Private, Confidential Sex Addiction Therapy
What is Sex Addiction?
Sex addiction refers to the behavior of a person with unusually intense sexual urges or obsession with sex. Behaviors and thoughts dominate the sex addict’s thinking, making it difficult to function daily with work or healthy personal relationships.
Sex addicts have distorted thinking and often rationalize and justify their behavior or blame others for problems. They deny they have a problem and make excuses for their behavior.
What are Some Behaviors of Sex Addiction?
Behaviors and symptoms include:
- Compulsive sexual behavior (masturbation)
- Constant use of pornography
- Multiple affairs
- Multiple or anonymous sexual partners
- Obsessive dating via personal ads
- Phone or computer sex (cybersex)
- Prostitution or use of prostitutes
- Sexual harassment
- Unsafe sexual acts
A sex addict generally gets little satisfaction from the sexual activity and avoids an emotional bond with sex partners. The addiction can lead to feelings of guilt and shame. They also feel a lack of control over their behavior despite negative consequences.
Why Does Sex Addiction Develop?
Researchers aren’t fully aware of why it develops, but there are several factors believed to play a role in a person’s risk for developing it, including poor emotional regulation, sexual trauma, and neurological changes. Shockingly, 97% of people with sexual addiction suffered some form of childhood or adolescence emotional abuse, and 72% suffered physical abuse.
What’s The Impact of Sex Addiction?
Sex addiction significantly impacts a person’s cognitive function and can put them at risk of harm, such as developing STDs, relationship conflicts, financial loss, and, at times, legal trouble. The mental and behavioral effects of sex addiction include low self-esteem, social isolation, severe depression, distorted thinking, and anxiety, among other problems.
Without support and treatment, sex addiction is a slippery slope that can lead to escalating risk-taking and serious consequences on a person’s relationships, physical and mental health, and financial insecurity.
How is Sexual Addiction Treated?
Initially, and most importantly, the sex addict needs to admit to the problem. It usually takes a significant event, like the loss of a job, the breakup of a marriage, an arrest, or a health crisis, to force this admission.
Treatment of sexual addiction helps the addict to control their addictive behavior and helps the person develop a healthy sexual outlook. This includes education about healthy sex, individual counseling, and marital or family therapy. Support groups or recovery programs (like Sex Addicts Anonymous) are usually beneficial.
In some cases, medications are implemented to curb compulsive sex addiction, such as Prozac and Anafranil.
Fifth Avenue Psychiatry Provides Discreet Sex Addiction Treatment in Manhattan
At Fifth Avenue Psychiatry, our sex addiction treatment doctors do not believe addiction defines a person. By creating individualized treatment plans, patients receive one-on-one help in a private setting designed for professionals and executives.
Fifth Avenue Psychiatry’s addiction treatment team of doctors, led by Dr. Glazer, who has been recognized as a Castle Connolly Top Doctor since 2015, provides executives and professionals with discreet, evidence-based addiction treatment.
Schedule an appointment today for more information.
FAQs
Sex addicts may have significant challenges with intimacy, but this does not mean they are incapable of loving their partner. That said, sex addiction is a serious issue and, when left unaddressed, can lead to risky behavior.
As of now, hypersexuality is not recognized as a mental illness by The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th Edition (DSM-5). There’s not enough evidence from clinical studies on people living with hypersexuality.
Sex is something we think about often. When you’re going through puberty, hormonal changes can cause sexual thoughts much more often. Aside from this, if you’re experiencing excessive thoughts about sex, thoughts that are time-consuming or distressing, there may be an underlying condition contributing to it, and you should consult a mental health professional.
On average, sex addicts have a much higher rate of developing an insecure-avoidant attachment. This is because they commonly experienced negativity in their childhood as a result of attachment, whether that be abandonment, neglect, shaming, or abuse.
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the emotions of others. While addicts, when active, may appear to lack empathy, this doesn’t mean they don’t have it. Many addicts in recovery and other aspects of their lives can show a great deal of empathy.