@Mark Robinette, MFT, http://www.sexaddicthelp.com

After 15 years of working with sex addicts, I have concluded that it is not sex – per Se – that is the object of the addictive attachment, but rather it is the state of sexual arousal that most addicts find so compelling. Orgasm is rarely the goal. As a matter of fact, people purposely delay orgasm because the aftermath can involve experiences of disillusionment, emptiness and shame.

The state of sexual arousal, which I have dubbed “The Erotic Haze”, is a cherished state of mind for sex and porn addicts. The spike in neurochemicals, particularly the neurotransmitter dopamine, floods the brain with a “feel good” experience approximating euphoria. This is the real object of addiction. Sexual arousal seems to have charms that soothe the salvage beast. It is the perfect salve for unwanted emotions. It is an elixir for feelings of inadequacy, emptiness, shame and depression. Once you’ve entered “The Erotic Haze”, your ability to control your behavior becomes nil. Acting out becomes an inevitability.

However, there are a number of stages you go through before you arrive at that state. You don’t get “struck” acting out. It doesn’t come out of the blue, compelling you to take immediate action. The purpose of understanding the sex addiction cycle is, with mindful awareness, to know you’re in one of the beginning phases and to apply newly learned coping skills before you drown in the quicksand.

The addictive cycle really shows the signs symptoms of  relapse. The more the cycle engages, the harder the relapse is to stop. The obvious place to start is to keep the boulder from starting to roll in the first place. You have to build up a barrier that keeps you from going down the classic “slippery slope”.

Upcoming posts will discuss a variety of coping mechanisms you can use to build that barrier or when you find yourself at any point in the cycle.

There are many points in the cycle when you are still able to make a decision. If the decision is emotion-based, you’ll be driven toward the immediate satisfaction of need-gratification. If you’re able to make a value-based decision, you’ll be more likely to step of the cycle to prevent relapse in addiction and get back onto firmer ground where you can consider the consequences of your actions. (See http://sexaddicttherapy.blogspot.com/search?q=values for a discussion of the importance of clarifying your values at the beginning of recovery)

The Sex Addiction Cycle

1. A triggering event results in a pain state.
2. Sexual Preoccupation
3. Sexual Fantasies
4. Ritualized Behaviors
5. Dissociation
6. Sexual Acting out
7. The Return of Reality
8. Medicating feelings of shame and remorse through starting the cycle all over again.

A triggering event results in an internal pain state.

• Anticipating or perceiving rejection
• Other wounds to self-esteem or sense of control
• Interpersonal conflict
• Isolation – desire to hide
• Desire to connect
• Stress/Anxiety/Depression
• Boredom
• Unstructured Time
• Shame for former acting out
• Emptiness
• Frustration/disappointment
• May become flooded with feelings derived from unconscious childhood trauma which you experience as intolerable

You unconsciously determine that being in the state of sexual arousal will alleviate all your discomfort.

Preoccupation

Focus becomes highly focused in a trance-like state on sexualized thoughts and memories as a way to mask the unwanted feelings from the triggering event. “Euphoric recall” may occur – you remember all the “glorious” times of your addiction, but forget and deny the reality of the negative consequences. Your only concern is to find just the right source of sexual stimulation.

Preoccupation denies anything that’s not sexual; sexual thoughts become overwhelming and takes a toll on the attention needed for effective day-to-day living. The sex-related obsessions distort your thinking and engrosses your mind. The focus of your attention is not on setting goals or doing meaningful, creative, productive activities. When you’re sexually preoccupied, you can’t assess and solve problems or make sacrifices in the present to achieve a greater gain later, as mature adults are capable of doing.

Obsessive preoccupations serve to bind fear and anxiety to contain fears or to keep you distracted from something troubling within. Obsessive thoughts are highly irrational thoughts, divorced from reality. They lead to irrational rituals and compulsive action as a way to maintain psychological safety.

Individuals in a trance-like sexual preoccupation seek total control of their inner and external environments.

Preoccupation with sexual thoughts, especially if they are deviant, produces guilt, shame and a fear of being discovered. It fosters lack of attention to the sumptuousness of real living and is a barrier to focused attention, loving and living in the NOW. Sexual preoccupation prevents you from feeling, doing, and risking in your life and so is a thief of your self-worth and integrity.

Sexual Fantasizing

Sexual fantasies are ubiquitous. For the non-sex addict, they float into consciousness, providing some needed experience and then just as quickly float away. The ability to fantasize is what allows us to imagine, to plan and to create. Some people use fantasy to write literature or create art. Others are just more creative and effective in their daily lives.

Not so for the sex addict who lives in a fantasy state for greater amounts of time than the non-sex addict for whom fantasies redress unresolved inner conflicts and who’s fantasies are not in the service of a connection to a particular partner. Fantasy becomes an obsession that serves in some way to avoid life. Used consistently, obsession sets the stage for loss of control.

The script of a sexual fantasy is a signal from the unconscious mind that essential needs, not met in childhood, are pressing to be recognized and met. In fantasy, all dimensions of low self-esteem and shame are ameliorated. They counteract depressive, self-deprecating feelings by providing a pleasurable, albeit temporary, relief from self-loathing.

A person captured by an elaborate sexual fantasy tends not to feel inadequate, shy, to ruminate about mistakes or to feel embarrassed about his weight.

Fantasy enactments, with their very particular situations and people are specifically designed to undo your deepest wounds and to deliver to your your unconscious, split off wants, wishes and needs if you would but try to understand them.

Fantasies of power, desirability, mastery, achievement, novelty and taboo acts are common in this formulation. Some fantasize about being humiliated by a dominant woman, or dressing in his wife’s clothing, or wearing an adult diaper and being treated like an infant.

Sex addicts use fantasies excessively because they’re unhappy about their self-image; they experience their real selves as shamed, inadequate and unlovable. In fantasy, they can simply assume the identity of someone else. The fantasy provides an experience of an enhanced ego, self confidence and magnified feelings of desirability. Of course, this is the great appeal of chat rooms where people assume alternate identities.

Consequences of Excessive Sexual Fantasies

Ask yourself if your fantasies are “generative”. Do they results in galvanizing you to make the necessary changes in your life? Do they produce activities that are creative and productive? My guess is not.

Excessive involvement in sexual fantasies is destructive. Fantasy impairs your ability to discern to and adapt to reality. Being locked in fantasy disconnects you from yourself. You crate a division within yourself which crates an inner fragmentation. The result is that your mind is in a constant state of chaos and conflict.

Your sexual fantasy life leads you to have certain expectations about people and situations that an unrealistic and create further conflicts and disconnect in your real life. Chronic dissatisfaction with life is the result.

Moreover, the more you build yourself up in fantasy, the greater the crash will be when reality sets in Deflation inevitably follows fantasy and feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy return. Fantasies remove you from reality and keep you from being present in your life. They inhibit you from having a sensitive, alive mind.

Excessive sexual fantasies inhibit personal growth and development. If you fantasize yourself as being successful, you don’t take the necessary steps in reality to become proficient in a craft, art or vocation. If you fantasize yourself in perfect attunement to a perfect person, you won’t motivate yourself to look for a real person with whom some of your needs might be met.

George Vaillant, a famous psychological researcher, did a three-year longitudinal study of recovering addicts. In speaking of the narcissistic traits of people who continually engage in fantasy, he observed that such people didn’t have a lot, or any, close friends.

Ritualization

Rituals special routines that induce trance and further separate oneself from reality. The goal is to reduce the ability to say “stop.” Ritualization helps to put further distance between reality and sexual obsession. They add to sexual arousal, provide a sense of control, and are grounding, pleasurable and comforting in themselves.

Boundaries start to collapse when addicts start to test themselves: Cruising in acting-out neighborhoods. Calling the massage parlor or escort services to “ask for prices” just out of curiosity. Emailing the old lover because you were thinking about him. These test are really at the edge of the old ritualized patterns.

