Sex addiction or hypersexuality: causes, symptoms and treatment

Sex addiction or hypersexuality is a disorder characterized by an urge and an urgent need to have sex. A person with a sex addiction desperately seeks to have relationships, these are usually risky and with a loss of control in sex. This problem can have different causes and must be treated before it generates problems in our intimate life.

Like other types of addiction, hypersexuality can lead to tolerance and dependence. Therefore, a person addicted to sex can end up not enjoying sex and feeling a deep discomfort when he is not intimate. Do you want to know more about the sex addiction, its causes, symptoms and treatment? Then keep reading what you will find below. In the following Psychology-Online article, we are going to talk in detail about sex addiction or hypersexuality.

Index

1. What is sex addiction or hypersexuality?
2. Causes of sexual addictions
3. Hypersexuality: symptoms
4. Diagnostic criteria for hypersexuality
5. Treatment of sex addiction or hypersexuality

Also known as satiriasis or nymphomania, this sexual behavior disorder is characterized by an uncontrollable urge to have sex. It is also defined as

A very curious characteristic of sex addiction is that pleasure during sexual intercourse it tends to decrease (tolerance) and the feeling of discomfort increases in periods when relationships are not maintained (dependence).

This process can be observed in other addictions, such as marijuana addiction or morphine, where the pleasant effects of the substances decrease and discomfort increases when said drug is not consumed.

Does sex addiction really exist?

For a long time this disorder has not been clinically recognized as such, being in most cases hidden by shame of those who suffered from it, and treated frivolously from society. Known for many years under the names of nymphomania (uterine fury) in the case of women or satiriasis (of satyr) in the case of men, currently, it is encompassed under the name of hypersexuality.

Although the DSM-V manual does not recognize this problem, the WHO has decided to include the term hypersexuality and high sexual behavior in its international classification of diseases.^[1]. So it is established as a risk disorder that should be treated.

Although there is still no clear profile of the sex addict, it can be pointed out that it affects approximately 6% of the population, being mostly men between 20 and 40 years old, although it also affects women, in both cases without distinction of social class or education.

As well pointed out addiction experts (Echeburúa and Corral, 1999^[2]; Potenza, 2006^[3]) the causes of sex addiction are more linked to the relief of discomfort than to the search for sexual intercourse itself. Sex addiction is also characterized because the behavior is not purely sexual (there is no activation of desire), rather, the intimate relationship is sought to try to "escape" from a situation of internal discomfort or reduce a state of anxiety.

Hypersexuality: main causes

Normally, this pathology does not appear in isolation, but is usually one more symptom, generated and maintained by other types of problems such as anxiety disorders low self-esteem, abuse in childhood, deficiencies in social skills, difficulties with impulse control and even Bipolar disorder, alternating periods of a lot of activity and lack of control in sexual behavior with others of relative calm, and even abstinence, related to the constant mood swings that these women usually suffer people.

We can ask ourselves when a sexual behavior, no matter how common it is, is transferred the threshold of being considered normal to be considered a pathology. Well, here Rojas Marcos helps us with the definition of it to delimit it “Any type of obsession that interferes with the ability of the person to lead a normal life, and that harms them in their personal and work relationships is a pathology".

• We can expand the concept by specifying that this specific pathology begins to be such when sex stops being used as a source of pleasure to become a way to evade us other types of problems, we are unable to control the impulse, and carrying it out not only does not give us satisfaction, but also makes us feel guilty and increase our discomfort, entering a spiral where to reduce this discomfort we fall back into the behavior that produced it.
• In reality, hypersexuality in its origin is comparable to any other type of dependency, such as drugs, alcohol or gambling; we could talk about addictive personalities with a tendency to develop addictions, substitute one for another, or even a combination of several at the same time, so the problem is more basic, and cannot be treated in isolation.
• Like any other dependency, it is related to neurochemical changes that are produced in our brain, in this case caused by sexual intercourse, continuously looking for the sensations that These changes report that they are not only related to pleasure itself, and trying to eliminate the syndrome of abstinence.

In this addiction, there is also a progressive escalation looking for increasingly intense stimuli, if the first step can be the fantasies, soon it goes to the compulsive masturbation and to massive consumption of pornography, when this is not enough, disorderly and uncontrolled sexual relations begin, in dates or one-night stands with strangers wanted anywhere such as going to prostitution, and in many cases even leaving aside protection against transmitted diseases sexual.

As we have said before, the DSM-V diagnostic manual ended up declining the proposal to introduce sex addiction in its new edition. However, in that same incorporation proposal, the following diagnostic criteria were defined:

TO. For at least six months, recurring and intense sexual fantasies and compelling sexual desire, as well as sexual behaviors associated with four or more of the following five criteria:

1. Excessive amount of time spent on sexual fantasies and desires, as well as planning and performing sexual behaviors.
2. Repeated sexual fantasies, desires, and behaviors in response to dysphoric moods (p. g., anxiety, depression, boredom, irritability).
3. Repeated sexual fantasies, desires, and behaviors in response to stressful life situations.
4. Persistent but unsuccessful attempts to control or significantly reduce sexual fantasies, desires, and behaviors.
5. Repeated involvement in sexual behaviors ignoring the physical, psychological or emotional risk that it may pose to himself or to other people.

B. The frequency or intensity of sexual fantasies, desires and behaviors cause discomfort clinically significant or impairment of social, work, or other important areas of the person's activity.

C. Sexual fantasies, desires, and behaviors are not due to physiological effects direct of a substance (p. g., a drug, a medicine) or to manic episodes.

D. The subject is older than 18 years-old.

Note: these diagnostic criteria have been fully extracted from the report "Does sex addiction really exist?"(Echeburúa, 2012, p.3)

It is important to re-emphasize the difference between a very active sex life more or less promiscuous that does not pose us problems and where we are satisfied with ourselves, of the cases in which this activity dominates us, controls us and causes us negative feelings.

Normally, a consultation is attended when personal problems with our partner and our environment have been made unsustainable, or we have even had problems with the law for some type of sexual abuse, dealing with minors, voyeurism, public scandal etc.

How to treat sexual addictions?

Whether for male hypersexuality or for treating female hypersexuality, the treatment should be tailored to the case and not to the sex or gender of the person.

As always, the main thing is admit and accept the problem, from there the treatment is usually based on the cognitive behavioral therapy, combined in many cases with drugs and sexological counseling, and on a fundamental and specific basis in this addiction: an alcoholic can and should give up alcohol, just like a gambler the game, however a A bulimic cannot stop eating to cure the addiction, nor can a sex addict do without it completely, because it is a fundamental part of the human being, and this would be to skirt the problem without solving it, therefore it is a question of identifying what triggers this compulsion and learning to control the impulse when it is not appropriate.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Sex addiction or hypersexuality: causes, symptoms and treatment, we recommend that you enter our category of Addictions.

1. Ministry of Health. (2010). International classification of diseases.
2. Echeburúa, E. (1999). Addictions... without drugs? The new addictions (gambling, sex, food, shopping, work, Internet). Bilbao: Desclée de Brouwer
3. Potenza, M. (2006). Should addictive disorders include non-substance related conditions? Addiction, 101 (Suppl. 1), 142-151.

• Echeburúa, E. (2012). Does sex addiction really exist? Addictions, 24(4), 281-286.