What’s in it for me? Understand and overcome sex addiction
Sex addiction isn’t pretty. Take it from someone whose obsession cost him two marriages and almost derailed his life.
Porn isn’t only a little fun you enjoy from time to time. It can become an addiction that severely limits your freedom, income and relationships. Addicts also have to deal with guilt every time they act out.
Thankfully, there’s a way back. The steps toward recovery are outlined in this Blink to Breaking the Cycle.
A word of caution: The nature of the subject requires that some sexually explicit situations are described as they occur in real life. This might offend or trigger some listeners and readers.
Identifying sex addiction
Super Bowl halftime couldn’t come fast enough for Bob. He was already on his way to his home office before the teams left the field, informing his wife he had an urgent business call to make.
Sitting comfortably in his office chair, he navigated to his favorite porn site, found a video and pulled down his trousers. The office door swung open just as Bob was climaxing to the image of a woman being dominated by three men. Bob’s wife had caught him twice before, but this time it was his ten-year-old daughter.
Bob’s marriage didn’t recover. After the split he could only see his daughter under the supervision of a child protection officer. To add to his pain, his daughter had to endure over four years of therapy.
Not everyone will suffer the same consequences as Bob, but there’s an underlying principle that links all sexually compulsive behavior. When sexual impulses start to dominate your thoughts and interfere with other aspects of your life and relationships, you’re going down the path of addiction.
Sexual desire is a valuable part of a wholesome life that includes intimacy with a partner. Sex just for the sake of it can be okay, but sex addicts have a tendency to objectify everyone from friends and colleagues to waiters and random strangers.
The sex addict is only interested in the orgasm. They’ll jack off to porn videos and magazines or get stimulated in chat rooms, strip clubs and glory holes rather than invest in real intimacy with a real person.
Sex should be an enjoyable and liberating experience, but even addicts will admit that their behavior is anything but liberating. There’s always a feeling of shame and low self-esteem after the act.
You tell yourself it’ll stop, but it happens again and again and again. Getting out of that loop isn’t easy, but as many former addicts can testify, it’s certainly possible. Now you know what it is you’re dealing with, you can start your journey toward recovery.
Confronting sex addiction in your personal amphitheater
How do you go from ‘Porn Guy’ to a person who isn’t constantly distracted by harmful fantasies?
Your personal amphitheater is a great place to start. This technique has helped many addicts confront and control sex addiction.
Imagine yourself standing at the center of a dark indoor amphitheater with a bright spotlight shining on you and following your every move. There’s an audience that you can’t see but are very much aware of. The people in your audience represent subpersonalities that tell you how to react to any particular situation, including sexual triggers.
Healing starts when you turn on the lights in your mind or your personal amphitheater. Try to identify the unconscious habits that drive you toward sexual compulsion.
Many of these habits are rooted in your childhood and upbringing. There’s usually a defining event or original wound that can affect the rest of your life if not halted. Just as some people turn to eating for comfort, others turn to sex to fill the void left by abuse or parental neglect.
Some kids experience sexually triggering situations. Others get abused by babysitters. There are also situations where a mother or father depends on their child for emotional support, companionship or intimacy, making the child a surrogate husband or wife.
When triggered by distress, anger, loneliness or rejection, sex addicts are likely to find comfort in masturbation, porn or objectifying people. The goal of sex addiction is to recapture the elusive high of their first experience. That’s impossible, so the addict becomes insatiable.
Whatever their origin, the wounds that scarred you only exist in your distant past. Turning on the lights exposes you to the subpersonalities these wounds influence. Isolate the subpersonality that dictates your reaction to sexual triggers and give it a nickname. It could be Georgie Porgie, Hotshot, Mr. Jerkoff or any interesting character you can make up.
From here on, you must have a consistent dialogue with your addictive personality to shed light on why it acts out. To make this more potent, write down the dialogues. You can read them later to reinforce the message or share them with your therapist to give them insight into your addictive personality’s maneuvers.
The goal of these daily dialogues is to reinforce the message that you don’t need to act out. You can be in control, and you can move your focus to another project.