Rituals are a critical part of any kind of deviant arousal template. The ritual itself becomes a fetish, capable of engendering sexual excitement and release it itself.

The exhibitionist walks through certain spots at certain times, cruising for the same type of woman. The transvestite carefully lays out woman’s clothing and lingerie on the bed, looking at them for a period of time before he dons them. The clinical literature talks about “the masochistic script”. To all appearances, the “domme” is in control. In reality, the masochist calls the shots. The room needs to be arranged just so. The type of clothing the dominatrix wears is dictated by the bottom. Often, even verbal and physical humiliation needs to follow his exact script, or he is disappointed in the scene.

Typically, active addicts do not have coping strategies in place to stop ritualized behavior. The purpose of ritual is to alter awareness and go into the “erotic haze”. Once there, reality becomes fully distorted and loss of control is inevitable.

Dissociation

The addict is lost to himself in the “erotic haze.” Every sex addict has a public life and a private life that is hidden, kept secret. In the “erotic haze”, the Mr. Hyde part of the personality is at the helm of your life. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde each have different value systems, different goals, different beliefs. Sex addicts have reported to me that they feel detached from their experience, describing themselves as feeling outside themselves, witnessing their own actions. They are divorced from their feelings, thoughts,values and sense of identity. They feel like they’re running on autopilot.

Dissociation is the state of being disconnected or detached from your sensory experience, sense of self, personal identity and personal history. A state of unreality prevails. The person loses his sense of where they are, who they are, or what they’re doing.

The “erotic haze” is a state of dissociation. Reality is completely blocked out. All focus is on getting where he needs to go. Others

Acting Out

The next phase of the cycle is sexual compulsivity, the “acting out” phase of the cycle. Compulsivity means that addicts irrevocably reach a point where succumbing to the sexual pleasure become inevitable, NO MATTER WHAT the consequences.

The term “acting out” means that the person uses a behavior to seek relief from discomfort, rather than talking about the issues with a trusted other. It implies the inability to contain an impulse which is then expressed in action. Sexual behaviors are a self-defeating strategy that communicates feelings for which you have no language. Acting out is a substitute for feeling, sharing and working things through.

With orgasm there is a cascade of neurotransmitters released, providing pleasure and instantly eradicating any feelings of guilt, shame, or anxiety. The addict feels relief for the moment, but it is a fleeting, transitory relief. Thus, some very smart and competent people end up doing things others would see as immoral, foolish, or, at the very least, immature.

Reality Sets In — Despair

Once orgasm occurs, the Erotic Haze is immediately dispelled.  Emptiness, disillusionment guilt or shame sets in.  The sex addict has been here many, many times.  He feels degraded as he realizes he is a slave to his addiction.  He is demoralized by the realization that he has once again betrayed his essential values, as well as his spiritual or moral ideals.  Awareness of the betrayal of his spouse results in overwhelming guilt.

Moreover, he know that he has committed the ultimate betrayal — the betrayal of his sense of integrity.  The thought of “I can’t believe I did it again” prevails.  He has tried numerous times to control his behavior and once again has failed.  For many addicts, this dark emotion brings on depression or a chronic feeling of hopelessness. For a while, sex may become the enemy—until the next time. One sure way to relieve these feelings of despair is to start obsessive preoccupation again.

The cycle perpetuates itself.
Endlessly…

Until you engage in sexual recovery treatment which provides skills and strategies for breaking free from this seemingly unbreakable chain.

For a Free 30-minute Consultation
call (212) 673-5717

Links:

http://www.sexaddicthelp.com/Articles/addiction_cycle.htm

http://www.saahelp.com/SA_Cycle.htm

http://www.sextreatment.com

http://wp.me/p2WMGN-z

The post Why You MUST Know about the Sex Addiction Cycle appeared first on New York Therapy for Porn and Sex Addicts.

Are you aware of the factors that immediately precede your entry into the “sex addiction cycle” with it’s preoccupation, fantasies, ritualization, “erotic haze” and ultimately, sexual acting out?

The closer you get to the end of the cycle, for instance, immersion in the “erotic haze”, the harder it is to extricate yourself from the irresistible allure of acting out. The more you can do to work on yourself at the beginning of the cycle, the greater the chances are that you can block yourself from addiction relapse.

So what is it, precisely, that starts it off? Some therapists say it is a “pain event” or a “toxic state”. I believe that, whatever your particular trigger is, underlying the reason you reach for your addiction is the experience of anxiety. If it’s not anxiety that you feel directly, it’s some form of it or it’s anxiety about experiencing certain feeling states – dread, fear, stress, racing-mind, physical discomfort, boredom, loneliness, marital conflict, etc.

It is my firm belief that your relapse prevention plans should include 20 minutes a day of deep relaxation.

Relaxation exercises not only alleviates anxiety, it makes you less reactive so you can think clearly about the consequences of your behavior.

Becoming sexually sober is not easy. Professionals in the alcoholism field talk about PAW (Post Acute Withdrawal) and they say the symptoms can last for up to a year for the substances to truly leave the body and mind. I don’t think it takes that long for sex addicts, but you’ll definitely go through a withdrawal period as your brain chemicals begin to settle in to homeostasis.

For the newly recovering addict, stress sensitivity can result in difficulty in managing stress and can be the most confusing and aggravating part of post acute withdrawal for many PAW sufferers. You will learn that it is common for recovering people to often be unable to distinguish between low-stress situations and high-stress situations.

To complicate things further, all of the other symptoms of post acute withdrawal become worse during times of high stress.  You may feel stressful in situations that ordinarily would not bother you and in addition, experience even more stress when you overreact. You may do things that are completely inappropriate for the situation, so much so that later on you may wonder why they reacted so strongly.

When things happen that require two units of emotional reaction, you react with ten. It is like holding the “times” key down on a calculator. You may find yourself becoming angry over what may later seem to have been a trivial matter.

You may feel more anxious or excited than you have reason to be when you suffer from the symptoms of PAW in addiction recovery.
When this overreaction puts more stress on the nervous systems than it can handle, there is an emotional shutdown. If this happens to you, you become emotionally numb, unable to feel anything. And even when you know you should feel something, you do not. You may swing from one mood to another without knowing why.

Despair Not!

There are many relaxation techniques available to you to alleviate stress.

And there are other reasons you should do a deep-relaxation technique for 20-minutes a day besides as an aid in addiction recovery.

Medical research shows that consistent deep relaxation has surprising health benefits such as strengthening the immune system, diabetics who no longer need insulin, widens respiratory passages in asthmatics, lowers blood pressure, cholesterol levels and helps cardiovascular problems, alleviates chronic pain, reduces insomnia, and improves blood flow to the heart.
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/13/science/relaxation-surprising-benefits-detected.html

Your best friend when cravings arise is right beneath your nostrils! No need to pick up a substance or a destructive sexual behavior to feel better. If you feel a sexual craving, immediately sit down and take 10 deep breaths from the diaphragm. Do NOT breath from your shoulders which produces the kind of breathe flow we use when we’re anxious.

Simple deep breathing will relax your body and clear your mind so you can think rationally about the consequences of your behavior. While you’re breathing, try to visualize those consequences. How did you feel after your last blow-out? Was it truly worth the effort? Try to bring up, visceral, the shame, self-loathing and emptiness. Now visualize your wife and draw up warm and loving feelings.

Deep breathing and visualization are only two of the many, many types of relaxation techniques.

I’ve provided a list and an accompanying link for 15 different ways to chill out. Try one. Not for you? Try another. But DO DO it. The benefits are incredible.

