Heal The Abuse - Recover Your Life, Jason Goodwin [ink book reader .txt] 📗

by avoiding sex. This was an attempt to avoid what we feared.We didn’t want to talk about sex or think about it. We haddifficulty developing relationships, because we were always tryingto avoid sexual intimacy. We were afraid of anyone who wanted tohave sex with us. We feared that every potential partner wanted toabuse us.

For some of us, avoiding sex took the form ofovereating. We intentionally made ourselves unattractive. Our fearof sex became so strong that we tried to shut off our sexualfeelings or pretend that we were not sexual beings.

Unfortunately, neither of these approachesleads to control. A sex addict will become a slave to his/herurges, and people who avoid sex often end up feeling lonely andunfulfilled.

Healthy sex lies somewhere between theextremes. It is unhealthy to avoid sex, but also unhealthy to seekit out obsessively.

Sexual addictions can turn into a fantasyabout power. We fantasize that we can have anything or anyone wewant.

For many of us, our desire for sexual powerand control is a reaction to how powerless we felt when we werebeing abused. Sigmund Freud described “reaction formation” as adefense mechanism in which a person avoids one position by taking apolar opposite position. As sex addicts, we avoid the feeling ofsexual powerlessness we experienced during the abuse by seekingtotal power and control over our own sexual behaviors.

Some of us become trapped in this unhealthyreaction to the abuse. We turn to sexually addictive behaviorswhenever we feel powerless for any reason. Any time our jobs seemtoo difficult, or things in our life aren’t going according toplan. Instead of facing our negative feelings and working throughthem, we turn to our sexual addiction to try and restore feelingsof power and control.

Sex is an important part of a romanticrelationship. It can lead to greater intimacy and make us feelbetter physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s a great stressreliever and can create positive changes in our brainchemistry.

Dopamine is the primary pleasure chemical inthe brain. When we experience orgasm, the level of dopamine that isactive in our brain doubles. We feel a rush of pleasure, not unlikethe rush people experience when using stimulant drugs likenicotine, caffeine, cocaine, or methamphetamine. It is my beliefthat some of us become addicted to the physical rush of pleasurethat occurs during sex. For some of us, sex becomes a physical, aswell as psychological high.

To heal, we must not overlook the physicalcomponent of our addiction. If we are addicted to pleasurechemicals released by our brain during orgasm, we need to abstainfrom having multiple orgasms. If we have unhealthy beliefs aboutsex we use to justify or rationalize our addiction, we need tore-examine our beliefs and challenge whichever ones areself-defeating.

In my experience as a counselor, I find thatsex addicts often become cross-addicted to other stimulant drugs,like caffeine, nicotine, cocaine, or methamphetamine. Some sexaddicts snort cocaine or use methamphetamine in order to engage inprolonged sexual acts with a partner or to achieve multipleorgasms.

As sex addicts, we will only overcome ourfear of sex, and our obsessive need to control it, by healing thepain of sexual abuse. Most people who never experienced sexualabuse do not have the same fear of sex. They do not avoid sex, nordo they seek it out compulsively. They experience balance in theirsexual lives. We too can experience this balance if we make acommitment to heal.

Women often experience sexual addictiondifferently than men. Female sex addicts go to bars, “sleeparound,” or “hook up” with partners in internet chat-rooms.

For many women, sexual abuse can lead to agreat deal of confusion about their sexuality and how quickly theyshould have sex in a relationship. They may feel a lot of pressureto have sex on the first date.

Many women have a hard time walking that fineline between flirting enough to keep a man’s interest and becomingsexual too quickly. This is a double standard that our cultureapplies to women. Women are encouraged to be highly sexual in somesituations, but pure and chaste in others. Female sex addicts areoften labeled by our society in negative ways, but tend to receivea great deal of positive attention from men.

Prostitution is a lifestyle that promiseslarge financial rewards, but leads to major problems. One of myfemale clients told me that prostitution was one of the mostliberating, powerful, and lucrative occupations she’s ever had.Other female clients told me they experienced a great deal of shameand guilt about engaging in this behavior.

In general, I find that all addictions leadto negative consequences. The client who told me how liberated andpowerful she felt as a prostitute wound up spending all of hermoney on methamphetamine.

The “adult entertainment industry” promiseslarge financial rewards, but can also be very damaging to theparticipants. Some “porn stars” consent to being abused onscreenfor money. They agree to perform humiliating, degrading, or evensexually abusive acts because they suffer from low self-esteem.

To break the cycle of abuse, we must learn tonever abuse others or ourselves. This means we do not allow othersto exploit or abuse us sexually, and we never abuse or exploit oursexual partners.

It is normal to feel angry about whathappened to us, but we need to find healthier ways to release ouranger. When we abuse others or ourselves, we only create more painand fear, more shame and guilt.

As sex addicts, some of us tried tosubstitute sex for love. During the abuse, we were given sex whenwe actually wanted love. As a result, some of us began to confusethe two in our minds. We may have tried to convince ourselves thatsex was love. But sex is not love, and it cannot satisfy our needfor love. Sexual addiction can actually prevent us from evergetting the love we truly need.

While sex is a poor substitute for love, itcan feel better than neglect. If an abuser used us for sex, we mayhave thought, “Well, at least he/she wanted me for something.” Wedecided that being wanted for sex was close enough to beingloved.

But it’s hard to feel good about ourselveswhen we’re being used. It’s hard to feel good about ourselves whenwe are starving for the love we truly need. Being loved is anaffirmation of who we are, not just “what we’re good for.”

Women