SEX & PORNOGRAPHY ADDICTION HELP

These workshops and IOPs can range from a week-long workshop to two-week intensive outpatient programs. There are times when inpatient care is indicated and if that is the case then we will explore those options. Sex addiction inpatient programs are all out of state and most are six-week programs.

Once you enter into treatment, we use a combination of resources including books and workbooks written by Dr. Patrick

Carnes, a pioneer in sex addiction treatment. We also draw on information from many other sources such as Dr. Alex Katehakis, Dr. Rob Weiss, Dr. Doug Weiss, Pia Mellody, Carol Sheets, Dr. Laurel Parnell, Kelly McDaniel, and many more. The treatment starts will strategies to help clients stop their acting out behaviors. We do this by examining our client’s sexual history and noting the pain and consequences caused by their behavior. We examine how clients rationalize and justify their behaviors and identify cognitive distortions and thinking errors that led to acting out. All this work contaminates the acting out behaviors and begins the process of healing. We teach specific skills to be used when clients are “triggered” or has a “craving” to sexually act out.

We help them develop healthy alternatives to use when they are feeling stressed, bored, lonely, resentful, overwhelmed, entitled, or whatever may be triggering a desire to sexually act out. We help clients create a community support system. Sex addiction is an intimacy disorder, which means people who suffer from it have difficulty connecting emotionally intimacy with others. We use group therapy to teach these individuals how to be vulnerable and open, which leads to a connection to the men in their group.

This translates into them being able to be vulnerable and open with their partners and eventually heal their inability to be emotionally intimate.

As we go further into treatment, we examine their history and look for early childhood experiences that may have impacted how their sex addiction developed. If needed, we process their trauma using various exercises including a Trauma Egg, EMDR, Lifespan Integration, and Meadows’ Post Induction Therapy.

We have a unique approach when working with people who struggle with sexual compulsivity and sex and pornography addiction.

As we work with our clients, their betrayed partners always have a sacred place in the room. We use our extensive education and clinical training combined with our personal counseling experience. We draw on our own history and experience treating clients with sex and pornography addiction to create a deeper understanding of and internalize how they have impacted their partners. Our goal for each client is to create awareness and gain long-term growth and healing as well as learn how to “show up different” for their partners by gaining empathy for the pain they have caused their loved ones. Empathy and the ability to show up and hold space for their partner’s pain is critical in order to help their partner heal and thus heal the couple-ship.

Also, throughout this process, we are addressing the issue of lying. As sex addiction develops, a web of lies is developed around the addiction. The lies protect the addiction. When a person becomes sexually sober, they find themselves lying without even thinking about it. This also gets addressed in therapy because it is imperative that the lying stop for their partner to heal. (Not to mention, recovery requires rigorous honestly in order to be fully effective.) For many partners, the lying is just as painful and is just as destructive as the sexual betrayal; therefore, the treatment plan must address the compulsive lying.

As recovering sex addicts progress in therapy, we address the issue of healthy sexuality. Our goal with sexual sobriety

is not to teach people to stop being sexual. Our goal is to teach people how to stop sexually acting out in a way that is causing pain and instead has a healthy relationship with sex that is consistent with their own values and morals.

Give the experienced therapists at Fourth Dimension Counseling a call if you would like more information regarding counseling and therapy for sex and pornography addiction and compulsive sexual behavior, including porn addiction. Let’s begin a new journey together, If we can be of service, give us a call: 425-652-1690