Take Zane, who feels lonely and decides to have a chat with his addictive persona. A basketball player in his high school days, he imagines himself in a gymnasium where he confronts his addict. Zane names his subpersonality Addict-Self. When Zane confronts Addict-Self, the subpersonality encourages Zane to visit a gym where he can see women’s butts and breasts popping out of their spandex suits. Zane can later masturbate while thinking about the women.
When Zane turns on the lights and does a little digging, he recalls how he loved watching girls in gym class as a 12-year-old. Digging deeper, Zane remembers how his nine-year-old self got all excited watching an 18-year-old neighbor undress. This illuminates Zane’s thinking, loosening the grip of that event on him.
Visit your personal amphitheater every day for about 10 minutes. It’ll take time to start seeing results because your mind doesn’t like taking orders. But these interventions will act as barriers between you and your sexually compulsive behavior. As you make progress, you’ll start to feel empowered and act more decisively as you gain more control over your addictive personality.
Sidestep your history and your mind
While George’s father didn’t show him much attention, his mother gave him too much. She made him massage her breasts and told the boy he was her true companion. This emotional imbalance produced a man who drank, smoked and obsessed about sex.
Two things stand out here: George’s personal story and George’s mind. History weighs heavily on a sex addict because they can’t make the distinction between what happened to them and who they are now. Once you realize that you are not your story, you weaken the impact of your past on your life.
Obsessive behavior engages the mind in repetitive thought. The obsessive mind is like a pendulum that swings constantly between the past and the future, hardly pausing to notice what’s happening in the present. As with their personal history, a sex addict must realize that they are not their mind.
Pause, look around and employ your senses to smell, feel and observe what’s happening inside and around you. This will release you from trying to recreate past highs – a process therapists call euphoric recall. When addicts look back, they lose out on true intimacy with the one they’re holding in their arms.
Mindful meditation will help you see things as they are, not as you wish they were. In a mindful state you can watch the addictive subpersonalities as they set off and stop them before they cause damage. This is something that gets easier over time. The more you experience triggers without acting on them, the more resistance you develop.
Let your mind rest. Find new hobbies, and remember, most of what’s happened in your past or is going on in your head right now does not define you as a person. This way, when you’re engaged in an activity, you experience it as if it’s happening for the first time.
Addiction thrives in a world where people are expected to be in action all the time. By learning to stay still, you connect with your essence, that part of you that is just okay with being you. Your essence doesn’t bother about your story or the lurid thoughts in your mind. It knows the difference between wrong and right, and values connection and true intimacy. Your essence also understands that you’re not the product of your subpersonalities. Sustain an active dialogue with your essence.
Handling triggers that keep you hooked
George had built a thriving business helping sex addicts turn their lives around, so what was this burning sensation he felt as he climbed the stairs to his office? He thought he’d heard the distinct sound of high heels. As he sat down in his office and peered out the window into the blue California sky, a familiar feeling returned.
He started to feel powerless over his sexual urges. He’d been triggered to act on his impulses, but since he had the knowledge to deal with it, he came out of it unscathed. George used to gaze at the blue sky on his way to an adult theater, and he’d become accustomed to the sound of the performers’ high heels. His brain had made an association between blue skies and high heels, a toxic mix that triggered George at a subconscious level.
Your task is to find your own sexual triggers and associations by digging deep into your past, or investigating what triggered you after you notice you’re aroused. It might be a color, a perfume or a combination of other events. Knowing how you’ve been programmed will help you install new software.
You can break away from a trigger’s grip by diverting your thoughts and actions, or taking a stand against your addictive subpersonality. Remember, not acting out will only strengthen your resolve and your control over addiction.
Go a step further by seeking out the places or situations that have triggered you and refusing to react to the emotions they stir up. This constitutes some kind of rebirth ritual that’ll demystify triggers. If you’re hesitant, you can go along with your therapist or confidante to help you face the situation.
Many sex addicts have overcome triggers by driving right in front of an adult theater and not walking in. Step into a porn shop, pick up your favorite magazine, place it back and walk out. One former addict even took a piss on a Playboy magazine by the side of the road! The idea is to take a stand and make a clean break from your triggers by performing your own unique ritual.
