How the 12 Steps Heal Sex Addicts: Step Eight

Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

How the 12 Steps Heal Sex Addicts: Step Seven

Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove these shortcomings.

How the 12 Steps Heal Sex Addicts: Step Six

Step 6: Became willing to have these defects removed.

Sexual Addiction: An Overview

You’ve most likely seen sexual addiction depicted in television shows and movies. The addict’s behavior usually garners a chuckle or two and then the character overcomes his or her predicament and all is well. However, like any other addiction, sexual addiction is no laughing matter. Sex addiction, or “sexual compulsion,” refers to an unusually intense sex drive and uncontrollable sexual behavior. The addict becomes overly obsessed with sex, so much so that it negatively impacts other areas of their life including work, relationships, and mental and physical health.

How the 12 Steps Heal Sex Addicts: Step Five

Step 5: Admitted to ourselves, God, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

How the 12 Steps Heal Sex Addicts: Step Four

This Step represents the attempt to review one’s life in as a meticulous and forthright way as possible, listing the action and choices that have caused guilt and shame in oneself, and harm to others. The process of emotional development involves a degree of self-knowledge and self-awareness. This Step is an opportunity for the addict to see repetitive cognitions and behaviors that inhibit this process of growth.

How the 12 Steps Heal Sex Addicts: Step Three

Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.

How the 12 Steps Heal Sex Addicts: Step Two

Step 2: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

How the 12 Steps Heal Sex Addicts: Step One

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over addiction and that our lives had become unmanageable.

The conviction that one can no longer engage in one’s sex addiction becomes an inarguable truth. Denial breaks down as the sex addict increasingly sees that to give way to the impulse to "pick up" has far-reaching and devastating consequences.

There are two facets of this concept in the first Step. The first "surrender," and surely the most significant, is this deep conviction that one is powerless over one’s sex addiction. One surrenders to the reality that they can never act on the impulse to "pick up." "One day at a time" is a truth that becomes an incontrovertible fact as sex addiction recovery progresses.

The second facet is that the sex addict is really surrendering their sense of uniqueness.

By Dorothy Hayden, LCSW
www.sextreatment.com

Sex Tourism Industry May Attract as Many as 40 Percent of International Tourists in Some Countries

In a shocking statistic, a recent philStar news report says that as many as 40 percent of men who travel to the Philippines for recreation are seeking sex. Officials are striving to toughen penalties and investigations for what they describe as human trafficking. The practice has also been referred to as sex tourism, and officials could also create new prosecutions for people who engage in cybersex.