What Is Sex Addiction: 3 Signs and Symptoms, and Steps to Recovery (11 minutes)

What is Sex Addiction?: 3 Signs & Symptoms, and Mission Critical Steps to Recovery

In this video, Craig Perra, founder of the Mindful Habit System, delves into the complexities of sex addiction and its signs and symptoms.

He explains what sex addiction is, its controversial diagnosis, and how it differs from frequent sexual behavior. Craig also offers a simple definition and outlines the three primary indicators of sex addiction: an inability to stop, feelings of shame and guilt, and habitual lying and hiding.

Drawing on 13 years of coaching high-performing men, he discusses deeper underlying issues like poor coping strategies, lack of purpose, and childhood trauma. Craig emphasizes the importance of creating a healthier relationship with technology, practicing mindfulness, and aggressively pursuing a great life as key steps to recovery.

00:00 Introduction to Sex Addiction
00:50 Defining Sex Addiction 
03:04 The Controversy Around Sex Addiction 
04:42 Three Signs of Sex Addiction
06:49 Understanding the Root Causes
09:15 Steps to Break Free
10:40 Conclusion 

Visit www.mindfulhabithelp.com if you need more help and want to learn more. 

Text PODCAST to 877-356-5573 if you have any questions about our programs.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
All right, So what is sex addiction? The three signs
and symptoms. Let's break it down. If you can't stop,
and if you feel like a piece of you know
what about it, and if you're hiding, lying, sneaking, especially
if you're in a relationship, then this video is for you.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm Craig Pera.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
I'm the founder of the Mindful Habit System and for
the past thirteen years, my wife and I have coached
thousands of high performing men break free and stay free
from compulsive sexual behavior.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
I've lived it. I almost lost.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Everything, and I want to help you understand what's really
going on because it's not what you think. What is
sex addiction. Sex addiction also called compulsive sexual behavior, hyper sexuality,
problematic sexual behavior, and and a whole bunch of other names,
and we'll talk about that in a second, is when
your sexual behavior feels out of control. It's when it

(01:08):
becomes a coping strategy and you don't have choice. And
it's not about how much sex you're having. It's not
just about frequency. You can have a high libido and
not be a sex addict.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
It's how much it's hurting you.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
And before I define sex addiction, I invite you to
broaden your definition from sex addiction to unhealthy sexuality. If
you believe that your sexual energy is one of the
most powerful forces in human nature, and if you believe
with great power comes great responsibility, ask yourself, how are

(01:47):
you honoring and respecting that power?

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Does it own you? Or are you in charge?

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Here's a really simple definition of sex addiction. If you're
engaging in sexual behavior over in old again, despite real consequences,
wasting time, feeling like a piece of garbage, watching it
at work and public. It's sucking the life out of you.
You're lying to a partner and you keep doing it,
and you hate it and you hide it, and you

(02:15):
feel shame about it, and yet you do it again.
That's sex addiction or unhealthy sexuality. And for almost all
of you listening to this video right now, it is
not about sex. I've been treating men for thirteen years
and I have never worked with a client whose primary

(02:36):
problem had anything to do with sex. The behavior, the
acting out, is always the symptom of deeper underlying issues.
It's about escaping, avoiding, numbing out, and inability to express needs,
lack of purpose, shame, poor coping, strategies getting that puff

(02:58):
of dopamine.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
When life feels overwhelming and empty.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
I need to tell you about the sex addiction controversy.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
And you may not know this.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Sex addiction is a very, very controversial diagnosis. The American
Psychiatric Association, after five years of research and field trials,
rejected the sex addiction model for inclusion in the DSM.
The World Health Organization also rejected sex and porn addiction.

(03:31):
And here's what they called it, compulsive sexual behavior disorder.
And it is a process disorder, not an addiction, and
that matters from a treatment perspective. In the American Association
of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists, the oldest and highest
educated group of sexuality professionals, they outright reject it, saying

(03:55):
it does not find that the sexual addiction training and
treatment methods and educational philosophies to be adequately informed by
accurate human sexuality knowledge. Well, goodness, gracious, did you know that?
Have you been in treatment for a long time and
did not know anything about that controversy? I learned it

(04:16):
after almost two decades of traditional sex addiction in twelve
step treatment. Huh what, maybe there's something else out there
that isn't so symptom centric, right, So let's call it
what it really is, a compulsive, destructive pattern of behavior
that ruins lives in relationships.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Whatever you call it.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
If it's wrecking your world, it matters. Now, what are
the three signs of sex addiction? The three red flags?
Number one, you can't stop. You've made promises, you've sworn
it off, but you keep going back. Now, listen, that's
not weakness. Remember I told you this started in childhood
and the wiring. You have a systems problem. We do

(05:01):
not rise to the level of our goals. We fall
to the level of our symptoms. Sex addiction symptom Number two.
You feel like crap about it. Guilt, shame, emptiness when
you reflect on what you were watching, what you were doing,
where you were doing it. You feel horrible about yourself.

