Interested in working with a porn addiction therapist? Maybe searching for “porn addiction therapists near me” brought you here. Is it worth it to even see one?
If you’ve been struggling with porn addiction and wondering where to turn to next to find freedom, seeing a porn addiction therapist is a step in the right direction. Getting professional help for your addiction allows you to heal the root causes of your struggles so you can finally achieve real, lasting recovery. As you begin exploring porn addiction therapists near you, here’s what you can expect when you start seeing one.
Working With a Porn Addiction Therapist: Credentials and Expertise
As you’re reading this, you may have already tried to quit porn many times and failed. By now, you may have also learned that overcoming porn addiction requires more than personal discipline, willpower, or even porn blockers alone. You need professional help. Realizing this—and asking for help—takes courage and strength.
And a porn addiction therapist can provide the help you need to fully heal. A porn addiction therapist is typically a certified sex addiction therapist, or CSAT for short. A porn addiction is a form of sexual addiction or hypersexual disorder, after all.
A CSAT therapist has the schooling and credentials to work with people struggling with various forms of sexual addiction. They can even work with partners or spouses of those struggling as well. The CSAT credential means your porn addiction therapist has received extensive training in various sexual addictions, including porn addiction. Before obtaining CSAT credentials, the therapist must already:
- Have a master’s degree in counseling, psychology, or related field
- Be a fully licensed mental health practitioner
- Have a license to practice as a counselor, therapist, social worker, etc. without supervision
- Have at least 5 years of direct experience as a counselor or therapist
In other words, your porn addiction therapist knows what they’re doing, especially with a CSAT at the end of their name. To ensure their expertise is up-to-date, a CSAT therapist is also required to renew their certification every two years so they can stay on the forefront of the latest treatment and expertise.
Trauma-Informed Care From a Porn Addiction Therapist
Your porn addiction therapist will also be qualified to provide trauma-informed care as part of the therapy process. Trauma-informed care, according to the University at Buffalo, understands and considers the pervasive nature of trauma and its impact. Consequently, trauma-informed care intentionally focuses on providing an environment of healing and recovery so clients don’t become retraumatized.
A porn addiction counselor or therapist is well-aware of the impact that past types of trauma can have on your emotional, psychological, social, and physical aspects of your life. Leading with empathy, the therapist will come alongside you as a partner, rather than a distant authority figure. They’ll uphold a number of trauma-informed principles in the therapeutic process, including:
- Safety: Ensuring clients and staff feel physically and emotionally safe
- Peer support: Peer support in recovery is key in establishing trust, building safety and hope, fostering collaboration, and utilizing real-world experience to achieve healing
- Trustworthiness and transparency: Treatment decisions are made with the goal of building trust between clients and staff
- Collaboration and mutuality: Partnership is emphasized, leveling power differences between staff and clients
- Empowerment, voice, and choice: Clients have a part to play in their own healing and are empowered to discover and build upon their strengths
SOURCE: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
Healing the Root Causes of Porn Addiction
But why is trauma-informed care important in porn addiction recovery? Like many addictions, an addiction to porn is often rooted in the lingering effects of untreated past trauma. If people are dealing with the fallout of trauma in their lives (especially trauma from adverse childhood experiences), they can easily seek out feel-good experiences like porn, sex, drugs, or alcohol to cope. After all, trauma can affect your emotional regulation skills, making it harder to manage negative emotions, difficult feelings, and stress in healthy ways.
A porn addiction therapist will know how to uncover and address any past trauma driving your addiction. As a result, you’re able to heal from the underlying trauma responsible for your addiction, paving the way for you to learn how to stop watching porn for good.
Evaluating for Co-Occurring Disorders
Like untreated trauma, porn addiction can also be tied to co-occurring disorders. Co-occurring disorders are a combination of addiction and mental health disorders experienced at the same time. Common mental health issues alongside porn addiction can include:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Bipolar disorder
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
In fact, past trauma can lead to the presence of mental health issues. Just as you may use porn to cope with trauma’s effects, you can do the same for your mental health disorder. This can eventually lead to a porn addiction and struggling with co-occurring disorders in the process.
A porn addiction therapist will evaluate the presence of co-occurring disorders in your life. This evaluation is really important: both disorders tend to impact each other. If you address your porn addiction symptoms but leave your underlying mental health disorder untreated, your worsening mental health disorder can eventually drive you to addiction again. Both need to be addressed if you want to find true, long-term recovery.
If you have co-occurring disorders, a porn addiction therapist at a dual diagnosis treatment center can address both disorders simultaneously. This puts you in the best position to overcome porn addiction and your mental health challenges all at once.
A Comprehensive Porn Addiction Treatment Program
When you’re seeking help for porn addiction, you’re not necessarily visiting a porn addiction therapist one-on-one at their office every few weeks. Instead, working with a porn addiction specialist or therapist typically involves participating in a porn addiction treatment program.
A porn addiction treatment program is typically more intensive, requiring you to temporarily live onsite at a treatment facility in residential treatment. At Integrative Life Center in Nashville, TN, we offer a residential porn addiction treatment program in a comfortable, serene setting. Our 28-day program includes:
- 35 hours of gender-separate programming per week
- Two individual therapy sessions with CSAT porn addiction therapist
- House-prepared and catered meals
- Nutritional support
- Spiritual guidance
- Nursing supervision, psychiatric care, and medication management
- Virtual partner support program (especially helpful for betrayal trauma)
In residential treatment, you receive 24/7 care. This allows you to solely focus on your recovery away from porn triggers and distractions that can lead to porn addiction relapse. During this time, your porn addiction therapist team partners alongside you to address any trauma, co-occurring disorders, and other root causes of your addiction. You’ll also learn valuable coping skills to help you stay the course long-term.
While seeing a porn addiction counselor in treatment, you may participate in both individual and group therapy sessions. In our treatment programming at Integrative Life Center, for example, we take a holistic approach with therapy, incorporating both evidence-based treatment and experiential therapies. This allows us to address your mind, body, and spirit so you can achieve whole-person healing and better overall wellness.
Reclaim Your Life at Integrative Life Center
With a porn addiction, it can feel like your life is no longer your own. But working with a porn addiction therapist team in porn addiction treatment can help you reclaim your life from porn. If you’re ready to break free from addiction’s grip and become your authentic self, we can help at Integrative Life Center. Take our FREE porn addiction quiz as a first step or contact our team today to get started.
The post Seeing a Porn Addiction Therapist: What to Expect appeared first on Integrative Life Center.
source https://integrativelifecenter.com/intimacy-disorders/seeing-a-porn-addiction-therapist-what-to-expect/
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