“Sexual Addiction” among women with substance abuse is often a case of hypersexuality resulting from early childhood sexual abuse, devaluation of one’s own sexuality from sexual abuse and adolescent promiscuity, undiagnosed early onset bipolar disorder, lack of healthy boundaries, and low self-esteem driving a need for affirmation through one thing over which one feels power….her body. Programs that disregard the connection between these factors in hypersexuality and bipolar disorder and ban bipolar medications, may be undermining the very thing they profess to be addressing. Short mail order certification courses in “sexual addiction”, male sex addiction instructors for women, and failure to allow treatment for underlying bipolar disorder are likely marginally effective. Titus 2 prefers to approach the hypersexuality history of women in recovery through individual counseling with women and long term personal mentoring by women who have experienced and overcome the sexual confusion and contradictions promulgated by our culture for children and adolescents and who have experience with these and other symptoms of bipolar. How do you think women’s “sexual addiction” should be addressed?
Reference:
JOURNAL OF CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY
Volume 12, Number 1, 2002
© Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
Pp. 3–9
Phenomenology of Prepubertal and Early Adolescent
Bipolar Disorder: Examples of Elated Mood, Grandiose
Behaviors, Decreased Need for Sleep, Racing Thoughts
and Hypersexuality
BARBARAGELLER, M.