Links

Deep Relaxation Hypnosis Tapes
I put these first because they’re my personal favorites. I’m trained in Hypnosis so I’m a tough customer when it comes to other hypnotherapists. But these guys are right on the money. And they’re BRITS, so the voices just take you away from your body and your mind where there’s really deep relaxation. I listen to one daily and the results are remarkable. My favorites are: “Body Scan”, “Quiet Mind” and “7-11 Breathing”. DO NOT MISS the ones on sex and porn addiction!
http://www.hypnosisdownloads.com

The Use of Meditation in Sexual Recovery
http://sextreatment.com/how-to-use-mindfulness-meditation-in-recovery-from-sex-addiction (This is my article, how could I leave it out?)

The Relaxation Response – Dr. Herbert Benson, in 1960, developed a program for deep relaxation that illicit a physical state of deep rest that changes the physical and emotional response to stress (e.g. decreases in heart rate, blood pressure, rate of breathing and muscle tension. His book, “The Relaxation Response” (available at Amazon) was HUGE. To my mind, it’s a simplified version of Buddhist meditation, but it seemed to be packaged in a way that appealed to folks.
http://www.massgeneral.org/bhi/basics/rr.aspx (interview and video)

Mindfulness meditation instructions
www.marc.ncla.edu/body.cfm?ID=22
I was studying mindfulness meditation back in 1978. Based in Buddhism, but without all the “stuff”, it teaches you to be present in each moment. The idea is to focus attention on what’s happening now and accept it with impartiality, or without judgment. Times when I’ve kept a regular practice are times I’ve been able to experience ecstasy while washing the bathroom floor!

Mindfulness practice is particularly good for sex addicts who tend to fantasize and be preoccupied with things that may never occur. This practice helps you keep your feet on the ground and find serenity in the simplicity of living.

Contemplative Prayer
www.contemplativeprayer.net/
For our Christian friends.

Relaxation Music
www.wholeperson.com.

Deep Breathing Exercises
http://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-management/stress-management-breathing-exercises-for-relaxation

Creative Visualization MP3 Download
mp3skull.com/mp3/creative visualization.html

15-minute beginner’s yoga routine
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyqHraoVSDA

Deep Tissue Massage
http://www.webmdlance/massage-therapy-styles-and-health-.com/babenefits

Tai-chi for Beginners
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNWPk6tYoUM

Martial Arts
www.wimp.com/martialarts/ (Video)

Biofeedback/Neurofeedback
www.mayoclinic.com/health/biofeedback/MY01072

Hiking/Walking
http://www.americanhiking.org/HikingResources/HealthBenefits/

Addiction-Recovery Stress Management

http://www.rightstep.com/programs/alcohol-drug-rehab-intensive-outpatient-care/intensive-outpatient-classes-session-20/reducing-stress-in-addiction-recovery-through-relaxation.php#ixzz2KQYIZBLj

As if I haven’t told you enough benefits of daily relaxation, there are others: improved focus and ability to concentrate; lack of lethargy; reduced irritability; better moods; better sleep; improved thinking; more creative problem solving; slows again; as an act of self-care, increases self-esteem. A study in “Neuroimage” (May 2011) says conclusively that deep meditation increases brain connectivity and alters the body at a fundamental level leading to better memory, self-awareness and compassion.

Now you have the facts. Your job is to decide which fit you best and start using one. Why not today? You will be richly rewarded with better health, greater peace of mind, a smoother, more joyful course through life. Living like this, who wants to throw a monkey-wrench of a destructive sexual act into the works??!!

The post 15 Relaxation Techniques to Aid Sex Addiction Recovery appeared first on New York Therapy for Porn and Sex Addicts.

A sex addiction is a habitual response and a source of sexual gratification or emotional security. It is a way of coping with internal feelings and external pressures that provides the Addict” as “Not You””>addict with predictable and consistent immediate gratification, but that has concomitant costs. Eventually these costs may outweigh the subjective benefits the addiction offers. Nevertheless, people continue in their addiction as long as they believe it continues to do something for them.

An addiction to sex may involve any attachment that grows in importance so that it damages a person’s inner and external worlds. All addictions follow certain patterns. For one, the relentless acquisitiveness of a magical seeming object or involvement as well as loss of control, perspective and priorities. Addiction, as we know, is not limited to alcohol and drugs. When someone becomes addicted, it is not to a chemical or a person but to a particular subjective experience. Anything that a person finds sufficiently absorbing and that seems to remedy deficiencies in the person’s life can become an addiction. The addictive potential of sex lies not in the sex-act itself or in the viewing of Internet porn, but in the meaning the sexual experience has for a person.

A person is vulnerable to addiction when he feels a lack of self-worth that is buoyed by sexual fantasies and enactments or when he experiences a lack of satisfaction in life, an absence of intimate connections to other people, a lack of compelling interests, or a loss of hope.

The “hook” of the addiction – the thing that keeps people coming back for more, despite considerable costs – is that it gives people feelings and gratifying sensations that they are not able to get in other ways. It may block out sensations of pain, uncertainty, discomfort, or of distressing emotions. It may create powerfully distracting sensations that focus and absorb attention. It may enable a person to forget seemingly insurmountable problems. It may provide illusory, temporary feelings of calm, self-worth, accomplishment, of power or control, of intimacy or belonging. These are the alluring benefits that explain why a person keeps going back to the “Erotic Haze.” It is a state of mind that accomplishes something for that person, or that he anticipates will do so, however fantasy-based and illusory these benefits may,in fact, be.

For all the discussion of “powerlessness”, addiction always involves and is fueled by value choices. People who enjoy strong emotional bonds with other people, productive work, feelings of competence and fun, a sense of responsibility towards others, engagement in interesting activities or community service, are not people who tend towards addiction. If you have better things to do with your time and energy and value certain activities and people more than you value escape into sexual intoxication, then you wouldn’t make sexual intoxication the epicenter of your life.

And if you are addicted to sex, wouldn’t it make sense to revivify or create those personal strengths and values as an antidote to your addiction?

However much sexual gratification and other benefits are experienced in the addiction, the person pays a considerable price for his addictive involvement. Addiction makes people live less consciously with less awareness of important people, events and activities. It reinforces the problems the person was trying to avoid in the first place. The sex addict may have an inner experience that seems to be a cure-all and makes everything better. In reality, it makes things worse. Jobs and relationships suffer or fall away, chronic sleeplessness damages health, debts may increase, marital conflict ensues, once-valued career opportunities disappear, the ongoing business of living is neglected. The person is increasingly “out of touch” with nourishing contacts and essential responsibilities.

Increased disengagement from reality is a set-up for the discomfort of withdrawal. Removed from the cushion of living a fantasy-based life, the sex addict is now deprived of his primary source of comfort and gratification. He “crash-lands” into an inhospitable world, a world from which the person has been using the addiction to escape.

When do sexual addicts seek help for their condition? When the pain of the “crash-landings” exceeds the benefits of the addiction.

The post What’s the “Hook” in Sex Addiction? appeared first on New York Therapy for Porn and Sex Addicts.

The True Self is capable of objectively observing the Sex Addict Self because it’s not obsessively preoccupied with getting it’s neurotic needs met.  Psychoanalysts call this the “observing ego” and it is considered a sign of maturity. Proponents of Eastern spirituality call the True Self “The Witness” because it’s essence is conscious awareness of the inner workings of the mind.

With time in addiction recovery, the True Self becomes “The Witness” of the Sex Addict Self and can see very clearly that the Addict Self is full of lies and rationalizations. When your True Self can recognize the lies and distortions of the Addict Self, you’re close to being free from the shackles of addiction.

Over the course of many years of treating sex addicts and their partners, I have compiled a list of the main thoughts and perceptions of the Addict that need to recognized and dismissed by your Higher Self.

The Addict Self lives in duplicity. It speaks falsehoods to you and to those you love. Having lived in hiding and isolation for so long, he is unable to do reality testing with others and so is subject to a squadron of perceptual distortions. Some of these include:

• All the guys do it.

• I’m not hurting anyone but myself.

• Just one last time.” (Have you considered that if you were capable of “one last time” you would have done it years ago?)

• I’m just not attracted to my wife. She’s gained ten pounds. (Compared to a porn star??)

