Dear Clients, Colleagues, and Community Members,
I am writing this post in the aftermath of the Atlanta, GA, spa shootings. As a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist & Supervisor (CSAT-S), I have considered whether or not to weigh in on this horrible tragedy since sex addiction has been mentioned in the media, and at this point, I have decided to share my thoughts.
First, I’d like to clearly state that, as a therapist and a woman in recovery for over two decades, these are my thoughts, and I speak only for myself. I do not represent any other therapists or persons in recovery from sex addiction.
Sex addiction is a very real addiction that creates much pain for the addicted person, as well as those around the addict. The ‘debate’ regarding whether sex addiction is a valid addiction has long been refuted with numerous peer-reviewed research studies that have been the focus of many of my academic colleagues for the past two decades. The World Health Organization in 2018 validated sex addiction as an actual disease, and it will be called Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD) in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the mental health workers’ primary resource in regards to diagnosing patients and filing insurance.
The debate is over. Sex addiction exists, and it is a very real addiction. Sex addiction is not glamorous or shiny, rather it is insidious and disgusting.
The Atlanta spa shootings are a horrible tragedy. Asian hate crimes are unacceptable. Killing innocent people is unacceptable. Period.
However, please do not believe any incorrect media information implying that the shooter acted only due to his sex addiction. Sex addiction is not a powerful enough stand-alone diagnosis for an addict to commit murder. This shooter had other severe long-term mental health issues he had been struggling with.
Sex addiction is an isolating disease, where the addict harms him/herself by engaging in dangerous sexual behaviors that keep the addict emotionally imprisoned and disconnected from authentic human connection. Oftentimes, sex addicts intentionally inflict harm on their own bodies, even escalating to suicide because the shame is too much to bear.
It is too simple to blame sex addiction in the Atlanta spa shootings. There are many other social, institutional, and mental health issues involved in this tragedy that deserve our attention too. We do not know exactly why the shooter turned his attention outside of himself to blame massage spa workers, rather than take responsibility himself for his sexually addictive behaviors, but unfortunately, he did blame others. Blaming others is not part of addiction recovery. Whatever ‘support’ this man was receiving clearly did not address his mental status, which is what we mental health professionals check at each visit. Mental status determines a person’s safety and ability to engage in reality, and this was definitely missed, if in fact, he was in treatment, or working with mental health professionals. Again, the point is that sex addiction in and of itself is not a determining factor that would ‘cause’ someone to commit murder, other diagnoses and mental health issues were part of this man’s mental status and decision-making.
As a society, we do need to become more aware of and educated about what sex addiction is and is not. Sex addiction in our younger generations is becoming addicted to pornography, with the average age of exposure being 8 years old. Sex addiction is horrendous betrayal trauma inflicted time and again to a spouse. Sex addiction is the lack of honesty and inability to be intimate in a partnered relationship. Sex addiction is not fun. Sex addiction does not feel good. Sex addiction is shaming, depressing, and a hopeless feeling of never being loved.
As a CSAT-S and a grateful woman in recovery, I am hopeful that we can turn this tragedy into a teachable moment of what sex addiction is and how prevalent it is in our world, in the hope of teaching and modeling healthy and safe sexual and intimate relationships.