{"id":12,"date":"2014-09-11T03:08:31","date_gmt":"2014-09-11T03:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/?page_id=12"},"modified":"2015-04-14T04:02:23","modified_gmt":"2015-04-14T04:02:23","slug":"sex-addiction","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/?page_id=12","title":{"rendered":"Sex Addiction &#038; Sexual Anorexia"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel-grid\" id=\"pg-12-0\" ><div class=\"panel-grid-cell\" id=\"pgc-12-0-0\" ><div class=\"panel widget widget_text panel-first-child panel-last-child\" id=\"panel-12-0-0-0\">\t\t\t<div class=\"textwidget\"><!-- meta slider -->\n<div style=\"max-width: 400px;\" class=\"metaslider metaslider-flex metaslider-298 ml-slider nav-hidden\">\n    \n    <div id=\"metaslider_container_298\">\n        <div id=\"metaslider_298\">\n            <ul class=\"slides\">\n                <li style=\"display: block; width: 100%;\"><img src=\"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/sex1.jpg\" height=\"600\" width=\"400\" alt=\"\" class=\"slider-298 slide-331\" \/><\/li>\n                <li style=\"display: none; width: 100%;\"><img src=\"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/sex2.jpg\" height=\"600\" width=\"400\" alt=\"\" class=\"slider-298 slide-332\" \/><\/li>\n            <\/ul>\n        <\/div>\n        \n    <\/div>\n    <script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n        var metaslider_298 = function($) {\n            $('#metaslider_298').addClass('flexslider'); \/\/ theme\/plugin conflict avoidance\n            $('#metaslider_298').flexslider({ \n                slideshowSpeed:7000,\n                animation:\"fade\",\n                controlNav:false,\n                directionNav:true,\n                pauseOnHover:true,\n                direction:\"horizontal\",\n                reverse:false,\n                animationSpeed:600,\n                prevText:\"&lt;\",\n                nextText:\"&gt;\",\n                slideshow:true\n            });\n        };\n        var timer_metaslider_298 = function() {\n            var slider = !window.jQuery ? window.setTimeout(timer_metaslider_298, 100) : !jQuery.isReady ? window.setTimeout(timer_metaslider_298, 1) : metaslider_298(window.jQuery);\n        };\n        timer_metaslider_298();\n    <\/script>\n<\/div>\n<!--\/\/ meta slider--><\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><div class=\"panel-grid-cell\" id=\"pgc-12-0-1\" ><div class=\"panel widget widget_text panel-first-child panel-last-child\" id=\"panel-12-0-1-0\">\t\t\t<div class=\"textwidget\"><p>Sex addiction is a condition marked by <strong>obsessive thinking about sex and by a persistent compulsion to engage in sexual behavior in spite of negative consequences.<\/strong><br \/>\n<br \/>\nThese are the essential characteristics of sex addiction:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As <strong>compulsion<\/strong>, the addiction is experienced by the addict as contrary to his free choice.\u00a0 The addict feels <strong>driven<\/strong>, almost against his own will, to engage in the behavior which he knows from painful experience is likely to lead to suffering.\u00a0 In fact,<strong> he is compelled<\/strong> by forces he does not understand, to continue to act out sexually.\u00a0 He attributes these failings to forces outside of himself, or to being a very sexual person, or to his own weakness, or to moral failings, or perhaps even to the demonic.\u00a0 <strong>The urge to engage in the behavior is experienced as more powerful than the person's ability to resist the impulse.<\/strong><\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>As <strong>obsession<\/strong>, the addiction is characterized by prolonged periods of time thinking about sexual behavior, planning sexual acting-out, resisting the urge to act-out sexually, and then dealing with the aftermath of having engaged in the sexual behavior.\u00a0 This <strong>obsessive thinking<\/strong> keeps the addict from being fully present to self or others, blocks the experience of authentic feeling, and keeps the addict from confronting the truth of one's history and present situation. <strong>The obsessive thinking is the precursor to the sexual acting-out and itself constitutes an escape or avoidance of painful realities.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"panel-grid\" id=\"pg-12-1\" ><div class=\"panel-grid-cell\" id=\"pgc-12-1-0\" ><div class=\"panel widget widget_text panel-first-child panel-last-child\" id=\"panel-12-1-0-0\">\t\t\t<div class=\"textwidget\">\n<li>The addict experiences a <strong>loss of control<\/strong> in the area of her addiction which spills over into her daily behavior. The sex addict is <strong>unable to predict<\/strong> with any degree of certitude whether he will be able to get home from work without cruising for sex, whether she will be able to keep her promise of fidelity to her partner, whether he will be able to keep his promise to himself of spending only thirty minutes more in the sex chat rooms or be up again to four in the morning.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li><strong>The addict continues to engage in the behavior, over and over again, in spite of negative consequences.<\/strong>\u00a0 Like\u00a0 the heroin addict who continues to use in spite of increasing shame, physical illness, financial ruin, alienation and incarceration, the sex addict continues to act-out in spite of\u00a0 humiliation, shame and guilt, loss of family and other relationships, social isolation,\u00a0 financial loss, occupational impairment, spiritual bankruptcy, depression,\u00a0 sexually transmitted disease and sometimes even arrest.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>As the addict's brain habituates to the release of endorphins and to the sensation of euphoria produced by sexual acting-out, she is driven to act-out for increasingly longer periods of time and often in increasingly risky ways in order to achieve the same effect. In chemical dependency circles this dynamic is referred to as<strong> tolerance<\/strong>.\u00a0 Eventually, the addict's acting-out can fail him completely so that even when he no longer experiences the pleasurable, euphoric release he still is compelled to act-out.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Like the person addicted to alcohol or other substances, the sex addict experiences symptoms of <strong>withdrawal<\/strong> when she abstains from sexual acting-out.\u00a0 For the sex addict, withdrawal can include anxiety, irritability, depressed mood, fits of rage, hyperarousal, and sleep impairment.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>The desire to continue to act-out, and the twin false beliefs that life is not worth living without engaging in his sexual behavior and that stopping is well-nigh impossible, result in <strong>delusional thinking.<\/strong>\u00a0 The addict <strong>minimizes his own behavior.