At Integrative Life Center, we recognize that sex addiction treatment is difficult to find. Those suffering from sex or pornography addiction deserve heart-centered and trauma-focused treatment to help you lead your best life.
What Is Sex Addiction?
Sex addiction falls under the umbrella of a compulsive sexual behavior disorder, as classified in the International Classification of Disease-11 (ICD-11) One of the critical hallmarks of suffering from sex addiction is just that, suffering. Suppose you or your loved one’s sexual behaviors are causing significant distress in your life and relationship. In that case, sex addiction may be the root cause.
Some key characteristics of sex addiction to look out for include:
- Feelings of shame, guilt, or regret from your sexual behaviors,
- Attempting to hide your sexual activities from other people,
- Using masturbation or sex as a coping mechanism for extreme emotions,
- Thinking about or planning sexual activities takes a significant part of your waking hours,
- Engaging in escalating sexual behaviors regardless of consequences, and/or
- Trying to stop your sexual behaviors but you are unable to.
Sex addiction results from a lack of attunement and trauma in early childhood. These sets of behaviors rewire your brain similarly to any other form of addiction. You crave the dopamine surge that it provides.
SEX ADDICTION: RISKS & CONSEQUENCES
- Having unprotected sex with strangers
- Engaging in sexual activities in a public place
- Employing the services of a sex worker
- Using pornography or similar media while at work
- Engaging in infidelity
Co-Occurring Disorders
Most commonly, those who suffer from sex addiction may also suffer from:
- Depression
- Antisocial personality disorder
- Bipolar disorder
- Substance abuse disorder
Substance abuse often accompanies sex addiction because addictive substances are used to help soothe desires.
What To Expect At Integrative Life Center
At ILC, we use integrative and multidisciplinary approaches to healing. We provide you with the highest quality and most personalized care possible. Using this holistic approach means treatment addresses all aspects of your life and well-being.
Trauma-Focused Care
Trauma is the event, the experience, and the effect of a psychologically damaging and overwhelming event. Understanding how trauma affects your brain and you ability to process trauma is a significant part of treatment for most addictions, sex addiction included.
Because trauma is stored in the body, trauma-informed treatment of sex addiction often focuses on the bodily or somatic manifestations of trauma.
At Integrative Life Center, we are committed to utilizing the six key trauma-informed addiction treatment components. Safety, trust, peer support, collaboration, empowerment, and understanding of cultural issues are at the heart of everything we do.
Heart-Centered Approach
At ILC, our mission is to help you be your authentic self. We do this by focusing on you as a unique individual. We respect your choices and who you are. We believe that we cannot be trauma-focused without being heart-centered.
We lead with empathy, compassion, and confidence to show you how much value you have.
Customized Care
During your treatment, we focus on you as an individual. No two sex addiction experiences are the same, thus, no two sex addiction treatments are the same.
By integrating principles and practices from various treatment disciplines, we create a unique healing journey perfect for you.
Sex Addiction Treatment Modalities
Sex addiction treatment at Integrative Life Center is multifaceted and based on extensive addiction research. By weaving together these different modalities and concepts, you’ll walk a unique and personalized path toward healing.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is at the heart of many treatment modalities because it focuses on you, your behaviors, and your ways of thinking. By working together to recognize unhealthy patterns of thought and action, we will create the scaffolding of your life path going forward.
Using the core principles of CBT, you’ll learn how to make healthier choices in your life. These can change unhelpful thought patterns and help you play an active role in designing your future
Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is another crucial treatment component that will help you realize that you’re worth more than your addiction. DBT is often used as a vital part of substance use disorder treatment because it teaches you healthy ways of dealing with daily life stressors.
Using DBT, you’ll learn how to envision, articulate, pursue, and maintain your life’s goals in a practical and useful way.
DBT is not centered on stopping your harmful behaviors as much as it gives you the vision to work toward.
Holistic Approach
Holistic means all things are interconnected. Thus, we focus not only on your mental well-being but also on your bodily, emotional, and intrapersonal development. One aspect without the other means you’re missing a key component of learning how to lead a successful and fulfilling life after sex addiction treatment.
Psychodrama Therapy
Psychodrama Therapy is a unique and powerful therapeutic tool. You have the opportunity to act out situations, stories, and even traumatic experiences to enable you to see the options you have in any given circumstance.
Knowing your options allows you to respond rather than react. Meaning that you get to stay closer to your authentic self because you’re in control of your emotional responses.
Working together to act out these scenes, you’ll learn healthy coping mechanisms that will help free you from your addictive behavioral patterns.
Mindfulness Therapy
We do not offer any one-size-fits-all programs. Who you are and your thought patterns are unique to you. Therefore, your treatment should be too.
With Mindfulness Therapy, we work together to find what forms of mindfulness work best for you.
Types of Mindfulness Therapy include meditation, breathwork, guided imagery, and verbal cues. By working through these, you will discover which ones are right for you.
Motivational Interviewing
Motivational Interviewing is a counseling technique that allows you to work with your therapist one-on-one to discover what insecurities stop you from achieving your goals.
Often those suffering from addiction lack the motivation to achieve their goals.
These short sessions may allow you to discover the reasons why you lack the willingness to succeed. You’ll also notice within yourself the things you need to change to reach your goals.
This is an invitation to take that next step if you need...
- a hand to help lift you up
- a warm, intimate environment to help you feel connected
- someone to walk the journey with you as you reconnect to you authentic self
- safety and grounding as you start your healing process
