What is sexual addiction?Sex addiction, also called hypersexuality, hypersexual disorder, sexual compulsivity, and compulsive sexual behavior disorder, is a behavioral addiction focused on sex. More specifically, sex addiction is a dysfunctional preoccupation with sexual urges, fantasies, and behaviors, usually involving the obsessive pursuit of non-intimate sexuality – pornography, casual and/or anonymous sex, prostitution, etc. This adult pattern of sexual urges, fantasies, and behaviors continues for at least six months, despite attempts to either stop or curtail the activity, and directly related negative life consequences – relationship instability, emotional turmoil, physical health problems, career trouble, legal issues, and more.
In short, sex addiction is an ongoing, out-of-control pattern of sexual urges, fantasies, and behaviors that causes problems in a person’s life. Sex addicts use denial, rationalizing, minimizing, and lying to avoid the truth to themselves and others. They typically have difficulty with closeness in committed relationships and use their sexual addiction behavior to escape painful and stressful feelings. The sex addict typically cycles through an addictive cycle of preoccupation, ritualization, compulsive sexual behavior, and despair or shame. Without treatment and recovery, overcoming sexual addiction can be very difficult. Partners and spouses of sex addicts have specific consequences and require help as well. Sexual health is the objective in sexual addiction treatment. Sexuality should be an integral and balanced part of our life experience. However, when sex becomes all consuming, or when a person deprives themselves of healthy sexual expression, their sexuality acts as a barrier filled with shame and self-contempt.
How can Somatic Experiencing help? |
Do these questions describe your behavior of the behavior of your partner?
What should I do?
lf you are wondering if you or someone you love might be struggling with a sexual addiction, Fr. Greg can help you determine if the symptoms and behaviors you are experiencing indicate a sexual addiction.
Please take the next step and contact Fr. Greg or a sexual addiction counselor you trust if you or someone you love are experiencing: Loss of Control - Performing more sexual behaviors than you want or intended to
Compulsive Behavior - A sense that your sexual behavior is out of control Unable to Stop - Failed attempts to stop or lessen Sexual behavior Lost Time -You spend a significant amount of time engaged in or thinking about sexual behavior Preoccupation - Frequent thought about sexual behavior Inability to Fulfill Obligations - Sexual behavior gets in the way of work, school, family, or friends Continuation Despite Consequences - Continuing sexual behaviors even though they have created problems with your relationships, work, health, or finances, and/or have led to legal issues Escalation - Sexual behaviors increase in frequency, intensity, or risk Losses- Losing, limiting, or giving up valued parts of your life in order to engage in sexual behavior Withdrawal - If you stop your sexual behavior for a period of time you feel irritable, sad, angry, nervous, or physically uncomfortable Read more about addiction... |
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Leon Else - Easy Love (Official Lyric Video)
Leon Else’s song delves into some of his most personal and vulnerable moments, as the track is reflective of a time when he was struggling and had developed an unhealthy addiction to fast flings.
"I felt everything was falling apart, and sex became something that was like a drug to me. . . .I used sex as a way of escapism to try and forget the pain of what was happening around me, and it became a monster I needed to continue to feed. The more sex I had, the more I needed it. It would always make me feel worse after, leaving me with an unsatisfied come down, which would lead me to have sex again to make myself feel better. I was constantly chasing a sexual high all the while knowing it wasn’t the answer. It felt like I was losing a piece of myself to every man I had sex with. It was a self-destructive time for me." |
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TINSA®, or Trauma Induced Sexual Addiction, explores the effects of adverse developmental experiences on a young brain and nervous system and illustrates how the damage caused by those experiences encourages addictive behavior.
Realizing how many sex addicts suffer from abandonment, neglect, and other childhood trauma led TINSA® creator Michael Barta, PhD, LPC, CSAT, to examine how emotional wounding leads to the need to self-regulate the release of the pleasure hormone dopamine through sexual stimuli. As increasing levels of dopamine are required over time to reach the same “high,” by adulthood, self-regulation can produce compulsive, damaging sexual behavior. Through TINSA®, Barta offers the means to treat sex addiction at the source, reducing compulsive sexual behavior over time and providing effective, long-term recovery. The Begin Again Podcasthttps://www.drmichaelbarta.com/podcast
In addition to intensive treatment programs and online courses, Dr. Michael Barta continues to drive his mission to make information for recovery more accessible and feasible to the everyday individual with the Begin Again Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Barta covers a range of topics related to sex and pornography addictions including the effects of pornography on the brain, the neurology of sex addiction, and the recognizing the trauma that is inflicted onto partners. |
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To Understand Sex and Porn Addiction, You Need to Understand How the Brain Works
When it comes to sex and porn addiction, talk therapy and abstinence or behavioral-based tools cannot, in and of themselves, give addicts the ability to sustain long-term healing. The core issues behind sex addiction and why you are addicted to sex and/or pornography must be addressed...READ MORE Sex, Trauma, and the Brain Human beings are instinctual creatures, but instinct can be skewed by trauma; traumatic events can prevent us from being able to access appropriate responses, especially if they occur early on in life... READ MORE The Link Between Sex Addiction and Trauma So many of our patients suffering from sex addiction are baffled by their behavior and where it comes from. Seemingly overnight most sex addicts witness their pursuit of sex morph into something dangerous that threatens their home lives, careers, and relationships... READ MORE |
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Sexual addiction perpetuates itself privately — indeed, in painful secrecy — through the retraumatizing effects of the compulsive behaviors themselves and the continuing fallout of the specific family dynamics that favored them.
But because humans are blessed and cursed above other mammals by an ability to build our social environment, sexual addictions’ continued captivity derives from powerful cultural as well as personal mechanisms. First, we wage war, oppress groups, impose punitive norms, and in countless other ways traumatize each other, thereby bequeathing relational disconnection and the addictions it invites, often unto generations. Second, especially in this era, society manufactures increasingly accessible and overwhelming lures to sexual addiction. So scaffolded upon the internal psychobiological and familial forces constantly refueling sexual addiction, humans as a species construct cultures that exacerbate enthrallment to this dependency.” (p. 105-106, Sex Addiction as Affect Dysregulation: A Neurobiologically Informed Holistic Treatment) |
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