those who had ridiculed him the most.
When evening came, the boys ganged up on him and forced him to engage in sexual acts against his will. As the night progressed he participated without being forced. That was the beginning of a lifelong fascination with forced sex. Through the years he spent thousands of hours fantasizing about being forced to be sexual. Sometimes he envisioned himself as the one forcing someone else to be sexual against his or her will.
As an adult, Jed sought out pornography involving bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism (BDSM). He started seeking out people he could pay to engage in BDSM behaviors and to abuse and humiliate him. Jed felt his sex life was a bit twisted, but until he got into therapy he never made the connection between his early sexual abuse and his sexual proclivities as an adult.
When I was ten, I found some soft-core porn magazines hidden in my father’s dresser . . . I would sneak them out and masturbate to the images every time I was home alone. How do I stop feeling guilty about doing that?
First, it is crucial for adults to recognize that having pornography that can be found by children is a covert form of child sexual abuse. Children are naturally curious. They will check out every nook, cranny, and “secret” place in their environment. If pornography is in the home, at some point a normal curious child will likely find it.
Unfiltered and unsupervised access to the Internet also puts children at risk of being exposed to pornography. The average age of first exposure to Internet pornography has commonly been reported to be age eleven. There is some evidence that this number is decreasing to as young as nine. However, protecting children from harmful Internet sites at home is not enough since access to the Internet is ubiquitous.
The original question concerned guilty feelings you have over childhood behavior. Healing begins with realizing that you were a child with a normal curiosity about sex. As an adult, it is time to recognize that you were a child and forgive that ten-year-old boy for doing things that ten-year-old boys do.
A person who is physically abused in their formative years is at risk of developing addiction or multiple forms of addiction as a coping mechanism.
I was brutally whipped by my father many times until I was a teenager. Could this abuse be partly responsible for my sex addiction?
Although we can never conclusively point to one factor or even multiple factors as the definitive cause for the development of sex addiction, we do know that physical abuse can contribute to it. Abuse like you describe is terrifying. Children may spend increasingly longer periods in fantasy to escape an abusive environment. Sexual fantasies are normal. Yet when a person spends hours a day indulging sexual fantasies, he or she is well on the way to developing sex addiction.
Both of my parents used to slap me a lot when I was a child. I don’t remember acting out sexually until I was about fifteen. Why didn’t I develop sex addiction earlier?
You said you don’t remember acting out sexually when you were much younger. What is your understanding of what constitutes sexual acting out? You may not have physically acted out until you were fifteen, but I wonder how much of your time was spent in sexual fantasy before that. Many people become caught up in fantasizing about sex long before acting out physically.
We know that not everyone who is abused develops addiction. The best we can do is to recognize that there are a variety of contributing factors.
Helen’s Story __________________
Helen’s earliest memories were of her mother telling her that she would never amount to anything. She was constantly being compared to her sisters and told that she wasn’t as smart or as pretty, and that no one would ever want to marry her. By the time Helen entered high school, she had already had many sex partners. She was determined to prove her mother wrong and found there were many people who wanted to be with her and be sexual with her. As an adult, Helen could look back on a long string of failed relationships. With each failure, she heard her mother’s voice in her head mocking her.
When Helen entered treatment for sex addiction, she learned that the hardest work she had to do involved changing the way she thought about herself. With the help of a skilled therapist, she was able to develop a new script for her thoughts and came to believe that she was a person of worth and value. Helen also found she was able to stop her acting out and live in true sexual sobriety. Two years into recovery she met and subsequently married a man who was himself a recovering alcoholic. They have now been married for ten years and believe that the success of their marriage is due to the commitment each of them has to their own recovery.
We recall the children’s rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Not only is this not true, we know that psychological abuse inflicted by unkind words can cause even more damage than physical abuse. Psychological abuse, also referred to as mental or emotional abuse, can contribute to the development of depressive and anxiety disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as addiction. Emotional abuse can take many forms and can include anything from verbal abuse and constant criticism to more subtle tactics, such as intimidation, manipulation, and refusal to ever be pleased.
Sometimes those who are being psychologically abused may not even know it. They may think what they are experiencing is normal—as in the case of an abused child who has not known anything else. Other examples of psychological abuse include efforts to control and dominate, shame, blame, accuse, judge, humiliate, degrade, abandon, neglect, and the “silent treatment.” Children who are psychologically abused may be threatened, cursed, called names, yelled at, mocked, and ignored.
As with other forms of abuse, it is important for the person who has been abused to know that it is not his or her fault. He or she did not cause it. The abuse is the result of the issues and insecurities of the abuser. Behaviors that lead to addiction may be the way a person escapes the pain of his or her abuse.
Religious abuse involves using religion to control or manipulate someone. It is the mistreatment of a person who is seeking spiritual guidance, and may include harassment, intimidation, fear, and guilt trips. Religious teachings may be well-intentioned but taken to extremes or used as a weapon to pressure a person into certain behaviors. The extremes of religious abuse are clear in cases of sexual abuse by priests.
A less well-known example of religious abuse is when an elder of a church pressures a mentally ill person not to take medication but instead to pray harder. Another example is when people are threatened with going to hell or perdition if they engage in certain behaviors. Religious leaders as well as parents may use shame to pressure people to throw away music or books that are thought to be evil. Children are frequently taught in absolutes and that it is wrong to question dogma. They learn that they are not to think for themselves but to accept without question what they are taught. Religious leaders can be authoritarian and narcissistic. Often a very high level of trust is placed in their words, which congregants often accept without question.
Have you been the victim of abuse? It may be helpful to go back through your life, especially the first eighteen years, and make a list of incidents of abuse by category. What kind of abuse occurred? Who was the abuser? How old were you when it happened? How did you