Another trick to sidestep your triggers is to understand that the first thoughts that come up when you’re triggered are always wrong. Knowing this gives you time to analyze your first thought, dialogue with your subpersonality, tap into your essence and find an alternative activity to occupy your mind with. Ask yourself what else you can do to divert your sexual energy into positive energy.
Notice how most of these positive steps revolve around you exerting control? You’re in charge, and you certainly can build up to a position of power when you encounter triggers. You can repossess and reprogram your reactions to triggers, and eventually replace the old software.
Installing your Red Light Guy
Imagine driving toward a crossroads and seeing red lights flash. Did you think about the lights before you stopped? Probably not! You automatically slowed down and put your foot on the brakes.
That’s the goal every sex addict should aim for. To automatically and effortlessly put on the red lights that guard against accidents when you’re triggered. You can name this function ‘Red Light Guy’ or any fancy name that works for you.
Your sex addiction is an automatic response to sexual triggers. You need to replace it with a new automatic system. Here’s how to deploy your Red Light Guy for maximum effect.
Watch your behavior to ensure you’re not randomly objectifying people. Eventually something will happen to trigger you. The trigger might be a picture on a magazine cover or a busty woman on the street. Some triggers might slip in before you notice, leaving you to deal with the sudden feeling of getting turned on.
In any case, the conscious work starts when you catch yourself starting to react. You need to perform a physical act like putting your hand on your chest, and then telling yourself you want to use that energy for something positive. This brings you to the present moment, where you are better able to put on your red lights.
You can also perform the Beard Test – if you have a beard, of course. This involves rubbing your open palm from your neck across your cheek to feel your beard. It reminds you that you’re a grown-up now. Consistent physical acts and affirmations will transform your internal traffic into one that guards against triggers and compulsive behavior.
Overcoming sex addiction takes commitment. But with continuous work and practice your sex radar will start to cede control to that side of you that enjoys your surroundings, and that isn’t constantly thinking about sex.
The joy of true intimacy
A reformed George was driving along with his wife when he got triggered. It felt awkward, but he told his wife anyway. Sharing his thoughts helped him stay grounded in reality instead of drifting into fantasy.
What George didn’t realize was that his unconscious addict mind was cruising in familiar territory. He only understood why he got triggered when they drove past the sign to a strip club he used to visit. They laughed about it. This small hurdle was a big victory because they’d achieved it as a couple. It was an intimate moment that drew them closer together.
If you're finding it difficult to share your struggles with your partner, you can try reversing roles. Imagine how you would feel if your partner was constantly masturbating to pictures of hotter people. Admit that you've been lying and that you're sorry and ready to work to earn their trust.
In the case where you’ve cheated, your partner might get hurt learning about what you did with others that you haven’t tried with them. Your intention is not to hurt, so leave out the worst details that’ll cause too much pain or be used as ammunition.
Telling your partner while going through a trigger is always better than talking after the act because your partner might start to wonder if you've left out some significant details. Being vulnerable also invites your partner to be more open about their own struggles, making it possible to solve issues together through dialogue or couples’ therapy. When you’re being open, you can look past the physical and sexual needs that brought you together to the deeper and more meaningful aspects of sharing and caring for each other.
Also, don’t forget to share your knowledge with others. It might be a friend who’s struggling with sex addiction or someone who approaches you. Make sure they’re open to the idea, and always seek their permission. You can even start at home by being present and providing your kids the intimacy and knowledge they need.
What good is there in sharing painful experiences? You might be hesitant. But in helping to fortify others, you fortify yourself and help society move collectively towards a life free from the scourge of sex addiction.
Final summary
It’s normal to want and experience sex. Sex only becomes a problem when it gets in the way of your life and relationships.
To regain control, you have to identify the subpersonality that fuels your obsession. You can accomplish this by metaphorically turning on the lights in your mind, or personal amphitheater. Engage your subpersonality in a dialogue and write it down for maximum effect. It’s also crucial to dig into your personal history to understand your triggers and how they make you react the way you do. You’re neither your mind nor your history. You’re just who you are. Knowing that and consciously living in the moment will minimize the effect of triggers.
Learn to divert your sexual impulses toward positive affirmations and actions to install a new safeguard against compulsive behavior. Remember, what you crave is true intimacy, and that can be achieved through working through your issues, sharing with your partner and helping others.