Step Study Class Descriptions

Chemical Dependency    
Codependency
Eating Disorders
Freedom from Anger
Love & Relationship Addiction
Sexual Addiction
Sexual, Emotional, & Physical Abuse (For Women)
How Celebrate Recovery Helps & Heals

 

Chemical Dependency

Chemical Dependency is a progressive disease.  In most people, addiction begins slowly and grows until life becomes progressively unmanageable.  As repeated efforts to gain control over alcohol or drug use fail, life for the chemically dependent person begins to fall apart.  Lives can be shattered.  Consequences are often reflected in the addicted individual's family life, health, spiritual happiness, social life, school or work relationships, and legal matters.  In spite of thoese problems, the chemically dependent person continues to use alcohol or drugs.  Repeated efforts to quit or cut down invariably collapse in failure. 

How do you know if you are chemically dependent?

  • Have you ever decided to stop drinking and/or using for a week or so, but only lasted for a couple of days?
  • Do you wish people would mind their own business about your drinking and/or using - stop telling you what to do?
  • Have you ever switched from one kind of drink or drug to another in the hope that this would keep you from losing control?
  • Have you had to have an "eye-opener" upon awakening during the past year?
  • Do you need a drink or drug to get started, or to stop shaking?
  • Do you envy people who can drink or use drugs without getting into trouble?
  • Have you had problems connected with drinking or using during the past year?
  • Has your drinking or using caused trouble at home?
  • Do you ever try to get "extra" drinks or drugs at a party because you did not get enough?
  • Do you tell yourself you can stop drinking or using any time you want, even though you keep getting inebriated when you don't mean to do so?
  • Have you missed days of work or school because of drinking or using?
  • Do you have "blackouts"?

If you answered YES twice or more, then you are probably in trouble with alcohol or drugs.

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Codependency

There are many definitions used to talk about codependency.  In its broadest sense, codependency can be defined as an addiction to people, behaviors, or things.  Codependency is the fallacy of trying to control interior feelings by controlling people, things, and events on the outside.  To the codependent, control or lack of it is central to every aspect of life.  The codependent may be addicted to another person.  In this interpersonal codependency, the codependent has become so elaborately enmeshed in the other person that the sense of self - personal identity - is severely restricted, crowded out by that other person's identity and problems.  Additionally, codependents can be like vacuum cleaners gone wild, drawing to themselves not just another person, but also chemicals (alcohol or drugs, primarily) or things - money, food, sexuality, or work.  They struggle relentlessly to fill the great emotional vacuum within themselves.  A codependent is someone who exhibits too much, and often inappropriate, caring for other people.

Characteristics of Codependency

  • My good feelings about who I am stem from being liked by others.
  • My good feelings about who I am stem from receiving approval from others.
  • Someone else's struggle affects my security.  My mental attention focuses on solving someone else's problems and relieving their pain.
  • My mental attention is focused on someone else.
  • My mental attention is focused on protecting someone else.
  • My mental attention is focused on manipulating someone to do things my way.
  • My self-esteem is bolstered by solving someone else's problems.
  • My self-esteem is bolstered by relieving someone else's pain.
  • My own hobbies and interests are put to one side.  My time is spent sharing someone else's hobbies and interests.
  • Someone else's clothing and personal appearance are dictated by my desires and I feel they are a reflection on me.
  • Someone else's behavior is dictated by my desires and I feel they are a reflection on me.
  • I am not aware of how I feel - I am aware of how someone else feels.
  • I am not aware of what I want - I ask someone else what they want.  I am not aware - I assume.
  • The dreams I have for my future are linked to someone else.
  • My fear of rejection determines what I say or do.
  • My fear of someone else's anger determines what I say or do.
  • I use giving as a way of feeling safe in my relationship.
  • My social circle diminishes as I involve myself with someone else.

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Eating Disorders

The Eating Disorders Group will provide support to anyone with food issues and will focus on strengthening their relationship with God.  This will provide freedom from the ongoing internal battle with good.  You can expect to become closer to God through His Word, the Recovery Principles, and the love and support of others.

Characteristics of an Eating Disorder

  • Throughout our lives many of us have turned to food to ease our pain or fear.
  • We felt comfort in eating and found ourselves turning to food whenever we were hurt, angry, or frustrated.
  • Food became our comforter and friend.
  • Some of us may have turned to food after obtaining sobriety in other areas.
  • We thought food was safe, not realizing it could become our "drug of choice."
  • We have focused on our body image instead of our health.
  • Many of us have tried various diet programs, exercising, medications, or many other ways of trying to control our eating habits.
  • We have failed over and over and left feeling guilty, incapable, and unloveable.
  • We have given in to the idea that there is one perfect diet or pill out there that can save us, if only we could find it.
  • Some of us believe that thin people do not struggle with food addiction.  We have also failed to recognize food as our "drug of choice."
  • As a result of our food addiction we feel out of control and may struggle with many other areas of our lives.
  • Some of us have low self-esteem which may affect our motivation, and our relationship with God and others.

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Freedom from Anger

EVery person has a "pattern of toxic behavior" that can significantly damage the important and intimate relationships in his or her life.  Anger is one of our ten basic, God-given, emotions.  This emotion can be constructive or destructive, depending on our response.  The focus of this group is on giving Jesus a "nano-second" to help us learn to use all of our emotions according to God's design for our lives, and to appropriately change our pattern of relating to others and our responsibilities.  When most of us think of an "angry" person, we think of someone who destroys themselves and their relationships through uncontrollable outbursts of rage.  We usually picture someone who goes around slamming doors, yelling loudly, and making life miserable for everyone, including themselves.  Equally as damaging and destructive is anger that is suppressed or "stuffed."  All anger, if allowed to, will continue to destructively influence our behaviors and attitudes, and will ultimately erupt from deep within the heart.