<\/strong>\u00a0 In his own mind, he remains vague about how often he has cheated on his spouse, how many hours he has lost in cyberspace, how much money he has spent.\u00a0 The addict also is in <strong>denial about the consequences of his addiction<\/strong> \u2013 about how much he has lost, or injured himself, or hurt others as a result of his behavior.\u00a0 And like the alcoholic who does not realize that others know that he has been drinking, the active sex addict lacks the awareness that would have him cover the tracks which lead to his addiction being exposed.\u00a0 That consciously unintended exposition can lead to major humiliation and devastation, but it also provides opportunity for healing and a pathway to recovery.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>How does one determine if he\/she is sexually addicted? \u00a0There are many written tests that can be taken to help you ascertain if you are sexually addicted. Essentially it boils down to this: <strong>if you are troubled by your sexual behavior, and if that sexual behavior has harmful consequences in your life, and you have tried unsuccessfully to eliminate or significantly reduce that behavior, chances are you are addicted to sex.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are exceptions to this \u2013 for example, a man who is gay and is married to a woman and finds himself compelled to seek out another man for sex, may or may not be addicted. And then there are people who are obsessively, excessively troubled by sexual behaviors and thoughts that most of us would consider normal \u2013 that is, their compass for determining healthy sexual behavior may be too rigid and punitive.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Goal of Treatment for Sex Addiction<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The goal of treatment for most sex addicts is to establish increasing freedom from the compulsion to engage in the destructive sexual behavior. This entails a process with very specific actions to be taken. These actions include breaking through denial and minimization to get clarity around the extent of the sexual behavior, coming face to face with the negative consequences of the behavior and the likely future consequences of the behavior, and understanding the reasons for one\u2019s past failures in trying to eliminate or manage the behavior.<\/p>\n<p>A second but equally important goal of treatment is to develop a healthy sexuality which includes a new understanding of sex and its purpose as well as new behaviors which are life-enhancing, nurturing and conducive to genuine intimacy.<\/p>\n<p>In most cases, abstinence from sex is not the goal of treatment. We are not seeking to turn you from an active sex addict into a sexual anorexic. Indeed, beneath the surface of many sexually addicted persons are people who are afraid of truly intimate sex, who avoid really intimate sex with their spouse or partner as if it were the plague. We seek, rather, to help you let go of the addictive behavior and to confront whatever is beneath the veneer or persona of the active addiction. We seek to help you to turn and face whatever the addiction has been helping you to run from.<\/p>\n<p>One way of seeing the development of any addiction is to view it as an adaptation to a situation, event, or emotion that a person could not handle. So he\/she learned to turn to a chemical or a behavior to cope with, avoid, or medicate the underlying pain which threatened to overwhelm the person. And using that substance or behavior works. The drug addict is no longer in physical pain. The alcoholic\u2019s anxiety is significantly reduced by drinking. The sex addict feels strong and powerful and passionate in his acted-out fantasy instead of feeling less-than and weak and shut down.<\/p>\n<p>The problem of course is that the addictive behavior on which you are relying brings with it damaging consequences. A related problem is that the addiction is progressive, that because of the addictive mechanism known as tolerance, the brain needs more and more of the substance or the chemicals released by the addictive behavior to attain the same result. What worked last year to help you avoid your pain does not work as efficiently this year. \u00a0Indeed, your growing addiction, your \u201cacting-out\u201d of your suffering, begins to cause you more suffering than it actually helps you to avoid or mitigate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sexual Anorexia<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sexual anorexia, the compulsive effort to control or extinguish sexual desire and behavior, is another unskillful albeit adaptive attempt to manage one\u2019s suffering. Like sex addiction, it is another way of trying to avoid or control pain, anxiety, shame, or other reality. \u00a0It too fails because it does not directly address the reality of the suffering underlying the \u201cacting-in\u201d of the anorexic behavior. It is an attempt to avoid it.<\/p>\n<p>Only the direct confrontation with the underlying pain or uncomfortable emotion leads to sustained freedom from compulsive behavior. Sexual acting-out and sexual anorexia are habitual ways of avoiding difficult affects like shame. \u00a0Of course, one can only tolerate so much of that pain at a time. That is why early attempts at recovery are more often than not marked with setbacks and slips which must be viewed as learning opportunities. \u201cWe seek progress rather than perfection.\u201d And one can learn to gradually increase one\u2019s capacity to face and experience painful emotions and realities.<\/p>\n<p>As human beings we are communal beings. We are not supposed to be able to get better by ourselves. We need others. We need others to not collude with us in avoiding the pain, avoiding the truth of what at some level we know, but to support us in turning toward, confronting and processing difficult truth. <strong>A good therapist has done a lot of that inner work himself and knows how to go with you to that place of discomfort and to support you as you process your emotions and your pain.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Contact Bill Lent\" href=\"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/?page_id=28\">Contact Bill Lent<\/a><\/p>\n<p>(646) 322-1582<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sex addiction is a condition marked by obsessive thinking about sex and by a persistent compulsion to engage in sexual behavior in spite of negative consequences. These are the essential characteristics of sex addiction: As compulsion, the addiction is experienced by the addict as contrary to his free choice.\u00a0 The addict feels driven, almost against [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":53,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"templates\/template-full.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315,"href":"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12\/revisions\/315"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamtlent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}