• This time I’ll make it work. I can have my pleasure without paying a price. (!!)

• I can’t see living my whole life without porn.

• I work hard at the office. I deserve this.

• The women in my fantasy life desire me and because I am desired by women, I am a better human being.

• I’m not just a John. She’s really turned on by me.

• My dominatrix is one of my closest friends.

• Being seen with a beautiful woman enhances my stature as a man in the eyes of other men.

• When I’m in a sexual trance, I’m in control. (Who are you kidding?)

• The woman in the chat room really believes I’m 35, single and in great shape.

• I’m the phone sex worker’s favorite client.

• I don’t have a problem with intimacy. I’m just polyamorous.

• Because I’ve suffered through 30 days of not looking at porn, I can start again and this time I’ll have control over it.

• Because these (fantasy) women desire me, I’m proving to the guys from school that I’m not some worthless geek who girls reject.

• If I’m overtaken by a powerful urge to act out, I must comply with it.

• If I reach out for help, no one will be there for me.

• I must turn only to myself to get my needs and wants met.

• The most exciting sexual experience is a fantasy based on using someone else.

• To be sexually aroused, I must be subjugated and humiliated.

• Because sexual arousal has changed my mood, my emotional needs have been met.

• Compulsive, deviant sex satisfies me emotionally.

• I can rely only on a predictable mood change from sexual arousal. People may not always come through.

• Objects are more dependable than people.

• Vanilla sex with a partner is boring.

• Sex is my first priority. People come second.

• The only thing I can really depend on is the illusory sense of fulfillment and the predictable mood change of the Erotic Haze.

• The only time I’m in control is when I’m in the Erotic Haze.

• I don’t really have to face anything I don’t want to.

• Objects and events are more important than people. I don’t really need people.

• I can do anything I want, whenever I want, no matter what the damage to myself or others.

• Intensity is Intimacy and Intimacy is Intensity.

• Sexual empowerment is personal empowerment.

• Feelings of sexual competency compensates for my shame and self-hatred.

• Sexual arousal fosters the illusion that I’m powerful enough to extract the love and nurturing from the person who couldn’t/wouldn’t give it to me as a child.

These are some of the cognition and perceptions of the Addict that keep you running as an active sex addict. Many have them occur at the level of the subconscious mind. It takes the Mindful Awareness of the Witness to see the signs of the “stinking thinking” that signifies that the Addict is alive and kicking.

Recovery is the, ultimately, the acknowledgment of the Addict within, a continual acceptance of its potential power and the continuous monitoring of the Voice of the Addict in whatever form it takes.

By acknowledging and claiming the Addict side of your personality and coming to listen and understand the Addict Self, you enter into the recovery process. Successful treatment of sex addiction fosters honesty with the Self in listening to and honoring the True Self. To be in recovery is to separate, consistently and perseveringly the True Self from the Voice of the Addict and to detach from identification with the Addict Self.

Recovery Plus

The process of recovery from addiction is found in the renewal of the Self; and, eventually, in forming meaningful relationships with others and with some form of spiritual principles.

As humans, we are driven by needs for connection, for power and for pleasure. Sex addicts are focused on attaining power and pleasure. But there is another critical drive that resides in the human psyche – the drive for meaning. The Addict Self cannot create or sustain a meaning-full and joyous life because addiction is so meaningless. Settling for living within and being controlled by their drives for power and pleasure, addicts give up on meaning. This is the Self eternally wrestling with the Addict.

The Recovery process makes certain demands on addicts. Gone are the days that life can be centered exclusively around the attainment of pleasure. For the recovering addict to thrive in sobriety, he must relinquish his attachment to power and pleasure and become a meaning-centered person.

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The post Caution! 37 Things Your Sex Addict Self Tells You appeared first on New York Therapy for Porn and Sex Addicts.

 part 11

The True Self is Reality. It sees the activities of the Addict as being what it is: a fantasy growling for what it compulsively seeks: immediate gratification in the form of physical pleasure. Sex addiction is fueled by a fantasy of being how you never thought you were in your youth together of a fantasy of the power over women you’ve always wanted to have. Do you see how the Addict Self always lives in the past?

The True Self is your essential Self. Unfettered by the years of negative conditioning from toxic parents and malignant messages from the culture, your True Self is the essential you that was born into the world. Buddhists call it the “Unconditioned” as it exists beyond the quagmire of the compulsive, aimless thoughts of the Mind  that’s been tainted by parental and cultural conditioning.

Spiritual masters have called the True Self many things: Conscious Awareness, That Existing Beyond Thought, Essential Nature, the Buddhist “emptiness”, the “Eternal Now”.  Therapists have distinguished between the “true self and false selves“, or “the inner child”,the spontaneous, alive, joyful, unconditioned part of ourselves that exists beyond judgment, shame and morality.

The True Self knows what truly satisfies and nurtures, is capable of bonding with a special person and, through that bond, connects with all of humanity through compassion. It responds to events, rather than reacts. The True Self is capable of making conscious choices that enhances it’s own “enlightened self interest” as well as the welfare of others.

The True Self is a meaning maker. Rather than having power and pleasure exist as the pinnacle of its existence, it seeks to find meaning and value in life.

Where the Addict‘s life revolves around the chase for the ultimate mood changer in things and events; the True Self has no need to change it’s state because it IS love, peace, joy and serenity. The Addict, stuck in a developmental arrest, has no experience of sexual or emotional maturity. The True Self knows that intimacy and connection to human communities are the true avenues to the fulfillment of emotional needs. It has no need to turn other people into objects to be exploited.

What’s so glorious about real, intimate sexuality is that it emanates from your True Self that is capable of transcending the boundaries of the ego to achieve powerful, real connection with one’s partner and the universe. After a person engages in power-sex, connected sex, there is a transcendent silence because what it is born from the groins of the True Self is beyond words.

 The Addict is motivated to get needs met he didn’t get met in childhood through a pathological relationship to objects and behaviors – needs that, having gone unmet in the past, will never be met, because they are the needs of a child, making them insatiable.  (“You can never get enough of what doesn’t satisfy you.”)

The True Self gets emotional needs met through a balanced combination of intimate connections with other people, it’s own authentic being, a sense of community and a relationship to a Higher Power. The Addict through the immediate gratification of sensual pleasure.

If the True Self develops and has it’s own center of gravity, then through Pure Awareness, the “Voice of the Addict” becomes audible. In a recovery program and in addiction therapy, you’ll recognize it as the voice of a needy child which lives within you, but isn’t you. Through witnessing the Addict Self without reacting to it, you begin to dissociate from the Addict’s Voice because you recognize that the Voice is not YOU.

Through your personal journey to maturity, the sense of “I Am” emerges with more and more surety. The “I Am” has always been with you but the Addict has mislead you. The Addict has mislead you into being what you are not. Early in an addiction recovery program, to find the Self it is enough to know what you are not – that is, the Addict. The Addict is unreal, made up of emotional pain from the past, impulses, needs and wants that are childish, immature, ego-centric and transitory.

 Finding Your Way to your True Self

You don’t have to chase the True Self, for you are it. (Remember the “Wizard of Oz”? Dorothy had no need to chase the Emerald City to get back to Kansas; she had they way home on her ruby slippers the whole time.) You’re used to the sexual hunt – the excitement of the chase. Well, your hunting days are over. Through your recovery program and sexual addiction counseling, will find the True Self if you just keep doing the next right thing. Let go of your attachment to the Unreal (the Addict) and the Real will swiftly take it’s place. Don’t imagine yourself to be something that you are no longer – the active Addict.

With this comes great peace and great love.

The Addict’s life revolves around chasing a mood-altering experience. The Self has no need to change its’ inner experience because it is peace, joy and serenity. There’s no need to engage in mood-changing activities if your inner life is stable.

