WHAT EVERY SEX ADDICT MUST KNOW BEFORE STARTING SEX ADDICTION THERAPY.
Almost everyone encounters some kind of traumatic or dangerous situation in their lifetime, and providentially, our body has a natural, built-in trauma response to threatening situations called the "fight or flight or freeze response." Understanding the body's natural response to threat and danger can help us better understand the symptoms of SEXUAL ADDICTION.
What is the Difference Between Anxiety and Fear?
Before we discuss what happens in the fight or flight freeze syndrome, it is important to first discuss the difference between fear and anxiety.
Fear:
Fear is the sensation you experience when you are actually in a dangerous situation.
Anxiety:
Anxiety is what you experience leading up to and after a dangerous, stressful, or threatening situation.
You may also experience anxiety when you think about something stressful or dangerous that could happen to you.
The difference between anxiety and fear illustrated:
A roller coaster
Think about the last time you went on a roller coaster. Anxiety is what you felt when you were in line looking at the hills, steep drops, and loops, as well as hearing the screams of other riders.
You also likely felt anxiety when on the roller coaster as you got closer to the top of the first hill.
Fear is what you experienced as you went over the peak of the hill and started your fall down the first hill.
Anxiety and Fear Are Valuable
Anxiety and fear are very Valuable responses. The anthropological race may not even exist if it were not for these hard-wired responses to danger and threat.
Anxiety and fear provides us with important information.
That is, they tell us when hazard is present and they prepare us to act when necessary.
When you are in a stressful or dangerous situation and experience fear and anxiety, your body goes through a number of changes:
1. Your heart rate may increase.
2. Your vision may narrow (sometimes called "tunnel vision").
3. You may notice that your muscles become tense.
4. You may begin to sweat.
5. Your hearing may become more sensitive.
6. All of these changes are part of the fight or flight syndrome. As the name implies, these changes are preparing you for immediate action. They are preparing you to flee, freeze (kind of like a animal does when caught in someone's headlights), or to fight.
All of these are adaptive bodily responses essentially designed to keep us alive, and because these responses are important to our survival, they occur quickly and without thought. They are automatic.
A Downside to This Response…SEXUAL ADDICTION
It would be great if anxiety and fear only occurred in circumstances where we were in immediate danger.
Regrettably, it does not always work this way. For example, many people have fear and anxiety when speaking in front of other people. You may also have fear and anxiety when meeting someone new. A person with agoraphobia may experience fear and anxiety when they go out into crowded or cramped places, such as a grocery store or a subway.
These circumstances are not dangerous in the sense that they don't threaten our survival.
So, why might we have fear and anxiety in these circumstances?
We have fear and anxiety in these circumstances because of the way we evaluate these circumstances.
Our body cannot always tell the difference between real and imagined threat. Therefore, when we interpret a situation as threatening, our body is going to respond as though that situation is dangerous and threatening, even if it really isn't in actuality.
The Fight or Flight Response is the key to SEXUAL ADDICTION
When you experience something distressing, you may no longer feel as though the world is a safe place UNCONSCIOUSLY.
It may feel as though danger is everywhere AS A CHILD. As a result, as AN ADULT you may constantly be in a state of fear and anxiety. Sex addiction can be a response to past childhood emotional issues around intimacy.
For this reason, sex addiction treatments often focus a lot of attention on altering the ways in which people interpret their environment.
DID YOU KNOW…THE FIGHT FLIGHT RESPONSE IS LOCATED IN THE SUBCONSCIOUS!!!
The Bottom-Line is this:
The KEY to RELEASING YOUR sex addiction is in your SUBCONSCIOUS MIND!
This brings us to “The Eight Psychosocial Stages of Human Development”… Dr. Erik Erikson, the famous psychologist (1902-1994) who proposed these Stages found that...
…Unresolved Childhood Developmental Tasks “leave a life-long residue of emotional immaturity.”
In other words… You’re original, immature, unidentified Subconscious Issues from childhood are controlling your behaviors—and even your thinking...many label it sex addiction.
So now that you know what YOUR CORE ISSUE is, how do you go about undoing (or resolving) this childish subconscious program built around sex?
Read how by clicking here: http://sexual-addiction-counseling.weebly.com/
notes:
What is Sex Addiction?
Sexual or sex habit, simply put, is the use of sex or adult to deal with non-sexual emotional needs. Plenty of individuals from different societies battle with this condition which not only interferes with their daily life but also wrecks it in the process. If the following situation been there as well to you or someone near to you then you are not alone:
Your mind is inundated with so many adult pictures that you find yourself preoccupied for hours.
Your wish or drive to have sex, view adult on the Online or buy adult video clips and newspapers is so strong that you are willing to give up your main bills and bills.
As a outcome, you may be in debts and maybe out of a job and yet, you still keep practice sex-related conduct that you know is dangerous.
There are many more symptoms of sex addiction; please evaluation our sex habit analysis for a initial self-diagnosis.
Why is a Personal Passionate to Sex?