Do I have a problem with anger?

  • I become impatient easily when things do not go according to my plans.
  • I tend to have critical thoughts toward others who don't agree with my opinions.
  • When I am displeased with someone I may shut down any communication with them or withdraw entirely. 
  • I get annoyed easily when friends and family do not appear sensitive to my needs.
  • I feel frustrated when I see someone else having an "easier" time than me.
  • Whenever I am responsible for planning an important event, I am preoccupied with how I must manage it.
  • When talking about a controversial topic, the tone of my voice is likely to become louder and more assertive.
  • I can accept a person who admits his or her mistakes, but I get irritated easily at those who refuse to admit their weaknesses.
  • I do not easily forget when someone "does me wrong."
  • When someone confronts me with a misinformed opinion, I am thinking of my comeback even while they are still speaking.
  • I find myself becoming aggressive even while playing a game for fun.
  • I struggle emotionally with the things in life which "are not fair."
  • Although I realize that it may not be right, I sometimes blame others for my problems.
  • More often than not, I use sarcasm as a way of expressing humor.
  • I may act kindly toward others on the outside, yet feel bitter and frustrated on the inside.

If you agreed with FOUR to EIGHT of these statements, your anger is probably more constant than you would like. 
If you agreed with NINE or more of these statements, there is a strong possibility that you have struggled wtih periods of anger or rage, whether you are aware of it or not.

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Love and Relationship Addiction

This group provides a safe place to deal with the depression, isolation, lack of trust, and the unhealthy use of love and relationships as a means of achieving worth. 

The characteristics of Love and Relationship Addiction are:

  • Lack of nurturing and attention when young.
  • Feeling isolated or detached from parents and family.
  • Outer facade of "having it all together" to hide internal disintegration.
  • Mistake intensity for intimacy.
  • Hidden pain.
  • Seek to avoid rejection and abandonment at all cost.
  • Afraid to trust anyone in a relationship.
  • Inner rage over lack of nurturing or early abandonment.
  • Depressed.
  • Highly manipulative and controlling of others.
  • Perceive attraction, attachment, and sex as basic human needs, as with food and water.
  • Sense of worthlessness.
  • Escalating tolerance for high-risk behavior.
  • Intense need to control self, others, and circumstances.
  • Presence of other addictive or compulsive problems.
  • Using others to alter mood or relieve pain.
  • Continual questioning of values and lifestyle.
  • Driven, desperate, frantic personality.
  • Existence of secret "double life."
  • Refusal to acknowledge existence of problem.
  • Defining out-of-control behavior as normal.
  • Defining "wants" as "needs." 

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Sexual Addiction

Sexual addiction is best described as a progressive intimacy disorder characterized by compulsive sexual thoughts and acts.  Like all addictions, its negative impact on the addict and on family members increases as the disorder progresses.  Over time the addict usually has to intensify the addictive behavior to achieve the same results.  For some sex addicts behavior does not progress beyond compulsive self-gratification or the extensive use of pornography, phone, or computer sex services.  For others, addiction can involve illegal activities such as exhibitionism, voyeurism, obscene phone calls, child molestation, or rape (for men). 

Sexual addiction starts as lust or an overpowering desire for pleasurable relief from inner pain, emptiness, or insecurity with which the individual cannot cope.  At first, it is used to dissolve tension, relieve depression, resolve conflict and to provide the means to deal with or escape from seemingly unbearable life situations.  Eventually, the quest for relief becomes an addiction, and the addiction takes on a life of its own.  Pleasure and relief are gradually replaced with tension, depression, rage, guilt, and even physical distress.  The addict is driven to spend more time thinking about and carrying out the addiction, annd lives in denial tot avoid recognizing how much of life is controlled by the addiction. 

Finally, the addiction begins to take priority over everything: the ability to work, live in the real world, relate to others and be close to God.  What began as the cure becomes the sickness.  The answer has become the problem.  A new loneliness overwhelms the addict and he becomes increasingly separated from God and others.  Often, as the addict seeks sobriety, stays sexually sober for some length of time, he discovers that even though he may not be acting out the compulsion, the obsession remains.

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Sexual, Emotional & Physical Abuse (For Women)

The Sexual, Emotional & Physical Abuse group is a Christ-centered group for women who have encountered past physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse.  One of the keys to the group's success is that women with a similar background (history of abuse) come together for common goals and objectives to enter into or maintain recovery.  Recovery for abuse women is two-fold.  They need healing from the trauma done in the past.  They also need healing from the influence these past experiences continue to have on their present lives. 

This group provides a safe, supportive environment.  The strength of the safe environment comes from the power of the group effort.  Each woman is respected and acknowlledged for where she needs to be on her own road to recovery.  The group acknowledges the sensitivity needs of each of its members. 

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How Celebrate Recovery Helps & Heals

Celebrate Recovery cannot solve life's problems, but it can show people how to learn to live without the hurts, habits, and hangups and live one day at a time with the help of our Higher Power, Jesus Christ.  As individuals become free, life becomes more manageable through the power of Christ.

By working through the Eight Recovery Principles found in the Beatitudes, receiving the healing and power of Jesus Christ, one can and will change!  Individuals begin to experience true peace and serenity and no longer have to rely on dysfunctional, compulsive, and addictive behaviors as a temporary "fix" for pain.  

By applying the biblical principles of conviction, conversion, surrender, confession, restitution, prayer, quiet time, witnessing and helping one another, individuals will be restored and develop stronger relationships with God and others. 

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For more information, email us at celebraterecovery@covenantchurch.org

Copyright 2009 Covenant Church | 2644 E. Trinity Mills | Carrollton, TX 75006 | 972-416-5466 | Contact Us

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