My Name is Katy

"Therefore, hold up your light that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up" (3 Nephi 18:24). My life was in complete shambles, yet a tiny flicker of hope was eventually ignited. Over years of healing, that hope has gradually grown into a giant bonfire of faith---all because I was taught the truth about Jesus Christ. The biggest lesson I have learned from betrayal trauma is that we can help pass that same Light and hope onto others because God can use us and our experiences to make others' journeys smoother. This is my story:


My husband had struggled with addiction his entire youth.  I found out during our engagement. Neither one of us understood there was a difference between sobriety and recovery.  I didn’t feel like it was my place to dig up old dirt.  If he had “worked through it,” then that should be good enough for me, right? Now I don’t doubt my answer that night as I prayed about what to do; however, as my life later fell apart, I constantly wondered if I had made the right choice.  My answer was to hold the engagement and marry him.  In hindsight I can see that this new piece of information only changed what I knew, not what God already knew the first time I asked about Mark.  

Neither one of us expected to face addiction again. The first 6 years of our marriage were stable and predictable.  We had some difficult experiences, but nothing that was lasting.  Then as we approached year 7, we were just hammered with difficulty after difficulty.  What we think happened is that although it had been years since my husband had acted on addiction, the roots of addiction were still alive and well.  He hadn’t learned healthy ways to process or cope with stress. Life’s challenges grew more difficult and stacked on top of each other.  


I began to notice strange changes in him physically.  He had suddenly dropped 15 or so pounds with no change in his diet or exercise routine.  I remember one night he was standing in front of me, rocking our new baby in his arms.  He  fell asleep standing there! The weight of our baby hitting his arms as they relaxed startled him awake. He would be talking, then literally fall asleep mid word.  This sudden sleep attack would happen regardless of how many hours of sleep he had or even at times when he felt well rested.  I began dragging him to doctors and pushed him through two sleep studies. All reports came back of his complete health.  There was nothing that any of us could put our finger on, but something was definitely wrong.


And then I began seeing changes in his emotional and mental health.  His behaviors became more and more bizarre and more and more harmful to himself and others. To be brief, he was battling anxiety, depression, and was suicidal.  He had been prescribed multiple medications and he refused to take all of them. Looking back now on this time of physical changes followed by mental/emotional changes, I can recognize it as a form of withdrawals from addiction.  In this time of intense pressure and stress on him, he was having urges to turn to what had always soothed the anxiety and stress in the past: his addiction. His initial holding it off was coming out in these other ways.  I don’t know clearly where the urges gave way to addiction unless I try to dig through old journals, but these urges blended with the repercussions of his turning to the addiction again. We learned later that the frontal lobe of the brain literally changes in response to addiction.  Things like judgement, reason, decision-making, the ability to learn, and memory are literally either inaccessible or severely inhibited.  

This dark and scary time with his frightening behaviors, actions, and emotional responses was actually a combination of urges to give in and his brain function literally changing as he slipped back into addiction. Let me reassure you before you worry too much about your personal situation.The brain function can also come back with sobriety and recovery. It was about 6 months of sobriety that started to turn this back on for my husband. This far out, my husband is back and that crazy guy is long gone! I know it isn’t the answer for everyone, but in the long-run Mark refusing medication was actually the best thing for him and our family.  The diagnoses were wrong. He isn’t bipolar and he doesn’t have anxiety or depression. Once he started getting some sobriety under his belt, his mood automatically stabilized out.  Long-term it was a great choice, but short term, it was a living hell.


I remember thinking it couldn’t possibly get worse, and then it would. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life to watch as little by little our lives together began to unravel as the addiction began to seep into all parts of our lives.  All of my efforts to run along behind him and try to stuff it all back together seemed to only make it fall apart faster.  As things unwound more quickly and as I began to run out of options to turn to for help, I began to panic.  I was close to my own personal rock bottom.  I had exhausted all of my resources and was beginning to realize that I couldn’t “fix” my husband and his problems, nor could I control him or steer him towards better choices. As our life together and my husband wound tighter and tighter, he finally hit his breaking point. He cracked.  He relapsed.  


My first reaction when he told me about what had been going on was actually relief.  Relief that I wasn’t crazy!  Relief that my sense that something was terribly wrong was actually spot on.  Relief that there really was something wrong. I was going crazy because he said it wasn’t him, so that meant it must be me.  But that relief was quickly followed by anger, pain, betrayal, and a jumbled up mess of other big emotions.  What we were going to do?  