(05:23):
You feel like there's different parts of you. You have
a part that wants to do better, that would throw
himself in a car to protect his wife and his children,
who works hard for his family. And then you've got
this other part, this addic part that hijacks agency and
control in response to very specific external stimuli. It takes

(05:44):
over and that internal war is exhausting. The good news
is there's something you can do about it. Sex addiction
symptom and sign number three. You lie and hide, and
you don't have to be in a relationship to be
lying and hiding. So we work with single people too.
You delete messages, you clear your history, you keep secrets.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
You're not honest.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
You may not be overt lying, but you're not being
honest about something that you believe deep in your soul
is very important to your partner in.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Regarding that deep down inside you.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Know, despite all the rationalizations, all the justifications, whatever narrative
you use to justify the behavior, deep down inside, you
knew if she knew, if she saw what you were
looking at and who you were objectifying and what you
were doing, she would be devastated, devastated And you having

(06:42):
that knowledge, Listen, it's okay, that's empathy. You can build
on it. But that knowledge is eating you alive. Where
does it come from? And it is absolutely not about willpower.
Here's what the science says. Let me just break it
down for you easy. First, as a man, we're wired
for variety. We are wired to be more visually stimulated

(07:03):
and using sex poor masturbation to escape this comfort started
in childhood, and the behavior distant and start in childhood.
The lying and the hiding it started in childhood. And
on top of that, many men with these patterns have
childhood issues, attachment issues, trauma, shame, or what I like
to call an intimacy disorder.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
There's always an input that creates the output.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
So if you're lying, compartmentalizing, you've got different parts of you.
Your wife is consistently telling you lack empathy, you have
poor coping strategies, you have.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Low self esteem.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
We use this powerful force to feel better about ourselves,
to deal with stress, anxiety, and fear and feeling worthless
in not being good enough. Sex is very effective short term.
It does help you numb, cope, and escape. And if
you think of how often you have done it and

(08:01):
how often you've done it in secret, calculate your frequency.
I've had some clients get to the tens of thousands
and don't feel bad about that except that reality and say, Okay,
I need to take some serious action because I know
what wires together fires together, so I have to do
something else. I've got to counterbalance that biological psychological evolutionary

(08:27):
drive to numb, coping, escape, and last, but not least,
we're not wired for this men, men, technology, the ease
and how easy it is to find poorn anything you
want to get more devian, to get dark, to find
sugar babies, to have an AI girlfriend, to talk to strangers,

(08:49):
to exchange.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Nude pictures, to download an app.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
You must create a healthy relationship with technology and recognize
that these devices are killing us.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
And in the new definition of masculinity.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
You're in control. You own it, it doesn't own you.
You have to change your relationship with technology. So five,
what do you know about it? If you're stuck in
this loop? What can you do to break free? Number one?
You need to build a smarter system. You need to
take care of yourself. You need distress tolerance skills so
you can be in control. You have to practice mindfulness.

(09:30):
You need community and connection. You need accountability, you need purpose.
You need to prioritize what's important. You need to manage risk.
You need identity change, the deepest level of change, the
deepest level of changes.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
I don't do that anymore.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
I don't poison my body, my family, my relationship with
shit that is making me feel worse about myself. I
do not sabotage the cure because this is such a
difficult problem to solve. Is the aggressive pursuit of a
great life. Here's the good news. You can use this

(10:10):
moment right. You don't have to get lower and lower,
whether it's with me or whether it's with someone else,
whoever you pick. You can use this crisis, the crisis
of discovery and devastating your partner, as a crucible moment,
as the pivot, as the lynchpin to do what you
need to do to control yourself. And the problem is,

(10:33):
controlling yourself is really, really, really hard. So the cure
is the aggressive pursuit of a great life. Give me
a thumbs up and subscribe for more videos like this.
And if you are ready to break the cycles, schedule
a free call with me, not an assistant, but with
me at mindfulhabitthelp dot com.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
Let's go