focusing on self-protection and is therefore unwilling or unable to show up remorsefully for the partner. We might also see aggression or intimidation, or verbal abuse and callous attitudes towards the partner. On the other hand, we might see stonewalling and other patterns of avoidance, where the person refuses to speak about the basement or provide any support. So there's all sorts of behaviours that we could consider there, but when we zoom out from the specific behaviours and consider the bigger picture, we'll generally see two key things that drive these patterns. Number one, an avoidance of dealing with the consequences of the behaviour, as I've mentioned a couple of times. And number two, ongoing attempts to manipulate the truth, or to hide the extent of the secret sexual basement, by only admitting to as much as I need to at any given time, rather than choosing to be fully honest. So that's a brief introduction to these patterns of behaviour that will probably be all too familiar to many of you who are listening to this. These are all encapsulated in our clinical term integrity abuse disorder, the second part of our two-part problem. We have CES or compulsive entitled sexuality, what happens inside the basement, and IAD or integrity abuse disorder, the patterns of behaviour that keep the basement separate from the home above. In terms of how we now apply this to treatment and to the treatment field in general, this takes us right back to the original motivation for doing this podcast, which is the illumination of clinical blind spots. If somebody is doing traditional sex addiction treatment or compulsive sexual behaviour disorder treatment, and focusing exclusively or at least primarily on the sexual acting out behaviour. They are potentially doing very, very important work that they need to do. But they are also in danger of missing this huge other piece of these integrity abuse behaviours, the controlling behaviours, the manipulative behaviours, which are just as important a part of the picture as the sexual behaviours themselves. We really do a disservice to the clients seeking treatment for these kinds of issues when we miss this huge piece. And we do an even bigger disservice to the partners and the family systems of those people when we fail to acknowledge the way that the partner is persistently harmed by these other patterns of behaviour. And how damaging it is for them to not know their own reality and to be fighting to piece that reality back together through that exposure phase. But having to battle against all of these deceptive and manipulative behaviours in order to do so. I'm going to come towards the end of this episode now, and that's hopefully given you a good overview of the specific behaviours. But in the next episode, as I said at the start, we're going to take the next step and break down why we call this integrity abuse disorder, because there are some clear and very important reasons for using that word abuse in there, which might initially be very uncomfortable for a lot of people to hear. Once we've understood that part, we can then move on to exploring the specific impacts the secret sexual basement has on the intimate partner. 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.