Compulsive Sexual Behaviour & Porn Use
Compulsive Sexual Behaviour & Porn Use
If your sexual thoughts, urges or behaviour feel out of your control, or your relationship with pornography is causing you distress, this is a space to understand what's going on without shame or judgement.
Is this you?
- I feel my sexual behaviour is out of my control
- I've tried to stop or cut down and haven't been able to
- My use of pornography feels compulsive, or is affecting my relationship
- I feel shame or secrecy around my sexual thoughts or behaviour
- This is affecting my relationship, work or sense of self
- I'm not sure if what I'm experiencing counts as a 'problem', I just know it's affecting me
Understanding compulsive sexual behaviour
Compulsive sexual behaviour describes patterns of sexual thought or activity that feel difficult to control and that are causing distress or harm in your life. It isn't about judging any particular sexual interest, fantasy or preference as wrong. What matters clinically is whether the behaviour feels out of your control and whether it's causing you distress, not what the behaviour itself is.
This work is approached without shame, and without treating any particular sexual interest, including kink, as inherently a problem.
What can contribute to this
- Using sex or pornography as a way of managing stress, anxiety or difficult emotions
- Patterns that developed early and have become harder to shift over time
- Underlying anxiety, low mood or past experiences that haven't been addressed
- Shame itself, which can often make the behaviour harder to change, not easier
How therapy can help
- Understand what the behaviour is doing for you emotionally
- Reduce shame, which often reduces the grip of the behaviour itself
- Build alternative ways of managing difficult feelings
- Repair trust and communication with a partner, where relevant