Sexual addiction therapy focuses on addressing compulsive sexual behaviors and helping you develop healthier choices and coping strategies to avoid addictive behavior. This type of treatment often involves a combination of psychotherapy and medication, depending on the severity of your symptoms. You can seek help for a sex addiction online or through an in-person clinic that specializes in this mental health condition.
A therapist can teach you how to recognize the triggers of your behavior and work through issues like shame, guilt, or low self-esteem that may be contributing to your compulsion to engage in risky sexual behaviors. Unlike many other forms of addiction, sex addiction doesn’t involve the use of drugs or alcohol, so most treatment programs focus on psychotherapy.
Some sex addiction treatment programs include trauma-focused therapies that focus on healing from past traumatic experiences. These may include somatic experiencing, post induction therapy and EMDR. These therapies can also be useful for the loved ones of a person struggling with sexual addiction as well.
Medical professionals believe that sex addiction is related to an imbalance in certain brain chemicals. However, the exact causes of sex addiction are still unknown. It is believed that people from dysfunctional families are more likely to struggle with sex addiction. This can be due to attachment-related trauma from childhood. It’s possible that this trauma can contribute to unhealthy family patterns like neglect or parental enmeshment.
The first step to recovery is recognizing that you or someone you care about has an issue with sex addiction. Sex is a natural and healthy activity between consenting adults, but it can become unhealthy when it’s pursued to the point that it interferes with a person’s relationship or career. In addition, promiscuous sexual behaviors can lead to the transmission of STIs such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea. sex addiction therapy