Sex addiction - What The Hell Is Wrong With You?

Sex addiction - What The Hell Is Wrong With You?

Why are you addicted to sex and / or pornography? Perhaps you are worried that there is something wrong with you, that perhaps you are wired wrongly.

Well the answer is that you are not genetically wired for it, and you are not mad or weird and it's not the product of a massive sex drive. I can say this with confidence because I know from working with many sex addiction and porn addiction clients that beneath the sexually-focused behaviours there is at least one and often several other significant things going on.

What is actually he matter with you is NOT that you are compulsive about sex and porn but that you have a need for a coping strategy.  The key to full-term recovery is finding out what that need is about.  In the same way that other complusives turn to gambling, over-eating or spending, you are using sexual activities and pornography to self-medicate some issues which reside in your past or are struggling with something in the present, such as work stress or relationship difficulties.

Here are some examples of how this works.  A common underlying difficullty that my mostly male clients bring is an inability to solve ongoing problems largely because they can't bring themselves to talk about them with the person(s) involved or speak to anyone else as a sounding board.  Such a barrier is often arising from a family background where talking wasn't the done thing and pushing thngs under the carpet was.  There can be many reasons for this but often its because people don't have the words and sentences due to lack of practice and/or family members don't want to hurt each other or cause conflict which could end in imagined negative consequences.  

The inability to talk through problems, which is exascerbated when they relate to conventionally taboo subjects such as sex, can lead to pent-up frustration and anxiousness which then needs an outlet, hence compulsive behaviours.

A second example of a more present-day nature is not having mechanisms to deal with daily pressures of family life and work. Stess builds and ultimately needs a vent as in the above example.  Sex and porn seem like a helpful escape or self-soother initially but eventually become compulsive as the brain becomes de-sensitised to the positive benefits and pushes for more to achieve the same effect (this explains the high sex-drive idea ie the brain has elevated the role of sex in a compulsive's life to meet the desired level of self-medicinal potency).  This explains why sex and porn compulsives take risks which they would never do when in a rational state of mind.

So this is what is the matter with you!  You are struggling with something in a dysfunctional way.  This is a normal and natural form of self-protection.  It gets outside the 'norm' when serious negative consequences are experienced and yet the compulsion still goes on.

What would therefore be weird and mad is NOT to take action before you or someone close to you gets harmed or pushed away for good.