What Is The Psychological Treatment Of Sex Addiction?
All the actions we carry out throughout our lives, from the most important to the most banal and everyday, exist because humans are emotional beings.
Emotions are what lead us to move to achieve certain long- or short-term goals, whether to improve our present situation or to avoid material or psychological damage and loss. In other words, beyond our ability to think rationally, it is the sources of motivation that set us in motion.
Now, these motivations are not always beneficial for us. Sometimes they become uncontrollable impulses that are part of a harmful psychological alteration that must be addressed through psychotherapy. Here We will talk about the treatment of one of these disorders based on dependency, sex addiction.
As its name suggests, sex addiction is a psychological disorder in which the person develops dependence on sexual behaviors, to the point that their quality of life deteriorates. This feeling of need associated with sex greatly limits the autonomy of those who suffer from it. making it stay ahead of the rest of the priorities even in situations in which attending to those impulses is harmful.
Thus, it can be understood as an extreme version of hypersexuality, which occurs without other linked causes such as medical and psychiatric disorders. For example, it cannot be said that the increased libido that some people feel under the influence of drugs or those in the manic phase of bipolar disorder have a sex addiction, because in these cases these symptoms are already explained by the diagnosed disease.
It is important to keep in mind that sex addiction is not a psychological disorder that is referred to as such in the diagnostic manuals used in Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry. Is about a concept used in clinical practice because it is useful to describe what happens to some patients , since it is very similar to what occurs in those who develop drug-based addictive disorders. This implies, for example, that this type of problem can be considered the expression of different disorders. For example, Excessive Sexual Drive, Excessive Masturbation or Compulsive Sexual Behavior.
How is sex addiction treated?
Psychological treatment of sex addiction It can take many forms depending on how it is expressed in each person. , since it is always a personalized procedure in which the characteristics of the individual and the context in which they live are taken into account. However, as a summary, we can say that psychotherapy applied to this disorder has the following characteristics.
1. Search for compulsive elements
Sometimes, sex addiction is actually a compulsive-type psychopathology ; That is to say, sexual behavior is a way to urgently relieve a discomfort that overwhelms the person. In these cases, we work on the root of the problem, which is that anguish and feeling of discomfort itself, getting the person used to facing it without having to resort to sexual intercourse.
2. Training in the management of responsibilities
Help the person “connect” with their daily tasks makes it easier for the need for sexual satisfaction to fade away. In other words, being able to keep your mind focused on short-term goals helps you see beyond sexual routines, because both sources of motivation compete.
To make it possible, a training program must be created to carry out tasks in chains of actions capable of motivating. To do this, techniques and strategies such as self-instructions and action triggers can be used.
3. Training in anxiety and stress management
Many impulse management problems have to do with a lack of ability to identify emotions. In this way, the need to stop feeling stress can be confused with the need to have sex. To remedy this, various procedures are used, such as the use of emotion diaries.
4. Cognitive restructuring
Cognitive restructuring is a process through which the therapist helps the person get rid of the harmful beliefs that keep the psychological problem to be treated functioning (or that contribute to the continued existence). For example, beliefs that undermine one’s self-esteem, or about the hostility of the world in which one lives, etc.
5. Exposure techniques
This set of procedures seeks to expose the person to situations that awaken their desire to engage in sexual behavior, while at the same time You are given the tools to resist the impulse until you let it fade.
6. Couples therapy
Many times, it is also necessary to hold couple sessions to address the effects that sex addiction has on that loving bond.
Do you want to have professional psychological support in therapy?
Psychological disorders linked to sexuality can become a source of intense discomfort and deterioration in quality of life, and that is why when faced with this type of problem, psychotherapeutic help is sought as soon as possible.
If you notice that an excessive dependence on sex or some similar alteration may be affecting you, contact us; in Cepsim Psychological Center We can assist you in any of our consultations throughout Madrid, and also through the online therapy modality.
