Are You a Sex Addict?

Are You a Sex Addict? A 'diagnosis' of sexual addiction is highly subjective. In a sense, it cannot be made by anyone other than the person concerned. We have identified four main questions that may help explain what you are feeling:

QUESTION 1. Does your behaviour preoccupy you and/or does it feel out of control?

• You plan to look at adult material on the Internet for an hour and then find that you have stayed on much longer that you wanted
• You use escorts out of a sense of need or fun, and then find that several sexual encounters follow one after another and it's never enough
• You engage in the behaviour in spite of the obvious harmful consequences

QUESTION 2. Do you try to stop and find that you cannot really stay stopped?

• You throw out the magazines, videos, and DVDs in disgust and then you start to collect them all over again
• You vow to yourself or to your partner that 'you are never going to do it again'...and then it starts all over again, sometimes right away sometimes eventually

QUESTION 3. Does your behaviour bring with it real and/or potential harmful consequences?

• Your behaviour causes you to feel really bad about yourself
• It disturbs your marriage and family life
• There are financial losses, sometimes spending outside your means
• You risk exposure to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections
• You risk job loss or professional embarrassment

QUESTION 4. Do you think that your behaviour might be unwittingly used by you to anaesthetize some other, difficult to pinpoint, negative feeling state? People commonly discover in treatment that the behaviour has been used to anaesthetise some or all of the following:

• Chronic low self worth
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Stress at home or work
• Anger
• Core loneliness
• Boredom
• Problems and bad feelings in the marriage or partnership
• Shame and guilt

If you recognise yourself in the descriptions above then it's probably worth looking at having an initial consultation with a professional in the field of sexual addiction or attending a sexual recovery meeting to help you discover more information about these feelings.

You are welcome to contact us through email or call our clinic on 020 7224 3532 for an initial consultation or just to get further information.