Symptoms of Sex Addiction
Are you unable to stop despite directly related negative consequences to your mental health, relationships, finances, work, and self-esteem? Or, Do you lose control as evidenced by failed attempts to quit or cut back and lack impulse control in relation to sex and love? Perhaps you have a preoccupation with substance or behaviour?
If you answered “yes” to one or more of these questions, there is a problem. The symptoms of sex and or love addiction are progressive meaning that it takes more and more of the behaviour and escalated behaviour to achieve the desired effect. It is similar to an addiction to alcohol in that tolerance is built up in your system and you need more to temporarily satisfy cravings.
Sex Addiction and Mental Health Disorders
While sex and love addiction are not currently recognized in the manual of mental disorders (DSM V) there is real-world evidence that sex/porn and love addiction are real and are destroying countless people’s lives and families. Sex addiction is an intimacy disorder (recognized in the DSM V) that presents as an obsession with sex, porn, and or love; it is a behavioural addiction.
What Outcomes Will Sex Addiction Counselling Provide?
Our addiction treatment will focus on using the best available assessments, in conjunction with your medical professional, to help you determine where you are on the spectrum from problematic sexual behaviour, to compulsive sexual behaviour, to sex/love/porn addiction.
It’s important to remember that not everyone with problematic or compulsive sexual behaviour is a sex addict. You deserve the proper assessment to determine where you are so that an effective treatment plan can be implemented.
The goal of our addictions treatment will be for you to recover who you authentically are in order to have satisfying relationships with yourself others and the world. Sex, love and porn addiction treatment is not about shaming sex, it is about healing sexual shame in order to show up as the confident, secure and relationally skilled person you are meant to be.
Sex Addiction Treatment Methods
In therapy, we will provide a safe space for you to face your sexual activities with curiosity and to understand the wounds of your past that have led you to your current sexual behaviour. Working to uncover not the intent of your historical relationships and experiences, but the harmful impact that they have had on your emotional development, mental health, impulse control, and capacity for intimate relationships.
We will not stay mired in an endless retelling of your history but will allow for you to experience in the “now” what it is like to be you, without judgment and shame.
Together, we will understand the neurobiology of addiction and how to intervene effectively at the earliest moment to take care of yourself. We won’t wait until you’re crossing the threshold of the motel room or the next escort site, porn site, chat room, or bar.
Then we will build the conscious plan for what you want to say “no” to and, more importantly, what you want to say “yes” to – what you want that will connect you to yourself, others, and the world!
Who is Sex Addiction Counsellng For?
Sex, porn and or love addiction is for anyone whose behaviours and the consequences of those behaviours are progressively out of control and harming their mental health and relationships.
What Outcomes Will Sex Addiction Counselling Provide?
Our addiction treatment will focus on using the best available assessments, in conjunction with your medical professional, to help you determine where you are on the spectrum from problematic sexual behaviour, to compulsive sexual behaviour, to sex/love/porn addiction.
It’s important to remember that not everyone with problematic or compulsive sexual behaviour is a sex addict. You deserve the proper assessment to determine where you are so that an effective treatment plan can be implemented.
The goal of our addictions treatment will be for you to recover who you authentically are in order to have satisfying relationships with yourself others and the world. Sex, love and porn addiction treatment is not about shaming sex, it is about healing sexual shame in order to show up as the confident, secure and relationally skilled person you are meant to be.
Enough! It’s time to lift that heavy cloak of shame!
Assessing where you are on the spectrum of destructive sexual behaviour is an important first step, so consider taking the Sexual Addiction Screening Test (SAST)here.
From this assessment, we can begin to plan treatment customized to you and lift the heavy cloak of shame that is burying your life now.
After you take the test, I will reach out to you within 24 hours (Monday to Friday) to provide you with a free 15-minute consultation from which you can book your first appointment: (705) 795-0240.