Sex Addiction Treatment and Causes
Symptoms of Sex Addiction
- Obsessive Thoughts on sexual activities
- Having trouble controlling sexual activity
- Escalating activities: More partners, more risk, more frequency
- Risking work and relationships with sexual thoughts and activities
- Neglecting work, family, friends, and self, to pursue sexually related activities
- Compulsively carrying out sexual activities, despite a desire to stop
Examples of Sex Addiction
- Compulsive Porn watching
- Compulsive masturbation
- Many affairs – Trouble remaining faithful
- Cybersex
- Risky / unsafe or public sexual behaviour
- Obsessive thoughts of a sexual nature
Some Consequences of Sex Addiction
- Guilt and Shame
- Relationship Breakup due to repetitive infidelity
- Problems at work due to obsessive sexual thoughts/porn watching/less productivity at work
- Low Self Esteem
- Sexually Transmitted Diseases
- Lack of Concentration
- Life Imbalance
Theories around causes of Sexual Addiction
- Sexual Abuse in Childhood
- ‘Addictive’ brain
- Biochemical abnormality
- Childhood Trauma or Distant Parent (s) / Attachment Issues
- Addicted parent (drugs or alcohol)
Treatment for Sex Addiction
Our role as counsellor of sex addicts, is to help the client:
Understand the causes, reduce guilt/shame, stop the activities (using brainspotting or Somatic Therapy), and create life balance again.
We do this by doing the following:
- Full assessment (to determine life imbalances, self esteem, thought patterns, past trauma/loss, childhood trauma, etc,.)
- We work on Relationship Therapy, to re-connect client to their spouse
- We use Behaviour Therapy and Trauma Therapies to increase controls around the unwanted behaviour
- We use Brainspotting or Somatic Therapy to heal deep subconscious traumas that may be causing overload in the brain/nervous system, causing client to trigger.
- We compare sex addiction to alcohol addiction and educate client on reward pathways in the brain, brain chemistry and more.
- We explain the theory around the Disconnect between Limbic System in the brain and Prefrontal Cortex (This disconnect, while someone is engaged in the compulsion, can cause the behaviour to continue, regardless of the desire to stop).
The National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity has defined sexual addiction as “engaging in persistent and escalating patterns of sexual behavior acted out despite increasing negative consequences to self and others.” https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-sexual-addiction/