Month: July 2019

• By -Cynthia Hartmann

Sex Addiction: Signs, Symptoms, and Treatment

• Posted on July 27, 2019
• Posted in Popular

Sam squirmed uncomfortably in his chair, finding it difficult to look in my eyes as he talked about his porn habit, which in the past few months had overtaken his life. “I’ve been watching porn since I’m 11,” he admitted. “But it used to be somewhat under control. Now I’m sneaking into the men’s room at work with my phone for hours at a time. When my wife is sleeping I’m online. I just can’t stop.”

Sam is beginning to realize he is a sex addict. That term began receiving renewed scrutiny last fall when former film producer Harvey Weinstein declared that was what ailed him and entered rehab in an effort to escape criminal prosecution for his alleged assaults.

Practitioners in the country’s mental health community still can’t come to an agreement about how to regard a multitude of dysfunctions ranging from compulsive masturbation to uncontrollable infidelity to illegal …

• By -Cynthia Hartmann

4 Strategies for Sex Addicts in Recovery to Avoid Relapsing

• Posted on July 22, 2019
• Posted in Popular

FOR SEX ADDICTS, LIFE can be a seemingly never-ending quest to fulfill their sexual compulsions. Some male sex addicts, straight and gay, frequent prostitutes and seek anonymous liaisons through dating apps despite worries about contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Some women sex addicts engage in a series of loveless encounters with partners they meet in bars and nightclubs. For some, the compulsion means spurning family events to spend hours watching pornography.

Though they know their compulsion is wrecking their life, active sex addicts can’t stop unless they embark on a recovery program that could include therapy, a stay in a rehabilitation center and participation in support-group meetings, clinicians say. Nationwide, about 12 million people in the U.S. are afflicted with sex addiction, an intimacy disorder characterized by “persistent and escalating patterns of sexual behavior despite increasing negative consequences to one’s self or others,” according to the American …

• By -Cynthia Hartmann

How To Treat Sex Addiction When You Don’t Think It Exists

• Posted on July 21, 2019
• Posted in Popular

Sex addiction is a recurring theme in movie plots and TV series, in the real lives of movie and TV actors, even in discussions about whether this politician or that one may suffer from some form of the disorder. All of this presupposes that sex addiction is real. But experts are at odds about whether it is actually a medical phenomenon they can diagnose and treat in their patients.

“I will unequivocally say that sex addiction does not exist,” sex therapist and licensed marriage and family therapist Ian Kerner, Ph.D., author of She Comes First, tells SELF. “There was a big attempt by the addictionology community to get sex addiction into the most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, [released in 2013], under the category of hypersexuality,” he adds. “It was rejected by the American Psychological Association for lack of enough research and empirical data.”

On the other …