Sex out of control: the warning signs and treatment of addiction
What constitutes a “sex addiction”? Is it a neurological problem similar to drug and alcohol abuse, a manifestation of a compulsive behavioural disorder or a physiological compulsion associated with adrenalin and risk? Or is it, as some sceptics suggest, neither a disease nor a disorder but a tendency born of social and cultural influences?
Relate, the relationship counselling service, describes sex addiction as any sexual activity that feels out of control. NHS advice also highlights the similarities between sex addiction and substance abuse, with the addiction caused by the powerful chemicals substances released during sex.
Relate points to the warning signs drawn up by Patrick Carnes, an American sociologist and counsellor who is also executive director of the Gentle Path programme at Pine Grove Behavioural Centre. His teaching, one can safely assume, is being absorbed at length by Tiger Woods.
According to Dr Carnes, the cycle begins with “core beliefs” a sex addict holds, established when they are growing up. How their family treats them may link to their notions of self-worth. Addicts may feel they are bad or unworthy, that people would not love them as they are, and that sex is their most important need. The bottom line is a relationship with sex, and not the various (and perhaps numerous) partners involved.
The warning signs identified by Dr Carnes include a feeling that your behaviour is out of control, being aware that there may be severe consequences, an inability to stop your behaviour in spite of knowing these consequences, persistently pursuing destructive/high risk activities, wanting to stop or control what you are doing and taking active steps to limit your activities, using sexual fantasies as a way of coping with difficult feelings or situations, and needing more and more of the sexual activity in order to experience the same level of high.
The addict may experience intense mood swings around sex, and spend increasing amounts of time planning, engaging in and recovering from sexual activities. He or she will also neglect important social, occupational or recreational activities in favour of sexual behaviour — which for many addicts (though not Woods) leads to problems with their finances and professional lives.
Dr Carnes breaks the addiction down into a process of “pain agents” (a discomforting trigger that drives the person towards thoughts of sex), emotional dissociation and the bubble of euphoric fantasised experience, followed by the “ritualised” act (be it a trip to a strip club, using sex chat lines or explicit text messaging) leading to the compulsion of sex itself, and then the despair felt when, post-coitally, the reality of the addict’s personal life kicks back in.
Woods’s counselling process at Pine Grove will involve identifying and changing the behaviour that is painful and damaging. Treatment strategies include talking therapies, such as coginitive behavioural therapy (CBT), meditation and other counselling workshops, in groups or face-to-face. Treatment is similar to other addictions, which in Britain will often involve courses of CBT.
The history of treatment is difficult to track, but it parallels greater understanding of behaviour, neuroscience and the brain. Over the past century sex addiction, as with many other compulsions, has been reassessed and what was once addressed, and punished, as a moral problem is now attended to as a medical one.
so Guys! go check your sex status now, dont simple cum all over the wall..hehe
No comments:
Post a Comment