Tiger Woods and Sexual Addiction?

Coach John, can you tell us a little bit about sexual addiction and how to recognize it? With Tiger Woods in rehab for sexual addiction, I’d like to know a bit more about how one can be treated for such an addiction. Thanks.

Dear Dr Kathy
Sex addiction may be one of the hardest to define and treat. There is much more grey area with sexual addiction than any other addiction. With other addictions you can usually see fairly clear black and white evidence of the addictions consequences. With sexual addiction it can be more subjective. But any obsessive behavior that overrides rational thinking can be considered an addiction.

I like to think of addiction as a vain attempt to fill a spiritual need with a material substance.
Also, most addictions are usually a form of emotional pain relief. I vain attempt to fill “a hole in the soul”.

Addicts of all kinds repeatedly pursue a fix from their environment to fill an emptiness they feel inside that that they wrongly think can be satisfied by material means. This comes from not being able to accept life as it is and thinking that if they can change things externally somehow it will keep them satisfied.

The addict wrongly thinks that a quick fix will satisfy them long term, and it never does, so it creates a vicious cycle. Donald Trump wants more money and power. Mike Tyson wants money and fame. Drug addicts want to feel good all the time at any cost. Sex addicts want to feel pleasure now anyway they can get it.

My definition of an addict is someone who really doesn’t care about anything else but their fix.

It all comes from not being happy and satisfied with the way they are inside right now. I’m not saying that we should blindly accept every situation we are in and not do anything about it, but I am saying that some things in life need to be accepted because we can’t change them with external fixes when they are fundamentally internal matters related to selfishness.

The bottom line is that most addicts need to change something about themselves and instead they try to change their world. That is why I advocate the various 12 step programs. If worked properly, the 12 steps force the addict to take a very close look at themselves and challenges them to change their addictive behavior.

The best thing about 12 steps programs is that they provide a place where others just like themselves meet and help each other work through the same issues together. Unfortunately addicts usually can only hear advise and solutions from others who have been where they are and changed for the better. This is because by the time they seek treatment they have lost hope and need to see actual proof that someone like themselves can get better.

The only hope for an addict is to see that the addiction is causing more problems than any short term enjoyment they still might get from their fix. The fix becomes so automatic that the addict can’t see beyond it to realize that something else might actually work better.

12 step programs help addicts to move beyond their addiction to live life as a part of it, instead of constantly trying to change it to suit themselves.

Thank you for the great question Dr Kathy. I hope I was able to answer your question.
Coachjohn