This post is a reprint from Sonoran Counseling Center Dr Robert Wise LCSW CSAT-S. Research is demonstrating how this horrible addiction is about "Brain-Science" and body chemistry. When coupled with scriptures, we suddenly understand the difficulty of healing and recovery. Dr. Patrick Carnes suggests that recovery may be 14 years if ever. If secular science is declaring this, then how much more should the church be equipped in spiritual power contained in the scriptures!
What “Causes” Sex Addiction?
Have you ever thought you would feel less afraid and
have more control if only you could understand “how” and “why” sex addiction
happened to you?
Maybe sex addiction would make sense if you could
understand the disease progression or point to traumatic events or stressful
times that caused it to get so out of control.
Something logical would have to help. Right?
Could good enough answers to “how” and “why” help you
cope with the shame of your sexual behavior or could it help make sex addiction
rational enough to know whether you should stay in or get out of the
relationship?
You don’t need to know “how” or “why” when your ship is
sinking.Needing to know these answers is what sent the lead engineer of
the Titanic down into the ship as it slowly sank. He needed to know
“how” this happened and “why” the ship was sinking. He might have found out
too, but not before it was too late.
He could have been in the life raft, but he wasn’t.
My point is, if your ship is sinking, then you may want
to know “how” or “why”, but you don’t need to know. Get in the life raft
and save “how” or “why” for another day.
This means getting stopped and staying stopped for the
sex addict and finding a safe support for spouses and partners – before doing
anything else.
Yes, knowing more about the causes of sex addiction is a
part of recovery, but it’s not what gets you sexually sober. <br/ >
Knowing “how” and “why” is not your life raft.
Get stopped first, and then consider the “causes” of sex
addiction
The “Causes” of Sex Addiction
Patrick Carnes, PhD, expert in the treatment of sex
addiction and author of the groundbreaking work, Out of the Shadows:
Understanding Sexual Addiction, did a survey profiling 650 self-identified
sex addicts (The Making of a Sex Addict, Carnes, 2003).
Here’s what he found:
Legacy of Addiction
▪
87% of sex addicts had other family members who were
addicts.
Sex Addicts had Rigid, Disengaged, or Both Rigid and
Disengaged Parents
▪
77% of sex addicts experienced their families as rigid,
dogmatic, and inflexible.
▪
87% of sex addicts experienced their families as
disengaged, detached, and uninvolved.
▪
68% of sex addicts experienced their families as both
rigid and disengaged.
Sex Addicts Experienced Childhood Abuse
▪
72% of sex addicts reported Physical abuse
▪
81% of sex addicts reported Sexual abuse
▪
97% of sex addicts reported Emotional abuse
(Include in this category, neglect, and abandonment – perhaps the
most common form of emotional abuse).
Sex Addicts Respond to Trauma and High Stress in
Dysfunctional Patterns
As adults, sex addicts repeat old patterns of responding
to stress that began as logical coping skills.
What were once necessary “skills” of emotional
survival become impulsive and destructive patterns of thinking and behaving. We
call these patterns, “Trauma Responses.”
Trauma Responses
▪
Post Traumatic Stress Reactions – 64% of sex
addicts reported intrusive physiological and psychological “alarm”
responses when under stress.
▪
Traumatic Arousal – 64% of sex
addicts reported patterns of seeking or finding pleasure in the presence
of extreme danger, violence, risk, or shame.
▪
Traumatic Blocking – 69% of sex
addicts reported efforts to numb, block out, or overwhelm residual
feelings connected to trauma or high stress.
▪
Traumatic Avoidance – 76% of sex
addicts reported escaping traumatic realities by escaping, “zoning out”
or dissociating from stressful experiences.
▪
Traumatic Shame – 72% of sex
addicts reported a profound sense of unworthiness and self-hatred as an
adult response to threats and high stress.
▪
Traumatic Repetition – 69% of sex
addicts responded to adult stress by repeating behavior patterns or seeking
situations or people that re-create some past trauma experience.
▪
Traumatic Bonding – 69% of sex
addicts responded to high stress by seeking and staying in dysfunctional
relationships that occur in the presence of danger, shame, or exploitation.
Problem: Chronic Stress from Trauma,
Abuse, Neglect, and Abandonment
Solution: Sex
Sex addiction is a dependency that
begins with the discovery that sex feels good and can bring relief and
escape. With sex, there’s always more, and it’s freely available with as little
as an arousing thought.
No wonder the brain takes notice.
Sex is also the first mood-altering experience that most
us ever have. It’s very powerful, especially for a child in need of emotional
relief, and for many adolescents, sex becomes a necessary and reliable solution
for the problem of chronic stress.
The Brain Learns and Changes
Our brains take note of what works to solve problems and
builds strong connections linking problems with solutions. We call these
connections, “neural pathways”, and they save us from needing to
solve the same problems again and again.
We remember what worked the last time and stick with it
the next time. Every time it works, the neural pathway is reinforced.
It’s like an old dirt road. Deep grooves wear deeper and
deeper the more it’s driven. The road would fade if it was abandoned, but it’s
not. Instead, the rutted road to the sex solution gets travelled again and
again.
This process is just one of a whole system of changes in
the brain as a result of a long-term addictive relationship to sex. Read more
about the brain and sex
addiction here.
Summary
The causes of sex addiction are many, and the potential
interactions of these causes are greater still.
So much of our understanding of sex addiction really
is brain science, but as we learn more about these causes, interventions
get more effective and more likely.
Remember, children don’t ask for
the trauma, abuse, or neglect they experience and they’re not responsible for
what happens to them in those years. As Adults, We Are Responsible for Our
Behavior.
I urge you now to take that responsibility and do the
hard work of repairing the harm you’ve caused yourself and others in your
addiction. Get sexually sober.
Recovery is possible, but you have to start.
Learn more about our process of
recovery from sex addiction.