 The Addict developed as a response to surviving childhood wounds. Addictive behavior felt soothing and developed as a way to cope with feelings that, for a young child, felt overwhelming and dangerous. The intensity of these feelings created a type of gauze, or template, that distorted your perception of self, sex and others.

Up Next:  ”The Witness”

The post Control Your Destiny: See the “Addict” as “Not You” appeared first on New York Therapy for Porn and Sex Addicts.

Thirty-five years ago, I discovered the rooms of AA. I heard many things I didn’t understand, not the least of which was when someone would say “The Disease Talks to Me.” “What on earth could that mean?” I thought to myself. 

Years into recovery from addiction, after I had developed a personality that no longer required the use of substances, I would have certain thoughts – alien thoughts – about how it would be a good idea to have a drink because …(fill in the rationalization). The “Voice”, even after a while in sobriety, would say: “Nobody knows you’ll do it and what’s it going to hurt?” or “I’d only be hurting myself.” or “I know I screwed up the last time, but this time I’ll be able to control it.” or “If my work colleagues can drink after a big presentation, so can I” But these thoughts seemed to operate outside my sober self. The disease had, in fact, begun to talk to me.

With more addiction recovery, I became able to Witness the Voice of the Addictas not being me or mine. Through meditation, I was able to cultivate the awareness that none of my thoughts, which inevitably involved the past or the future, were me or mine. My True Self was something far greater than my thoughts. I experienced my Mind as nothing more than a receptacle for repetitive electrical impulses that ran me compulsively and had no inherent meaning or no ultimate destination.

It was when I became the detached witness of my own (addictive) Mind that I had my first experience of a conscious contact with a Power greater than myself.

Many years have passed and I now work with sex addicts who hear the same “Voice of the Disease” that had once haunted me. Sex addiction recovery and addiction therapy give them skills and strategies so the True Self can prevail over the Addict Self.

The “Erotic Haze”

The Sex Addict, because of the emotional trauma of his childhood, eschews human relationships, which have been hurtful to him, and develops relationship with objects and events that are mood-altering. He lives in fear of being traumatized and so turns within himself to get his needs met. The Addict spends it’s adult life living in emotional reaction to it’s history. The True Self lives in the NOW.

The Addict is the immature self that seeks to find the solution to emotional problems in prostitutes, phone sex or Internet porn. Sex relieves pain and emptiness. The Addict believes that sexual arousal will bring him wholeness, comfort, peace, safety and fulfillment. Compulsive attachment to sexual arousal results in life in “The Erotic Haze.” In this state, the sex addict has the illusion of feeling empowered, recognized, desired, attended to – states he did NOT experience in childhood.

The “Haze” is very powerful because it creates simultaneous feelings of arousal, relaxation and control. Clients of mine have said it’s the only time they feel alive and complete.

The“Erotic Haze”, which is the playground of the Addict Self is a state of dissociation from the True Self . It is a state of high-intensity arousal, pleasure, empowerment and a sense of control. In the

“Erotic Haze”, the True Self is not in control – does not have the power of choice, is unable to make decisions for his own best interest; in the “Erotic Haze”, the Addict Self – the self that is always wanting, wanting, wanting and yet is never truly satisfied – is steering the ship.

A sex addict in an Erotic Haze feels that some sort of essential connection has taken place. But it is a pseudo-connection. After the long-desired acting out, his cherished ecstasy quickly fades leaving him disillusioned and empty. He realizes that the sense of power and control, his experience of being nurtured and desired, his “connections” were illusory and empty.

Faced with fear, shame and self-hate, the Addict Self has pitted himself against his deep need to have emotional needs met from childhood and he has lost the fight. (Because those needs, belonging to a time long ago, can NEVER be met – hence the compulsion.) 

He has once again bought into the empty promise of relief, emotional security, fulfillment and closeness through a pathological relationship to a “mood-altering experience.” Once again, the hopes for the Erotic Haze have dissolved into nothing more than transient pleasant sensations. Nothing truly gratifying. Nothing substantial. No delivery on the promises of the allure of visualizing sexual acts with beautiful women.

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Next: the birth and cultivation of the True Self who hears and mirrors the voice of the Addict Self.

The post Sex Addicts! Learn the Voice of Your “Addict Self” appeared first on New York Therapy for Porn and Sex Addicts.

This series of articles will offer a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of addiction in general and sex addiction in particular.  Additional articles will provide precise ways that the various ways of therapy can help an individual suffering from this affliction to stop the destructive sexual behaviors as well as how to resolve the unconscious underpinnings that hold the addiction in place.  Finally, we’ll discuss how to achieve “mind-blowing” sober, sexual, erotic partner with a cherished other which presents of new paradigm for thinking about your sexuality.

What is Addiction?

To be at risk for addiction, two psychological conditions seem to exist during childhood.

• First, the child has become over- reliant on sources of comfort outside of himself to provide a feeling of being soothed, safe and secure.
• Second, the child had difficulty making a healthy separation from the primary parent, with later concerns that closeness and intimacy can be dangerous.

Both of these conditions come about as a result of failure in empathy and attunement in the parent-child relationship that leaves the child feeling misunderstood, unsupported and potentially unloved. What develops is a “developmental arrest”, so that the adult in later life (like a child) is driven to seek pleasure and avoid the pain of living. The demands of reality appear too challenging and overwhelming.  This theme of seeking solace in pleasurable experiences despite adverse consequences in reality is central is a primary symptom of addiction..

A developmental arrest keeps a sector of the personality immature. The result can be deficits that leave the potential addict without the capacity to regulate inner feelings of distress, to delay gratification, to exercise impulse control, to recognize and articulate feelings, or to create meaningful attachments to others.

When active addiction sets in, the problems the individual experiences in dealing with the ups and downs of living seem to be magically solved. The addiction is the glue that holds together the different parts of a fragile self. It reinforces a false sense of omnipotence, grandiosity and perfection and blots out aspects of reality that are not in concert with that perception. It anesthetizes the individual from unwanted feelings and painful aspects associated with attempts at expressing the true self. It defends against the need for intimacy or closeness, as the addict relies only on his addiction for a sense of pseudo-intimacy and closeness. For an addict, to be without the addiction would feel like personal annihilation.

The inner world of the addict is characterized by intense feelings that are often experienced as unbearable, overwhelming and permanent. These feelings form the context within which the addict lives. The actions and choices of an active addict are organized around an attempt to manage intense feelings. No obstacle is too formidable as the addict, in an attempt to feel “normal”, succumbs to the irresistible impulse to indulge. Unfortunately, the strength of the urge to act out on the addiction obliterates the ability to reflect upon the potentially devastating consequences of his actions.

Addiction is always experienced as a profound sense of alienation from self and others, since the ability to establish meaningful inter-personal relationships is often crippled by toxic experiences with early-life caretakers. I quote a former client:

” I was alone and it was loneliness and it was intense. I think the only love in life has been the drug…I just felt so alone…I was sad, so lonely, so isolated. I knew I wasn’t being me… that I could be different, but I couldn’t with people. As far as having some friends, really being close to somebody, there wasn’t anybody…I just wasn’t able to keep connections.”

Even in the face of devastating consequences to his external and internal worlds, the addict holds on tenaciously to his only source of identity, stability, comfort and support – the drug.

It is only when the pain of active addiction outweighs its diminishing benefits that the addict holds out the white flag and asks for help so that he can get free from his addiction.

The Problem of Sex Addiction

Addiction to sexual behavior is a complex disorder that incorporates many aspects of your personality, bio-chemistry, socio-cultural environment, family-of-origin issues, thinking/feeling processes, self-esteem, and quality of relations with others.  I see sex addiction as a prism; depending on the angle you hold it up to, it can look completely different.

The complexity of addiction to sex is shown by the fact that psychologists still don’t know if it’s a symptom of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, an impulse-control disorder, or an addictive disorder. The fact that it was only recently recognized as a distinct disorder means that not much substantive research has been done to understand this multi-dimensional condition.