I didn’t understand until years later what happened at this critical point in my journey.  As I tried to make sense of all of this---of why my husband was turning to this rather than to me, especially on the nights I had been tucking his children into bed!!!---Satan whispered some alternative answers to my questions.  His lies made much more sense than the truth.  I allowed these lies to be planted in my heart and my mind.  I allowed them to take root and begin to grow.  My husband’s choices appeared to be evidence of their truthfulness.  Many of these lies were related to my body, my physical appearance, and my lack of ability as a spouse.  But the lies didn’t stop there.  They seeped more and more into the rest of my life.  You see, “I wasn’t good enough for my own husband,” something that should just be a given.  Since I wasn’t good enough for my own husband, “logically” it only makes sense that “I am not good enough for anybody.”  “I’m not worthy.”  “I’m a complete idiot.” “I am broken beyond repair or use.” And on and on these lies went, gaining deeper and deeper roots and crowding out more and more of my mind and my heart.  This is where I have discovered many of the roots of my betrayal trauma.


As these lies began to take root and grow, it gave me new places to make more attempts to rescue my husband.  I was pretty "frumpy" at that point.  Now it’s crazy that I felt like that because I had given birth to 3 babies in 3 years and was raising these young children!  A hot shower was a rare treat, let alone perfect hair, nails, makeup, and a nice outfit. But that is where I concentrated my efforts.  I could see perfectly well why he was turning to those things.  "It was because I had let myself go."  Even though with my "mom body," I couldn’t compete, I was going to give it my best effort to try.  So with renewed fervor, I didn’t let a day go by that my appearance wasn’t immaculate.  And guess what. He still turned to the sex addiction.  By then I realized the connection that if he gets anxious he turns to his addiction, so I figured if I could prevent him from getting anxious it wouldn’t be a problem any more.  My grand plan was to make sure the house was clean, dinner was on the table, and there was no kid clamor when he walked in the door after work.  Now I was not only living under the unreal expectations of a perfect appearance, but also the unreal expectations of life with young kids (messes, noises, delays!).  But I did all I could...and he still continued to binge in his addiction.  Finally I got this great idea that I just needed to change the way I approached physical intimacy.  I poured my heart into this area as well...and nothing changed. Maybe it wasn’t actually my fault…?


Finally I began to really truly hit my personal rock bottom.  I began to wonder if I really was responsible for his behaviors, actions, moods, or choices. I finally began to realize I could not control him.  I couldn’t make him choose marriage, our family, or sobriety.  All I could do was place him in God’s hands and work with God on myself.  At that point I was still willing to keep figuring this all out and stay married, but I didn’t feel like we had any resources left.


A few months after my husband's disclosure of the worst of the worst (and breaking the news about all of the rest), we were on the verge of divorce.  We were separated again, this time he was requesting no contact at all. He told me to get a lawyer.  To be brief, my bishop firmly gave me inspired counsel.  I didn’t necessarily feel good about going through with the divorce, but I honestly thought I had no other options.  I thought our marriage was damaged beyond repair. My husband wouldn’t even talk to me, let alone hash all of this out. He had made it clear that he was done trying, yet my bishop was encouraging me to figure out how to make it work.  As I went home from the interview with my bishop and prayed about what to do, the thought kept coming, “Just see if Mark is willing to talk.” That night we stayed up the whole night talking (9 pm-6 am).  We were finally able to break through the communication barriers.  With that many layers of hurt and problems, it can’t all be fixed in one sitting.  But what that night did for us is hit reset.  By the end of that conversation, we both knew we wanted and needed to keep trying. We were both committed to this marriage and both committed to doing whatever we needed to do to make it work.  We just needed to know how to fight for our marriage.


That very next week we found the LDS 12-step Addiction Recovery Program (ARP) meetings.  We had tried a string of marriage counselors throughout that time of things falling apart, but we didn’t find one that could actually help us. That next week after our all night conversation, we found a private counselor who understands addiction, and, specifically, the underlying issues that needed to be addressed in order to recover from addiction.  She also knew what I needed as a spouse.  She understood what I needed to do in order to support Mark and to find my own healing from the ways his choices deeply hurt and traumatized me.  Along with other counselors, she offered a group counseling program that we both enrolled in.  


It was almost 6 months before the soonest available group started.  We literally sold plasma to be in that program because our finances were in such shambles in consequence to the addiction. We knew we had to do this before we could move on with our lives!  We were willing to do anything in order to get the help we needed.


