Topic: human-sexuality

Question: How can I control my sexual urges?

Answer (from Kristi King-Morgan, LMSWSocial Worker, Psychotherapist):
Anything can become an addiction.  Eating, gambling, shopping, sex, even exercising.  It sounds like this has become a behavioral addiction for you.  A therapist can help you identify the underlying reasons and help you learn to control the urges and develop healthier coping skills. People turn to an activity that makes them feel better when something is bothering them emotionally or mentally.  Anything can become a problem if you overuse it.  This is why it is important to have a healthy balance of activities in your life; more than one thing that you can turn to in order to help you cope.  Addictions are formed when we turn to the same thing over and over again.  Sex is a very powerful addiction for some people.  It makes us feel good.  We get pleasure from it. I had a client that turned to eating as her “addiction.”  The advice I gave her applies to your situation as well.  Eating is something that we have to do and that an addict cannot “cold turkey” and walk away from.  My client could not tell when she felt the urge to eat if it was because she was hungry or because she was upset about something and was subconsciously turning to food to make her feel better.  Her body was telling her brain that she needed to eat.  I asked her to first STOP and THINK when she felt the urge to eat.  Look at the clock and mark the time.  Tell herself that in one hour if she was still hungry then she could eat, but that she needed to find something else to occupy her mind and her time until the hour had passed.  She tried this for a week.She said it worked.  She would get busy reading a book, watching TV, or would go for a walk around her neighborhood for exercise and these activities would take her mind off things and the hour would pass and she wouldn’t even notice the time.  What this did for her was stop an unhealthy behavior and replace it with some healthier activities.  She had to learn to first recognize when she was feeling the urge, and then to come up with other activities to do instead. You can do this with your urges.  Having sexual gratification as your one “go to” method to cope is causing you distress.  Make a list of other activities that you like and that you can engage in, and when you feel the sexual urge, make yourself do another activity for an hour to get your mind off of it.  It may take a few tries to find an activity that will hold your attention.  A habit that has developed over time is not going to be so easy to break.Please go to a medical doctor and get evaluated as well.  They can do lab work and check your hormone levels.  If needed, medication can help.  After being cleared medically, counseling can help you.  You stated that you have a disability that makes it impossible.  A therapist can help you explore the feelings that you are experiencing due to the inability to have sex.  This is a grief/loss issue in the same way that someone who had lost the ability to walk might be grieving over his mobility.  Something that you used to be able to do, now you cannot.  It is expected that you might have some feelings of anger or sadness about this.