We do know that sexual addiction represents an expression of the same processes of addiction that underlie all compulsive behaviors: an enduring, inordinately strong tendency to engage in some form of pleasure-producing behavior to regulate unwanted emotional states that are painful and potentially overwhelming.  Also common to all addictions, underlying the symptom of the sexual behavior are problems with self-care and self-regulation.  Achieving a sense of “self-governance” is part of addiction recovery treatment.

Being perpetually ensnared in the jaws of the addiction cycle (see SAA website for a discussion of the addiction cycle) with its loss of control, shame and distress, and negative impacts on work/relationships/finances/self-esteem, is demoralizing from the sexual addict’s perspective.  Yet the perceived benefits seem to outweigh the high cost of the behavior, as you no doubt experience the lure of the sexual rush to be irresistible, regardless of the knowing consequences.

Recovery from sexual addiction must address both the destructive addictive sexual behaviors as well as the underlying addictive process. The challenge of the therapist who offers a sex addiction treatment program is that of presenting a variety of treatment approaches to accommodate and treat the addict on multiple levels. The therapist needs to have the concrete skills of an addiction counselor as well as the psychological sophistication to deal with the underlying issues.

Treatment for sex addiction, then, is most likely to be effective when it emerges from an integrated, comprehensive approach that brings together different treatment methods, is individually tailored to your personality and evolves as you progress.

This series of articles include a comprehensive overview of sex addiction so you can understand the nature of the beast; one sex addict’s journey from addiction to recovery, a series of articles about the different methods of addressing recovery from sex addiction, and a final article about the shifts required to have “optimal” sexual experience, or the achievement of your sexual potential.

My overall goal is to present a number of ways to help free you from the shackles of sex addiction.  My hope is that each article will provide more understanding and more hope that getting out of the snake-pit of sexual compulsion is doable.  Not only is it doable, there are a variety of ways to do it.

If addiction to sexual behaviors is the tip of the iceberg, then the personality deficits, recurring self-defeating patterns, trauma from early life relationships with caretakers, unconscious conflicts and skewed perceptions about self and others represent the bottom of the iceberg. I contend that permanent freedom from enslaving, out-of-control, humiliating sexuality cannot be achieved unless the issues on the bottom of the iceberg are resolved

This series will look at therapy for sex addiction from a variety of angles. Each article discusses part of the overall process of total sex addiction recovery. The articles include:

• Overview of Sex Addiction:  Understand the enemy so you can devise strategies for victory.
• Who is a Sex Addict? A case study that describes the life of one sex addict.  The causes of addiction are included.  Also included are the benefits he was able to achieve in treatment.
• Relapse prevention.  This is the critical first step in recovery from addiction.  You will learn to free yourself from repetitive, compulsive, shameful sexual behaviors.
• Psychopharmocology  (as the “waterwings” of treatment)  to perhaps help with impulse control, anxiety and depression that may contribute to the experience of strong sexual urges.
• 12-step Therapy  cultivates a support system to help addicts and is an opportunity to work the 12-steps as an avenue to psychological and spiritual maturity.
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy.  The Stoic Philosophers’ theories are the foundation of CBT.  The basic idea is that we don’t suffer from the external event; we suffer from the interpretation (thoughts) about the event.  We examine a series of belief systems common to most sex addicts to see how they are based in the past and cause suffering in the present. Change a thought, change a destiny.
• Group therapy. This is a vital part of treatment for addiction.  Addicts learn intimacy and work through issues of trust. A cohesive group can supply understanding, acceptance and empathy – things that may have been missing in your past.
• Psychodynamic therapy. This is the nuts and bolts of treatment for addiction.  A one-on-one relationship that heals, rather than harms, can rectify the hurt from the past by providing a different model for relating.  The therapist considers your whole personality.  Unconscious conflicts, hurts, wounds, shame, feelings of inadequacy, amongst other issues that underlies sexual acting out become more conscious to the person who then is able to exercise self-control through understanding and insight.
• Couples counseling   Sex addiction is usually devastating to your partner.  If the couplehood is to remain intact, couples counseling is essential.
• Hypnosis in the treatment of sex addiction.  Don’t be afraid of trance; you’ve been in one all your life.
• Mindfulness Meditation to Increase Awareness of Inner Processes.  It’s impossible to change without awareness of your inner process and the ability to be aware of another person.
• Brainlock: A behavioral approach to treating various compulsive behaviors.
• Conclusion: “From Sexual Addiction to Sexual Fulfillment”.  Here’s how to get the total sexual experience that the addiction was searching for but missed the mark.

As a therapist who’s worked in the field of addictions for over 20 years, it’s been my experience that an entire repertoire of treatment skills, strategies and techniques (arrows in the quill) are necessary to match each client’s own set of fingerprints, his uniqueness as a human being.  Therefore, the more treatment can be directed specifically to a particular addict and his family, the more effective it will be.

m of pleasure-producing behavior to regulate unwanted emotional states that are painful and potentially overwhelming. Also common to all addictions, underlying the symptom of the sexual behavior are problems with self-care and self-regulation. Achieving a sense of “self-governance” is part of addiction recovery treatment.

Being perpetually ensnared in the jaws of the addiction cycle (see SAA website for a discussion of the addiction cycle) with its loss-of-control, shame and distress, and negative impacts on work/relationships/finances/self-esteem, is demoralizing from the sexual addict’s perspective. Yet the perceived benefits seem to outweigh the high cost of the behavior, as you no doubt experience the lure of the sexual rush to be irresistible, regardless of the knowing consequences.

Recovery from sexual addiction must address both the destructive addictive sexual behaviors as well as the underlying addictive process. The challenge of the therapist who offers a sex addiction treatment program is that of presenting a variety of treatment approaches to accommodate and treat the addict on multiple levels. The therapist needs to have the concrete skills of an addiction counselor as well as the psychological sophistication to deal with the underlying issues. Treatment for sex addiction, then, is most likely to be effective when it emerges from an integrated, comprehensive approach that brings together different treatment methods, is individually tailored to your personality and evolves as you progress.

If addiction to sexual behaviors is the tip of the iceberg, then the personality deficits, recurring self-defeating patterns, trauma from early life relationships with caretakers, unconscious conflicts and skewed perceptions about self and others represent the bottom of the iceberg. I contend that permanent freedom from enslaving, out-of-control, humiliating sexuality cannot be achieved unless the issues on the bottom of the iceberg are resolved

“If you’re interested in treatment, contact me at dorothyhayden1231@gmail.com for a free 30-minute consultation.”

The post Sex Addiction Treatment: An Overview appeared first on New York Therapy for Porn and Sex Addicts.

The price of this intense preoccupation with sex is often marital strife or loss of a partner, decreased productivity on the job, and emotional abandonment of his children.  Jobs, family, friends and personal wellness are sacrificed as the addict ritualistically endeavors to recapture the erotic haze again and again.

The post Who are Sex Addicts? What Are They Looking for in Sex? appeared first on New York Therapy for Porn and Sex Addicts.

This from www.porn-no-more.com

(After 45 posts, it occurs to me that I haven’t said A THING about recovery. I promise we’ll look at that IN DEPTH and for a long time — promise)

I’ve been sitting in a room talking to addicts for 25 years. All kinds of addicts. I’ve participated in the enormous struggles of alcoholics to get sober, cocaine, heroine, methamphetamine, food, love, nicotine, sex…all kinds of addictions.

My conclusion, culled from clinical experience, is that internet porn is THE primary addiction and is, by far, the hardest to kick.

My intention in comparing my uncle’s cocaine addiction that robbed him dry was to show you that the biochemical dysfunctions of a cocaine addict are exactly the same as those of a long-term porn addict.

