Any addiction (alcohol, drug, food, sex, or gambling) involves the hijacking of the brain’s natural orientation to relationships as its source for optimal health. The brain “is wired” for healthy relationships. An addiction “short-circuits” the healthy brain creating disorder and disaster.

In a previous post we noted that the Nov/Dec issue of The Therapist Magazine (California Marriage and Family Therapist publication), a group of therapists wrote an article discrediting the work of sex addiction therapists. Jan Beauregard, Candice Christensen, and Alexandra Katehakis have published a response that sets the record straight. Here is the “take away” for those too busy to read the entire article:

If you limit your emotional language to “feel good” and “feel bad”, you may be missing out on the wonderful breadth of human experience. It may limit your capacity for healthy intimacy as well. A British researcher finds that our emotional experience is limited by the vocabulary we have available to identify and name our emotional experience.

A person who struggles with sexual addiction lives a double life. They don’t know themselves as whole people with healthy Mind/Body integration. They struggle to enter into healthy relationships with others – relationships that include healthy sexual expression characterized by mutuality and respect. They are one person presenting two faces to the world. They identify one personae as good and acceptable, the other is bad and needing to be hidden away. They present the good to family and friends while the bad lives a secret life. Shame grounds their basic belief about themselves. They truly believe they simply are not worthy. Their double life is an expression of self-loathing.

How is it that so many people are falling every day into the trap of addiction? The introduction of the internet into daily life certainly plays a role. Here’s how.

John Bowlby pioneered understand of the way human being “attach” in his study of children and their caregivers. His fundamental insight is that the shape of our emotional response to the people closest to us has been informed by very early childhood experiences. Therapists use the basic insights of Attachment Theory and and their understanding of Attachment Styles in treating sexual addiction.