Sex Addiction and the Dissociated Self
Modern research suggests that when you act out on your sex addiction, you dissociate your central personality from the part of yourself which craves the release that your actions will bring. You do not have a multiple personality or bipolar disorder. Instead, you temporarily create a separate and dissociated self to satisfy the inner desires created by your addiction.Your central personality can and oftentimes does have a commitment to overcoming your addiction. However, your dissociated personality connects to your destructive and self-consuming behavior.
How Does Sex Addiction Develop?
Counselors and therapists can help you uncover and address the causes of your sex addiction. Particularly, they can help with the catalysts that enabled the development of your dissociation patterns. If you experienced abuse or some other trauma when you were young, you may have resorted to dissociation to escape the pain of that trauma. Sex addiction happens because you’re carrying that dissociation into your adult life as a coping mechanism. You may have been raised in a repressive environment that did not address your sexual development or added a shroud of shame to your developing sexuality. Dissociation may have been used to separate yourself from that environment and rebel against that repression or shame.
Fetish vs Addiction
Many people confuse sex addiction and fetishes, but they are quite different. What you may find arousing is separate and distinct from the patterns that you have established to ease certain pains or discomforts on your life. Your first step toward overcoming your problem is to understand that sex addiction is a behavioral pattern. Your central personality may remain convinced that you can handle the problems and stressors of everyday life with your own inner sense of strength and resolve, yet that greater part of your personality will often cede control to the dissociated personality as a standard response.
Sex Addiction Treatment
Your counselor will help you to understand and accept this pattern-response behavior. Additionally, they help with the dual aspects of your personality that facilitate it. Then, he or she will help you to meld both sides of your personality into a unified self. If you are able to acknowledge that your central personality and your dissociated self are one and the same person, you will be better able to exert control over the dissociated and addicted side of yourself. At the Last Resort Recovery, we offer a variety of mental health and addiction treatment programs to help you along this journey. Some of them include:
Addictions of the body and mind do not have to control your life. The Last Resort offers comprehensive addiction treatment programs to help you live your best life. Please call us at 512-750-6750 for more information.