Four decades of healing history, the top experts in an often-misunderstood field, and the most advanced approaches to address a wide range sexual addiction and behavioral disorders.
Our comprehensive program addresses sexual addictions, unresolved trauma, and co-occurring issues, going beyond symptoms to explore root issues and lay the groundwork for lasting healing.
Group and one-on-one therapy are just the beginning. We employ a wide range of methods and modalities, including valuable peer support, to address each person’s unique needs.
Let us help you determine if our program is right for your situation, discuss insurance coverage, payment options, and let you know what to expect upon arriving at treatment.
Change takes work, but it can’t be harder than living with unresolved addiction, trauma, and other disorders. If you or someone you love needs help, we’re ready and waiting.
By Alanna Hilbink
When we start the conversation about sex addiction, some of the first questions often asked are, Is sex addiction real? And, Can a sex addiction be a mental health disorder? Sex addiction may be one of the most misunderstood, maligned, or even flatly denied addictions. However, compulsive sexual behavior disorder is recognized in the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases, and we at Gentle Path at The Meadows understand how compulsive sexual behavior impacts your life.
After talking with clinical experts like our Executive Director, Scott Davis, it is evident that sex addiction is very real, as are its effects. But most importantly, hope for a healthy, happy future is also real.
One of the biggest challenges in understanding and identifying compulsive sexual behavior disorder, or any behavior disorder, is finding the line between participating in an aspect of everyday life, and doing so problematically. When is sex healthy? When are actions like affairs just affairs? And when is there a bigger problem?
Compulsive sexual behavior disorder, also called sex addiction and hypersexuality, is an inability to control sexual impulses. It is not a specific number of partners, or the amount of sex or total hours of porn viewed, but rather, as Davis says, “It is about the way they have sex; it is about the way that they engage or ritualize it that makes it an addiction and makes it unhealthy.”
When sexual behaviors are your focus and they’ve become repetitive and ritualized, consuming your thoughts and actions to the detriment of other areas of your life, sex has become unhealthy. You may experience real, negative consequences in your life resulting from your sexual behaviors, yet continue to engage in them. You may try to stop or reduce your behaviors and find you cannot. You may not even enjoy or find pleasure from some of the things you do. If you or a loved one experiences any of these signs of sex addiction, it’s time to reach out. Our clinical experts can help you unravel what’s going on in your life and match you with the best type and level of treatment, treatment that will get to the root cause of your sex addiction.
Because there is so much stigma around hypersexuality, it can be hard to understand that sex addiction isn’t a personal failing. But Davis explains that when it comes to compulsive sexual behavior disorder, your thoughts and behaviors are rooted in trauma and ritualization. When you face emotional challenges in childhood or later in life, you are limited in how you are able to cope or self-soothe. Ritualizing sexual behavior creates a sense of control. It offers an accessible “solution” to emotional, physical, or spiritual neglect or abuse. Unfortunately, as sexual behaviors become more and more ritualized, this solution does more harm than good.
Few mental health concerns exist in a vacuum. They are rooted in our experiences, our neglect, or our trauma, and often in our other mental health concerns. Davis sees the connection between sex addiction, personality disorders, and drug or alcohol addiction. These other issues are often easier to identify, to recognize as a problem, or to admit to and talk about than sex addiction. But he stresses that sex addiction and substance use often become “fused” addictions where one leads to the other. Or if one stops, the other will start.
Sex addiction and substance use often become “fused” addictions where one leads to the other. Or if one stops, the other will start.
If you don’t address underlying and co-occurring mental health issues, you aren’t finding lasting health and recovery. You’ll find another unhealthy coping mechanism or outlet for your emotions, and this other outlet may lead you right back to the sex or substance use issues you started with.
Treating sex addiction doesn’t mean a life of abstinence. Davis says, “Sex is a healthy part of any relationship; it’s a healthy part of our culture.” And it can be a healthy part of your life. But reaching a point where sex is healthy, where you recognize your and others’ boundaries, where you know your triggers, takes work. It takes work, and it takes expert, comprehensive treatment.
At Gentle Path at The Meadows, we believe sex addiction, like all addiction, is based in trauma. Therefore, as Davis says, “We’re going to treat the trauma as well as the addictive behavior. You can’t do one without the other. You have to do good trauma treatment, and you have to do good addiction treatment.” Which is what we do at Gentle Path. We have staff therapists with different specialties, therapists who understand trauma, who understand addiction, who understand the different forms sex addiction can take. They are also therapists who will understand you.
Reach out today. Our experts can help you assess what is hypersexuality, what else may be complicating your life and your health, and what is the best next step for finding lifelong balance, health, and recovery.
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