How sex addiction and porn addiction cause loneliness and low self-esteem
Today we reach the end of our 4-part blog series on the links between common mental health challenges and porn addiction and sex addiction, also known as compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (CSBD). We have looked at the links with anxiety and depression and also with anger. Today we will look at how loneliness and low self-esteem often cause and maintain unwanted sexual behaviours. And we’re looking at them together because so often they go hand in hand.
Low self-esteem and porn addiction
People with low self-esteem often isolate themselves and become lonely, and people who feel lonely often have low self-esteem – it’s a vicious cycle. When we struggle with low self-esteem, we want to protect ourselves from being hurt; from being rejected. And one way of ensuring we don’t feel unwanted or unimportant is to keep ourselves to ourselves and become a loner. Low self-esteem can also feed into loneliness because it’s a major cause of jealousy. If you feel you have little worth then inevitably you may question other people’s feelings for you; no matter how much someone says they love you, you will still question it. At the end of the day, if we can’t accept ourselves it’s very hard to believe that others will. And those doubts can leave us terrified that our loved ones will find someone ‘better than us’ and we so we use acting out to numb the fears and to seek validation.
Low self-esteem is a particularly corrosive emotion because it can eat into almost every area of our lives. It’s often caused by the emotions we’ve been talking about in earlier blogs: anger, depression, anxiety, but like loneliness, it also causes them. When we have low self-esteem we’re fearful of criticism and making mistakes and so we can become anxious and hyper-sensitive to criticism. And if we’re hyper-sensitive to criticism we may struggle with anger and throughout all of this the chronic and ongoing self-doubt often leads to depression.
It’s probably worth making a quick distinction here between low self-esteem and low self-confidence. Many people with low self-esteem are very confident. They are successful in many different walks of life and they are confident in ‘what they do’, but when it comes to ‘who they are’, that’s a different story. The shame and secrecy that so often surrounds sex and porn addiction leaves many otherwise confident people struggling with chronically low self-esteem.
How to beat porn addiction
As we’ve said earlier in this series, getting into recovery means letting go of old coping mechanisms and building a life where old behaviours are no longer wanted or needed. Regrettably many people find their self-esteem is at its lowest in early recovery, especially if they’ve been ‘found out’. Building a positive sense of self-worth is critical for recovery because it will stop you from turning to acting out to bolster a fragile ego and it will give you the courage to develop meaningful and fulfilling relationships to overcome loneliness.
So, let’s look at how we do that. How do we rebuild self-esteem?
Well first and foremost, you need to identify when and where it got broken in the first place. That means looking at relationships with parents and also friends and early relationships. This is one area where the messages we get from friends in our teenage years are equally as important, and in some cases more important than the ones we get from parents and primary care givers. Self-esteem is about the image we project to others, or rather the image we ‘think’ we project to others. And much of that image is formed in adolescence. If you think of a tree, the fruit is self-esteem. The roots are the messages we pick up in early childhood. If our parents show that we’re wanted and valuable, then chances are we’ll have a strong root system. But if we feel unwanted in childhood, or unimportant and disrespected your roots will be weaker. However – if we’re in the right environment and we’re nurtured – for example by teachers or friends or within romantic and sexual relationships, then our root system can continue to develop and we can still look forward to developing the fruit of self-esteem. Some people don’t get that nurturing until even later in life. At university or within the workplace; the great news is that it’s never too late to improve our self-esteem, but the only way to do it is in relationship with others.
Groupwork and sex addiction
This is why groupwork is one of the most important services that we offer our clients. If it’s something you’ve not tried before, then why not sign up to our Kick Start Workshop and find out more. Or talk to your therapist. I’ll leave you with some feedback from one of our recent recovery programmes:
“I have made some real progress towards recovery during the course and met some friends for life!”
“With expert guidance and the fellowship of the other men in the group I truly believe that I can become the best version of myself.”
“I owe this course my life. For the first time in a very long time I feel positive about the future and in control. Even once the course ends, it’s not actually over. I now have a group of friends to meet up with weekly. We support each other’s company and have a great time doing it. I can’t thank my therapist and the Laurel Centre enough.”
For more details on our face to face and our online group recovery programmes click on this link.
