Understanding and Resolving Sexual Compulsions
Page Two
Our brains are not like computers whose parts are hard-wired and fixed for all time. Instead, they are highly plastic organisms that learn and are malleable and retrainable. Repeated experiences of a sexual high trigger potent chemicals that influence the brain’s functioning. New patterns are established, imbalances in the chemicals that transmit neuronal messages (such as serotonin and epinephrine) are formed, and changes are made in our neural receptors.
Viewing pornography for a few minutes without a physiological response will probably not lead to compulsive sexuality. But if we add masturbation and intense emotional fantasizing, we begin to change our habits and, ultimately, our brain functioning.
If we choose repeated intense sexual activities outside of our value system, the pleasure centers of our brain powerfully impact the thinking centers, and our value system can be turned upside down. We find ourselves acting out of synch with what we know to be right, but unable to stop it.
This is very similar to what happens with gamblers who can’t resist the call of the casino. In spite of the fact that they know they are unable to stop, they decide to drive over there and give it “one last try.” The risk-taking involved in this desperate act provides an even greater emotional high and a vicious cycle is established that becomes ever increasingly difficult to break.
Early in this process we can decide relatively easily and successfully to stop. Later, quitting becomes progressively more difficult. Willpower begins to be directed to things like planning sexual exploits (this planning is called ritual), waiting for opportune moments, and choosing to neglect work and family in order to fantasize about sex. Much like alcohol or cocaine addicts who choose to show up sober at work so they won’t lose the job that pays for their habit, sexually compulsive persons increasingly plan their days around the need to maintain their jobs and give outward appearances to their families that they are dependable. Their decision making abilities, are active, but they are gradually reshaped. In time even their efforts at maintaining appearances may diminish or disappear as they take greater and greater risks to increase their sexual highs.
 This addictive process is
different from the normal
experience of adolescent sexual
awakening when young people
discover and revel in their
increasing adult sexuality.
Eventually, thoughts about health risks, potentially severe financial losses, injury, loss of family, and even death are pushed into the background and they are controlled by their sexual compulsions. Their obsessive thoughts and compulsive acts have become entrenched in a way barely distinguishable from chemical addictions. Their brains have now been altered, and they have much less ability to stop their destructive thoughts and actions.
This addictive process is different from the normal experience of adolescent sexual awakening when young people discover and revel in their increasing adult sexuality. Emotionally and spiritually healthy teenagers are curious and explorative but they are not driven to ever-greater risks and experimentation. This only happens when there is a serious unmet emotional or spiritual need that draws them inexorably into intense repetitive use of sex to cope with emotional pain or a lack of meaning in life. Young people who are depressed, for example, or who suffer from attention deficit disorder (ADD) or low self worth, are especially vulnerable to compulsive sexual activities. Emotionally and spiritually healthy teenagers are not.
In this booklet we are going to use the terms addiction and compulsion more or less interchangeably. We are grouping compulsive gambling, eating disorders like anorexia/bulimia, and extreme forms of workaholism with sexual addiction because similar underlying mental and physical processes characterize them all.
Signs of Sexual Compulsivity
Psychiatrist and addictionologist Dr. Aviel Goodman2 lists seven characteristics of sexual addictions:
1. Tolerance—the need to increase sexual behavior in order to achieve the same effect
2. Withdrawal—when the person tries to stop the sexual behavior, distress occurs
3. Increased efforts to achieve intense sexual feelings
4. Increased efforts to quit, control, or cut down on sexual activity, but without success
5. Increased time spent getting ready to act out sexually and to recover from it
6. Reduced time and effort in usually beneficial social, occupational, or recreational activities
7. Psychological distress continues despite the person’s knowing that sexual behavior brings on the distress.
The web site of the National Council of Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity3 lists several other typical symptoms:
1. Multiple marriage affairs or using a position of power to gain sexual access to multiple partners
2. Use of prostitutes, escorts and sexual massage
3. Indecent telephone calls
4. Excessive expenditure of time and money on pornography/ cyber and phone sex
5. Multiple anonymous sexual encounters
6. Touching others without permission.
 Continued on Page Three
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