We both went to 12-step every week. We attended our weekly group counseling programs.  We met with our counselors in private sessions at least once a week.  We opened up our 12-step manuals and actually worked the steps every day; eventually after a few years both of us worked through the entire program. We did every assignment and workbook from our group counseling program.  We did any assignments our counselors gave us. As we were taught tools or processes, we put them to work. Now looking back I understand more about addiction and the brain.  Back then, we usually didn’t know why what we were doing was so important.  We just did it and it worked! We trusted the process. I found yoga 9 months after D-Day and began a daily yoga practice. For quite a while we did yoga as a couple and I also taught my kids. Later, our healing process also included EMDR, Neurofeedback (for me), and QNRT. We had no idea at the time the gold mine we were blessed to accidentally stumble on so early in our healing/recovery process: the body's involvement in addiction and trauma. We also continued to meet regularly with our bishop.  We studied, both the gospel, and also addiction-related topics as individuals and as a couple.  


We were also set up really well by an amazing ward who prepared us by teaching cold, hard doctrine!  We needed professional help, yes; however, that professional help could never substitute the doctrines and principles that were equally vital to our success story today. No behavior modification plan or methodology can ever be a substitute for understanding and applying the doctrines and the principles of the gospel!


On a screen that may not sound like much, but in real life it was intense!  We worked our royal tails off consistently and willingly!!!  Once we were strong individually, it was time to turn our focus and attention on healing our marriage.  We have spent the past almost 4 or so years continuing to work individually on our "own stuff" and also focusing on working through my betrayal trauma, slowly regaining trust, and healing the wounds to our marriage.  Our marriage has gradually healed to the point that most days I don’t even think about all of this or remember what we have been through unless I am reminded. Even then, those reminders rarely throw me into a tailspin like they used to. I never thought I would get to this point because of how far we have had to come and how much we have had to overcome to get here!


Because of Mark’s relapse 7 years into our marriage, we learned there is a huge difference between sobriety and recovery.  Sobriety is trying to avoid triggers, pushing through with sheer willpower alone, relying on oneself to overcome addiction, or “white knuckling it,” as we call it in the addiction world.  Recovery is recognizing the addiction is merely a symptom that requires digging down to the roots of what is causing the addiction.  We believe that recovery and healing is discovering the roots of addiction or trauma, swapping out those lies for truth, and developing patterns for better and healthier ways to handle the future, then maintaining and expanding that recovery for the rest of one’s life.

But because I can also write about the gospel because this is my blog, :) we can do better than that! Recovery means tapping into a Higher Power bigger than ourselves and coming more and more fully into constant connection with the Divine. For me that means developing a personal connection with God through my Savior, Jesus Christ. We believe that recovery is only possible through Jesus Christ. Recovery isn't something we can create ourselves, and with Him, no soul is "too lost" or "beyond hope." We have witnessed it first hand. <3

People really truly can change!  They can be changed.  That doesn’t mean they can go back to certain environments or have interactions with certain people or things and stand strong. Now I know why the Anti-Nephi-Lehi’s buried their swords! It doesn't mean that they will always do the right thing or never make a mistake again. Perfection is our goal, but for now for most of us in mortality, consistent movement in that direction is progress! Because of Jesus Christ, we can find a complete recovery from addiction. And even though my own addictions I discovered through this process were minor compared to my husband's, I also needed a complete recovery of my own heart.  I needed to understand how to turn to my Savior and be healed from my own past and additionally the painful experiences of my husband’s choices. Christ can root out the tendencies that would lead to addictive impulses, our patterns from betrayal trauma as spouses, and change our very natures!  He can give us the strength to forgive!  He can bring healing!  



Although there have been plenty of up's and down's over the past nearly 8 years since our all night phone call, there have overall been more up's than down's. In January of 2017 we hit the 5 year mark since Mark's last relapse. I don't know what the future will be like, but because of what we have learned and experienced, I have hope. When we hit the down's, we now know what to do about it. We have learned to communicate better, especially in stressful situations. We have both learned what we must do to maintain our recoveries and try to make daily and weekly course corrections (individually, as a couple, and as a family unit). Most importantly, we have learned enough about the Atonement and how to turn to Christ that when things do come up, we can work through them. I don't know what the rest of our lives will look like---if I will ever get to the point where I don't have any more triggers or betrayal trauma left. But it doesn't matter to me. I have hope. And for me that is enough to surrender the future.

Be sure to check out the Project Lemonade page for the second leg of my journey: how we can make the path smoother for other women. <3

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