Behavioral addiction, whats that all about?

Many of us are familiar with addiction to substances, the most common of course being towards nicotine. People these days are better equipped to recognize addiction as metal health awareness has increased over the past few years. However, many people would be hard pressed to know that behaviors too can also be addictive. Currently there are two entries within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for behavioral addictions and they are, Non-Substance-Related Disorders and Gambling Disorder.

Outside of these two the APA does not recognize others such as porn addiction, sex addiction, and device addiction. The reasons for such a decision are interesting but would fall outside the main point of this article, so for now we'll get back to the title: Behavioral addiction, what's that all about?

To help answer this question lets look at an example: John Doe is married and lives with his spouse and two children. However, over the past year John Doe has been using apps on his phone to meet with strangers and have sex with them. John Doe notes that it started with one or two partners in the first month but has increased as he became more familiar with how to organize these meet ups. John now having been doing this has likely thought about the risks involved with continuing to do this.

He may get caught by his partner, contract a sexually transmitted infection, and many other unpleasant outcomes. Yet, John Doe despite having awareness of the risks continues to engage in this behavior. Months pass by and eventually John Doe's partner finds out, they work things out and John Doe promises to stop. For a while this works, but John Doe still thinks about having sexual encounters. Then he begins to explore those old websites and apps he used to use, and sure enough he begins to communicate with one or two people without ever moving past that until one day he does. 

John Doe then is back where he started. This example is actually quite common among people who struggle with sexual addiction. From the outside looking in one might think "Ok, how come John just cant stop?" but there's more going on there. 

In my counseling I view behaviors as systems, these systems are interlinked together to create the outcome which is behavior. The links that make up these systems have unique properties that are necessary for the behavior to be carried out. People are motivated to seek and create efficient systems so that they may engage in highly rewarding behaviors. Such behaviors are difficult to stop on one's own due to the fact that the systems for these behaviors were made by the individual themselves and have been made efficient. That is to say that its easier to continue to participate in one's system than it is to break or modify it. However, in many cases the "rewarding behavior" isn't what many people seek from engaging in their systems.

That is to say, if John Doe seeks the reward of sex, why doesn't he seek that from his partner? Everyone is going to have a different answer for themselves, in my counseling I work with you to answer this exact question and work together to examine your system and change it. If this sounds like you then I encourage you to reach out to me to take the first step towards Healing and Recovery.