Now I think I was wrong. An important distinction was missed. Drugs like heroin and cocaine enter the system through intravenous needles or are snorted up the nose. However, the brain responds from information received from the EYE quicker than from any other source. Visual information is processed in the limbic system (part that seeks pleasure, avoids pain) in microseconds. Visual information is processed faster than from any of our other senses. Even the ingestion of heroin or cocaine is much slower in comparison. The brain responds to visual sexual images in microseconds which begins changes in brain chemistry that establish addiction instantly.

We used to call internet porn the “crack cocaine” of the internet. Now I think it’s more destructive than any external drug. After all, you carry you’re own supply!

Pornography addiction is difficult to treat because of this instantaneous, immediate entre into the addictive cycle. But it’s also difficult to treat because it hits at the very core of our humanity. Interest in sexuality is a primary driving force in human beings. It is pleasurable by design and necessary in order for the human race to continue to exist. It is innate, but it is also a product of dysfunctional conditioning by family, culture, school and religious institutions. For sex addicts, whatever the causes, sex has become entwined with their identity.

Sexual acting out shores up a fragile ego. It instantly provides what all human seek and need – a sense of safety, security that perhaps was missing in childhood. Time spent in the “Erotic Haze” extinguishes the relentless, unconscious feelings of being ill-equipped to negotiate a world that seems hostile and unpredictable (perhaps like their family-of-origin).

Seems compelling, no?

There are other reasons porn is hard to treat. The commercial availability of the World Wide Internet in the 80′s has, and will continue, to radically alter the way people experience their sexuality. The classic “3-A Engine” of affordability, accessibility and anonymity instantly made internet porn and cybersex irresistible to a large portion of the population. In an interview with “20/20″ in 1999, I predicted that cybersex would someday become an epidemic. Well, years later, my prediction materialized. Sometimes it’s hard to be right.

I lived through the “sexual revolution” of the 70′s. People were more free than ever to express their sexuality in the service of “all you need is love” — a utopia where love, peace and hot sex would the milieu in which we lived and all would be well.en. Something went horribly wrong with the plan. Love, peace, connection, community and the beauty of sexual expression have been replaced by the horror of sexual compulsion. Far from people coming together to share love and sex, our culture is fastly becoming one where sex is completely cut off from human connection. Internet sex is a solitary scene.

Far from sexuality being the open, beautiful free expression of ourselves that the 70′s generation envisioned, sex has become isolated, shameful, desperate, compulsive — robbing people of all that was once dear.

The dopamine depletion that follows a porn binge leave people depressed, anxious and lethargic. Connections to friends and family, passionate pursuits, the satisfaction of reaching a major goal, the simple pleasures of day-to-day living, any sense of spiritual connection, hobbies and recreations were long ago dismissed as sex became the primary mind “motif” through which they saw reality. Sex/porn addiction over the long-term becomes the addict’s only need.

I have to tell you. It’s such a sorry scene. Like all addictions, which are progressive, porn can eventually suck you dry of everything good, loving, vital and spontaneous in you. It’s literally living in hell. A spiritual bankruptcy.

Think about it objectively. If your only need is (compulsive) sex, you’re totally dependent and controlled by the very thing that’s killing you.

Horrible. Horrible.

Hell.

If you’re interested in treatment, I offer my blogger community a free 30-minte phone consult. contact: dorothyhayden1231@gmail.com. See more at www.sextreatment.com.

The post Porn Addiction: Not an Easy Nut to Crack appeared first on New York Therapy for Porn and Sex Addicts.

Question: Can you explain the phenomenon of the growth of cybersex in the last ten years?

Answer:
The cybersex phenomenon is the sexual revolution of the 60′s re-emerged to the 1000th degree because now the hottest sex in town can be found on a laptop computer. In only the last five years, the birth of a new electronic sexual revolution has been silently taking place and we are witnessing the birth of a new disorder that affects people who have no history of sexual compulsion.

Cybersex offers new dimensions in sexual satisfaction as we now have instantaneous access to almost any type of sexual content imaginable. It’s become the biggest porn shop in the world.

Recent studies suggest that there are nationally over 300,000 people addicted to cybersex. Millions of people spend significant amounts of time each day lost in the world of pornography, fantasy role-play chat rooms where online partners hook up to discuss sexual fantasies and fetishes almost instantaneously, live sex in front of webcams, steaming adult videos, newsgroups, and unfortunately, child pornography.

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Unlike any medium before it, we now have a tool that unleashes sexuality in a way that has been traditionally kept abated through censorship. The computer offers us an unlimited smorgasbord of sexual feasts. Anything else goes. No topics are off limits-beastiality, radical S&M, transvestitism, live sex shows and kiddie porn, to name a few, proliferate the net.

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The power of the Net is accounted for by a number of parameters. The first is that it provides anonymity: Your coworkers and friends won’t see you at the strip club or purchasing pornography at the local newsstand. On the Net, people are known only through screen names or made-up handles. This is a world of fake identities and personas where one can engage in bold sexual fantasies without anyone knowing.

The second is accessibility. Websites are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s always under your nose. No trips to the bookstores or newsstands that close at a particular time. Distance to get your “porn hit” is no longer a problem.

Third is diversity. With hundreds of new adult sites added each day to the millions that already exist, your deepest, most bold, most “perverse” desires are waiting to be sated on the internet. These kinds of satisfactions are rarely available in real life. A person can get a particular, customized sexual rush from his deepest, diverse fantasies without risk.

Affordability is another factor that fuels use. For anyone on a budget, cybersex provides a low-cost means to a sexual high. Prostitutes, phone sex, and pornography are expensive.

Finally, the ultimate factor that feeds cybersex addiction: Fantasy. It’s a perfect opportunity for people to develop sexual fantasies and objectify others without fear of rejection. You can choose the ideal partner in an ideal situation. The user is free to become part of the fantasy without responsibility, consequence or rejection. This is a faceless and nameless community fueled by fantasy. The user is free to imagine or project the qualities of the “perfect” person on the other side of the computer.

These are people who feel dissatisfied with life and people as they are, and are always in search of perfection. If one chat buddy isn’t right, click the mouse and you have access to a new holder of your fantasy projections. You can also use the computer to conjure up a fantasized image of who you are. One’s imperfections magically disappear without having to do the hard work of change.
href=”www.sextreatment.com”>sexaddicttherapy.blogspot.com

Question: What is the difference between printed pornography and cyberporn?
Answer:
Regular pornography leaves you vulnerable to being found out, and is not anonymous in that you have to go to public places to buy it. The fantasy potential is limited to what the publisher presents to you. In addition, regular porn is not interactive whereas cybersex gives the illusion that you are not alone and are sharing your sexual fantasies with others.

Question: What is the difference between regular sex addiction and cybersex addiction?
Answer:
Regular sex addiction has a slightly different dynamic that cybersex. Sex addicts want human contact without connection. They want to be in bed with a prostitute who will satisfy their sexual and sometimes emotional needs. People addicted to phone sex usually ask for the same woman, so they have the illusion that there’s a person out there who knows their needs and doesn’t judge them.

Cybersex, on the other hand, offers an intense sexual high with no real human interaction. It also offers more diversity – anything is possible – any fantasy, fetish, pseudo-interaction with a fantasy woman/man/child is within reach with the push of a button.

Question: What are the warning signs? How does a person know when he’s reaching the threshold of addiction? How much is too much?
Answer:

I guess the question is what defines a cybersex “addict” vs. a recreational user or someone who uses the net to explore his/her own sexuality as a way of exploration and experimentation. I had a patient who said it very simply: “I could not bring myself to stop despite knowing all the horrid consequences of my actions.”

A classic definition of addiction is: inability to discontinue use despite adverse consequences.” The signposts to addiction are distinctive: a person becomes pre-occupied with getting on the net and walks around in a trance-like “erotic haze”. If denied access for too long, he becomes irritable and panicky. He goes on the net to stay for an hour and five pass by.