One way to understand why anyone is dependent on sex is to look at other types of habit such as liquor and medication. Someone who is dependent on liquor or medication uses these ingredients to modify his/her moods; in other terms, the abuser tries to reduce emotional discomfort. The material becomes more essential than family, friends and work.
Eventually, the individuals reach a factor where, to be able to encounter regular, they must have the drug or liquor. Dr. Meat Carnes, in his book, "Out of the Shadows", makes, "...to encounter 'normal' for the alcohol addiction is also to encounter separated and single since the main connection he will depend on to encounter sufficient is a chemical type, not other individuals."
Sex habit commonalities the above energetic in that lovers use sex-related habits to "medicate" or reduce their thoughts (such as worry, anxiety or anger) to the degree that their sex-related working out becomes their main way of dealing with emotional pressure. Therefore, it is essential not to mistake sex-related habit with libido.
Most grownups have a healthy libido but not everyone uses sex to deal with non-sexual emotional needs. Sex habits can take on many varieties such as but not restricted to the following sex-related behaviors:
Anonymous sex
Porn habit (pornographic images, video clips, newspapers, cyber-sex, Web sites)
Chronic affairs
Compulsive masturbation
Sexual massages
Voyeurism
Feeling Weak is the Essence
According to Sex Junkies Unknown, a 12-step program devoted to helping sex lovers, "...the material of all habit is the addicts' encounter of powerlessness over a uncontrollable conduct, leading to their life becoming difficult. The abuser is out of management and encounters incredible pity, discomfort and self-loathing." Moreover, Dr. Carnes describes that one of the attributes of sex habit is that it is modern in characteristics. In other terms, these regular habits increase in consistency and wide range which outcome in excessive repercussions.
The sex abuser does not actually need to have sex with a person to be able to be addicted. Pornography habit or cyber-sex is a type of sex-related habit in which the person, more often than not, masturbates to adult pictures on the Online. This uncontrollable conduct where improving period is put in in installing pictures, developing information and trading sex-related information with others via boards makes a dream world in which the sex abuser stays most of his time.
The Online provides exactly what an abuser seeks: content to petrol his pressing sex-related wishes and privately nourish his dream in an separated environment with an limitless wide range that is available not only at a touch of a option but also whenever they want of the day. Consequently, the peoples emotional discomfort and pressure are numbed by these dreams and traditions many, if not, thousands of periods before having true closeness (and/or sex) with a real person.
The sex lovers who use the Online go through a swift development of their habit. An excessive period is invested in front of the computer which causes greater threats, improving your chances of getting found. This is the reason why adult habit has been properly considered the "crack cocaine" of sex habit.
According to evaluation Web websites such as WebSense.com and Internetfilterreview.com, Online adult data for 03 were as follows:
90% of 8 - 16 season olds have considered adult online (most of them while doing their homework)
The biggest customer of Online adult is the age group between 12 - 17
About 12% of complete Web websites are pornographic
25% of complete search results needs are porn-related
Why is it Crucial to Get over Sex Addiction?
The repercussions of sex-related habit can be harmful to not only the abuser but also those near to him/her. It can leave an abuser separated, extremely troubled and frustrated to the factor of being taking once life.
Low self-esteem, pity, hopelessness and lose heart are also typical thoughts experienced by sex lovers.
70% of sex lovers evaluation serious marriage or connection problems
40% evaluation the decrease of a associate or spouse
The outcome of sex habit do not end on an emotional level but rather, proceed onto healthcare, economical and lawful ones as well.
Medical repercussions of sex habit may involve HIV and other std's (STDs) such as genital herpes, syphilis and gonorrhea. Moreover, vaginal injury may outcome from excessive sex or the use of foreign things for sex-related pleasure.
Financial repercussions of sex habit may involve the decrease of the job, getting charged over sex-related following or sex-related exploitation expenses leading to hips. Purchasing adult content, use of hookers, getting in touch with 900 numbers and travelling for the single purpose of sex-related connections can create tremendous financial debt in bank card financial debt and fatigue the money of an abuser often periods to the factor of bankruptcy.
Legal repercussions of sex-related habit. Detain and prison time are the most typical lawful outcome of sex-related habit. The addict's out of management way of life forces him to practice dangerous, unlawful actions such as voyeurism, exhibitionism, incorrect pressing and the solicitation of hookers.
How Do I Know If I'm Passionate to Sex or Pornography?
A basic strategy in realizing any addicting conduct is to determine whether it is developing frustrating trouble in your daily life and yet you choose to come back to it despite the issue.
If your sex-related conduct is assets your some time to effort and effort and it causes you to bargain your primary principles and the philosophy that you hold beloved to your heart then there is likely a issue. If you are working out intimately and your conduct has led to health problems (psychological and/or physical), job reduction and economical issues, interactions being damaged or damaged or more serious repercussions such as being involved in litigations over incorrect and unlawful habits then you are most likely a sex abuser.
A typical false impression among sex lovers is that the issue will go away on its own and they will often say to themselves, "This is my only opportunity... I will never get a chance like this again...this is the before that I am going to..." but encounter and studies have shown that they will come back to the same sex-related situations, despite past wedding vows to modify if they do not seek professional help.