Sexual addiction is defined as a lack of control over sexual thoughts, urges, and impulses. While sexual impulses are natural, sex addiction causes a significant negative impact on one’s life.
Sexual addiction is missing from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), but research has shown that it develops much in the same way a chemical addiction does.
When a person is consumed with sexual addiction, the need to be sexuallly stimulated is compulsive. It takes over everything and interferes with their ability to lead a normal daily life.
Symptoms of Sexual Addiction
- You have intense and recurrent sexual fantasies and urges that you feel are beyond your control.
- You’ve tried to control your sexual fantasies or urges and are unsuccessful
- Your compulsive sexual behavior is an escape from your other problems, like depression, anxiety, or stress.
- You have trouble establishing and maintaining healthy relationships.
- You feel compelled to perform certain sexual behaviors and have severe remorse or guilt afterwards.
Sexual Addiction Treatment
Individual/Couples Counseling – Through an emphasis on the addict’s neural pathway restructuring therapy, we explore the shame base of their addiction, childhood attachment issues, and overcoming the entitlement, lack of empathy, and selfishness that has defined their lives for years. Our goal is to instill hope, in the partner of the addict, and help alleviate the trauma, understand the nature of the addiction, and help them understand that this was not their fault.
For couples, a time comes in the healing process of recovery for the couple to examine their relationship and heal the wounds of relational trauma. This is a vital step in the restoration process.
Group Counseling – Group therapy is our primary means of sexual addiction therapy. It is used to guide clients through the process of gaining insight about themselves and the origins of their sexually compulsive behavior.
The moment when a partner becomes aware of the addict’s behavior is nothing short of traumatic. Yet because of the shameful nature of sex addiction, finding support often does not seem a realistic possibility for the partner. Many partners suffer the trauma of betrayal that is not tied specifically to sexual infidelity. Alcoholism, drug abuse, verbal and emotional abuse can have s similar impact.
Once a parent catches a child viewing porn multiple times, they become very concerned that something may be wrong. With the average age of first exposure now 7 -10 years old, many times, by the time they become teens, something is very wrong.
Sexual Addiction Weekend Intensive – The only one of its kind in Central Texas, this one-weekend, 15-hour intensive offers a more rigorous, concentrated start to the recovery process. Understanding the root causes of sexual addiction, emotional regulation, shame reduction, relapse prevention, and the influence of past trauma are all explored during this in-depth therapy experience. We have seen this weekend intensive “jump-start” the healing process, and clients have stated that, “It gave me a 6-month head start in my recovery.”
Counseling For High Profile Clients – Some people who are struggling with the consequences of compulsive sexual behavior have a high profile with the media or within their community. Often times, this makes the decision to seek help even more difficult. We seek to minimize the risk of exposure by providing more highly confidential intensive experience.
We will meet with the client off campus and we can even keep the client’s actual name out of our system and their face out of our waiting room. The intensive is provided at a local luxury boutique hotel with extensive experience in dealing with high profile clients. Handling treatment in this way assures the client that confidentiality can be more easily maintained.