I had a patient who took a day off from work and spent 14 hours on the net. As addicts spend an increasing amount of time on the computer, he begins to lose interest in other people…children, spouse, good friends. He lies about his behavior, saying she’s staying in the den until 3:00am paying bills. Staying up until all hours, the addict rolls into bed after his spouse is asleep and gets up a few hours later to go to work.

Now he’s sleep deprived which contributes to depression and lost productivity on the job. Often, despite the fact that he knows the company techs are monitoring his computer, he continues surfing while at work, often getting fired. Careers are ruined.

He begins to use the Net to self-medicate: to escape feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, failure and social alienation. Cybersex activities begin to surpass all other interests. His judgment may be so clouded that he begins to traffic in illegal (child) porn which results in legal problems.

Now spouse and children are emotionally neglected. When his entire sex life begins to revolve around a computer where he can get what he wants when he wants it without having to be reciprocal, sex becomes a narcissistic endeavor rather than a shared, intimate activity with a loved one. He begins to lose interest in real sex with a real person because it doesn’t match the thrills he gets on the Net. This usually has devastating emotional impact on the spouse. Now, in addition to ruined careers, there are ruined marriages.
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The bottom of the well of cybersex addiction is helplessness, hopelessness, financial ruin, isolation from the human community and self-hatred.

Question: How, exactly, is it that addicts are able to stay on the computer for up to 14 hours a day?
Answer:
The compulsion to stay on the net for hours at a time is based somewhat on a biological factor, as well, of course on psychological factors. Biologically, a sexual idea, urge or fantasy releases serotonin and dopamine into the brain resulting in a euphoric high, or “the erotic haze”.

The state is an extremely pleasurable one – tantamount to an alcoholic taking his third drink. That’s why I always suggest that new patients consult a doctor about possible medication for depression and/or adult attention deficit disorder. These are the conditions that addicts are usually seeking to self-medicate with the “erotic haze.” In my experience, the right medication can help to mediate a ceaseless preoccupation with sex and can also help the person to begin to control his impulses.

Question: Why depression and ADD?
Answer:
Being in the “erotic haze” is the best anti-depressant around. As I mentioned before, sexual fantasies release chemicals into the system that make the person feel enlivened, awake, aware, cohesive, motivated and alive. The addict is the person who uses sex to achieve self-cohesion and self-identity. The non-addictive person experiences some of these feelings but during and after sex, but doesn’t use sexuality to confirm or validate the self.

Adult ADD and cybersex addiction is an interesting phenomenon. About a third of my clients have been diagnosed with adult ADD. This is almost a separate story – the connection between ADD and sex addiction. Suffice it to say, the adult ADD client suffers from restlessness, hyperactivity, and distractiveness and often uses hypersexuality to self-medicate these symptoms.

Question: That explains the biological factors. What about the psychological reasons for cybersex addiction?
Answer:
Psychologically, the trance-like “erotic haze” is so enticing and so need fulfilling, it becomes a drug-like state. This euphoric state produces a state of mind where you can maintain the illusion that “you can have it all.” Perfection exists. The people who populate the cyberworld are perfect people who have none of the flaws of the people in real life. Depression, anxiety, self-doubt, boredom, loneliness, marital problems, perceived sexual/social inadequacies, stress from the office, all disappear like magic.

You don’t have to do the work of developing self-esteem or enhancing relationships, compromising, dealing with frustration or disappointment. All personal growth stops as sexual pleasure provides the only meaning in life. Other values and morals fall to the wayside, giving sway to the euphoria of living in the “erotic haze.”

Not being subject to the limitations of reality, there’s no necessity to compromise. One lives in a world of exquisite sexual fulfillment of life-long fantasies with none of the vulnerability of rejection and failure. It’s a regression to the infantile self where all needs are magically met with no self-responsibility.

Question: What is “regression to an infantile state”?
Answer:
I have found that people who use sex compulsively do so because of early-life real or perceived traumas. Compulsive sexuality, be it regular sex addiction, cybersex addiction, fetishes, cross-dressing, or what-have-you, is the result of an unconscious impulse to “undo” the early trauma. But this is the stuff of the actual treatment.

Question: Is there a sense of shame associated with having a secret life?
Answer:
Of course, there’s shame about lying to the people you love about such an important part of your life. There’s a sense of fraudulence.

But shame goes deeper than that. People who keep secrets have a “secret life”. We know this breading the newspaper about accomplished, intelligent leaders who are discovered to have two different sides of their personalities. A “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” syndrome develops where the person compartmentalizes some behaviors from others and is actually lying to himself. The result is a split in the personality and the loss of integrity about living as the person you really are. The sense of being a whole person is eroded.

Furthermore, people know that cybersex is a self-devaluing, rather than a self-enhancing behavior. Gradually this lowers one’s sense of self worth and diminishes the capacity for intimacy, adding to social isolation and shame.

The culture has yet to set guidelines about what’s appropriate cybersex conduct. In the meantime, people have to listen to their own inner voices about moral choices. Is an internet affair really an affair? Of course people, at least unconsciously, acknowledge that they’re breaking their own moral codes.

I hear the shame in my patients every day. “I’m just a piece of turd”. “What if the soccer moms knew what a pervert I am?” “I’m disgusting to myself.” Perhaps the price paid in self-esteem is the most damaging part of cybersex addiction.

Question: What about the effects on the family?
Answer:
There are powerful and adverse consequences to those whose partner has become compulsively involved in cybersex. As a person gets more caught in the web of cybersex, one of the primary effects on the rest of the family is the loss of time with that person. He spends less time with family, more time in the “den”, paying bills, slithering into bed in the wee hours to get only a few hours of sleep. He can appear anxious, frustrated and angry when he can’t get on the web. He stops being interested in having sex with her. He feels distant when making love. He may blame his wife for not being good in bed or ask his partner to participate in sexual activities that she finds repulsive.

The spouse can feel that their partners are drifting away but they don’t know why. She feels like she’s living with a stranger. She often doesn’t know how to behave. Feelings of hurt, betrayal, rejection, abandonment, devastation, loneliness, shame, isolation, humiliation, jealousy, anger, uncertainty, confusion and loss of self-esteem are typical.

Often, spouses of addicts compare themselves unfavorably with the online women and they feel hopeless about being able to compete. She begins to live on an emotional rollercoaster. She may discover hidden emails, or get a credit card for a porno website. Evenings are spent alone. She may start to respond “co dependently” – trying to be “good enough”, trying to seduce him away from the computer, becoming an obsessed detective on the computer. She starts with rationalization to save her sanity: “At least he’s not drinking”; “Well, it’s a computer, not a real person”; “Men will be men.” She blames herself; she starts withdrawing from friends and family. She loses herself in her partner’s addiction and may even eventually accept her partner’s sexual norms as her own.-

Websites such as “Cyberwidows”, S-Anon, or COSA give support to spouses of cyber addicts.

The impact on children is also devastating. A premature exposure to pornography and especially to deviant sex can influence a child’s healthy love and sexual development. A home in which the possibility for access and exposure to sexual sites creates a sexualized energy that permeates the house and will effect the child’s psycho/sexual development.

Also, the child may get involved in parental conflicts, may be emotionally and sometimes physically neglected and the child may have to endure the intense feelings associated with feelings about parental divorce. Children of sex addicts often become addicts themselves.

Question: What types of sites do men prefer vs. what women prefer? Also, what is the difference between the way men and women use internet sexual activity?
In an article inSexual Addiction and Compulsivity, a survey revealed that 77% of men liked porn, 26% engaged in real-time sexual activities and 46% spent time in chat rooms.

For women, only 10% looked at pornography, but an astonishing 80% of the women reported using the chat rooms, and 80% said that chat-room activities led to actual sexual encounters.So what does this tell us? While most of the cybersex addicts I treat are men who use the net to fulfill fantasies in their heads, there exists a wellspring of women who abuse the internet. The difference between men and women is that women use the net to set up actual meetings with men, usually with the unconscious hope of romantic involvement. Men stay anonymous.

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