TREATMENT FOR SEX ADDICTION: "Brainlock" -- A Behavioral Modification Program.
"Brainlock, a 4-Step Self-help Guide for Treating OCD" is a book written by Jeffrey Schwartz, M.D., a physician who spent most of his career treating and doing research on Obsessive/Compulsive (OCD) behaviors. His has developed a four-part program self-help program that can be used for any unwanted compulsive urges, desires and behaviors.
Let's go through Dr. Schwartz's four-part program. It is similar to what I've written about Relapse Prevention, but the point can's be driven home enough – that if you immediately change your behavior when you get an urge, the changed behavior will sooner of later create new neuro-pathways in your brain that will re-enforce your abstinence.
Step 1. "RELABEL"
You learn to Relabel unwanted fantasies, urges and behaviors. Call them what they are in reality: the voice of your addiction. Addiction is a biological condition that has to do with an imbalance of certain endorphins, mainly dopamine and serotonin. It sends false messages from your brain, and you are to recognize them as such. You must make a conscious effort to stay grounded in reality because you must strive to avoid being tricked into thinking that a sexual urge or craving is based on a real need. It is not.
Your sexual urges are symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, combined with an impulse-control disorder, both of which are medical issues. Relabeling simply means calling the unwanted cravings and urges by their real names – the voices of your addiction.
This is war and the enemy is the addiction monster in you. When overwhelmed by cravings, you can say to yourself "It's not me – it's the addiction." You work constantly to prevent confusing your true self with the voice of addiction.
I've been in AA recovery for 33 years. When I first started going to meetings, I would hear, from time to time, someone say "The Disease Talks to Me". What that meant, I had no clue. It took years of recovery before I could cultivate a sense of myself as a whole person who heard the voice of the addiction as something that was there, but IT WAS NOT ME. A kind of separation had occurred between my true self and my addictive self. All these years later, the addiction still whispers in my ear from time to time, but I get amused, I don't listen to it, and let it go on it's way so that I can engage in behaviors that are either productive or enjoyable and have no negative consequences to my self-esteem.
The Impartial Spectator
Dr. Swartz, I think, may have been trained by a Buddhist-teacher. The development of the "Impartial Spectator" evolves through Mindfulness Meditation.
As I wrote in my article on relapse prevention, mindfulness awareness is essential to a sexual recovery program. Awareness requires you to consciously recognize and make a mental note of a disturbed feeling or urge. Your goal is to observe them rather than act on them. When you develop a relationship with "The Impartial Spectator", you can step back and say to yourself, "This is just my brain sending me a false message. If I change my behavior at the point of the urge, I'll actually be changing how your brain works."
Once a person with a compulsive disorder learns behavior therapy and resolves to change his response to an intrusive sexualized thought or fantasy by not performing a pathological behavior, a willful resolve gradually kicks in because a sense of personal empowerment starts to develop.
