"It is a relationship with the self that is flawed. Parts of the self get literally walled off from them. They can't love them," he says. "They can't even access them." Dr. Drew says speaking of Sex Addictions.
Sex addiction isn't as simple as promiscuity. Dr. Drew defines the disease as an intimacy disorder. People who are addicted to sex may be afraid or unfamiliar with intimacy, so they substitute sex for real human closeness.
"Sexuality is something that should make you feel good about yourself," Dr. Drew says. "[When you're a sex addict], you've lost control of your sexuality."
Many sex addicts do have one thing in common. Dr. Drew says 80 to 90 percent suffered trauma as children. "If you have a history of trauma, particularly sexual trauma, in childhood, you want to look very carefully at this behavior," he says.
In fact, Dr. Drew says these terrorizing experiences can influence who you're drawn to as an adult. "The people and places that cause terror in childhood cause attraction in adulthood," he says. "We end up being repetitively attracted to the same kind of person that obliges us by acting out the same behavior over again."
This was on the Oprah show yesterday, and I missed seeing it, but read about it on her website, www.oprah.com
And just a few days ago, my junior high math teacher was arrested for child porn. http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/70303702.html
Unless we start to treat the children who are molested correctly, healing the wound in childhood, they will become the addicts of the future.
It is so incredible to me. We have to stop the cycle at the child, or not be surprised with the outcome of adult children of abuse.
The first question most ask me about my parents, “were they abused?”
Most realize that this is a cycle, that it began in childhood, but we fail to see the child today who is the victim, and that the child needs huge amounts of treatment to undo the abuse.
Sure we must put away the abuser, the one whose life has run amuck since his abuse, but we must stop the problem with the injured child today.
We spend lots of money on the abuser, and nothing on the child.
It seemed backwards then, how the defense team comes in and rescues my father from jail, how the focus is on him. Yet no one came into rescue the wounded girls.
Most were too old and seen ‘useless’ for the trial, yet we were the most wounded, for we have added to that wound unknowingly.
We are left with a wrecked view of self, unable to access the part of us that lived prior to the abuse.
The outrage we feel towards the molester, may be society’s guilt at not dealing with the child years ago.
Our guilt and shame at ourselves for not facing and healing this wounded one.
As I sit here I know what wasn’t done for me.
How we are left alone flipped upside down and backwards, while most want to pretend we are normal.
There is no normal after that.
It is insanity to think so.
Yet we are fooled and surprised when an adult child of abuse abuses, for that is the only love/attention they have ever known.
Each time we neglect an abused child another abuser is born.
Hurt people, hurt people.
An abused person either lives as a victim or a perp.
Those are the only two choices.
The third choice must come in, a new way of dealing, healing and owning what is really going on.
It is time we focus all eyes on the child’s wound.
