Kelly McDaniel LPC, NCC, CSAT
Women, Sex, and Addiction
Louisville, Kentucky
August 2009
Naming the Disease:
What Is Sex and Love Addiction?
• Romance addiction
• Relationship addiction
• Co-addiction
• Love addiction
• Sex addiction
• Illusion of love
Love and Sex Addiction:
A Dis-ease of Cultural Inheritance
“Our culture gives girls the message that
their bodies, their lives, and their
femaleness demand an apology.”
Dr. Christian Northrup, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom
Love and Sex Addiction:
A Dis-ease of Psychological Isolation
“Clinical experience informs us that
one of the most, if not the most,
terrifying human experiences is
psychological isolation”
Dr. Jean Baker Miller
Culture and Addiction
• Cultural influences for women often are
minimized or overlooked when a woman is
facing an addiction
• Addiction, however, is a powerful coping
strategy for living in a culture that does
not give women the same status as men
• Addiction, at first, is a method of
compensating for inherited powerlessness
Damaging Beliefs—
The Fuel for Addiction
“Healing cannot occur for women until
they have critically examined and changed
some of the beliefs and assumptions that
we all unconsciously inherit and
internalize from our culture.”
Northrup, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom
Harmful Beliefs for
Sex and Love Addicts
• I am a bad, unworthy person
• No one would love me as I am
• If I have to rely on others to meet my
needs, they will not be met
• Sex is my most important need; or my
most important sign of love; or my most
terrifying need
Dr. Patrick Carnes, [Book]
The Four Cultural Beliefs
• I must be good in order to be worthy of
love
• If I am sexual, I am bad
• I am not really a woman unless someone
desires me sexually and/or romantically
• I must be sexual to be lovable
Kelly McDaniel, LPC
Cultural Belief #1
I must be good to be
worthy of love
Adolescent girls “are
expected to sacrifice
… parts of themselves
… on the altar of
social acceptability
and to shrink their
souls down to a petite
size.”
Cultural Belief #1
• “Indoctrination into the code of goodness”
• Largely unchanged since the 1950s
• Code of goodness is basic training for girls
• Sexuality becomes a way for girls to go
around the code of goodness and feel
powerful
Cultural Belief #2
If I am sexual I am bad
Cultural Belief #2
Cultural Belief #3
I am not really a woman
unless someone desires
me sexually or
romantically
Beauty and Desire
Cultural Belief #3
“I never felt beautiful, so I always needed to find a way to make a
man notice me. Sometimes I could do this by the way I dressed or
by being flirtatious. Sometimes, I used intelligence. When I got a
man’s attention, I felt better…more powerful. More like me. The
intensity of a man’s attention was intoxicating. Without it, I didn’t
know myself and I couldn’t function very well. From the attention I
gained energy and strength. I felt like a woman because I was
wanted. But I never felt safe. I could never trust. I didn’t realize
the reason I couldn’t trust him was because I couldn’t trust me….I
wasn’t sure how far I would go to earn a man’s attention. I never
knew how much of me I would sacrifice for him.” [Jane]
McDaniel, Ready to Heal.
Cultural Belief #4
I must be sexual to
be lovable
“Seductive or
pornographic images
of women abound on
television, in
advertising, in family
oriented catalogs—
in short, everywhere.”
Cultural Belief #4:
I Must Be Sexual to Be Lovable
“Women have been taught to disconnect
from sexual feelings, to hate, only secretly
enjoy, or feel ashamed of them …”
Charlotte Kasl
Cultural Belief #4
• Sex happens fast in the movies
• Sexual intensity is marketed as sexual
intimacy
• Many of us learn how to be sexual and
romantic from TV and film
• Sex as love becomes fused in our minds
A Cultural Double Bind
A double bind is defined as:
“a psychological impasse created when
contradictory demands are made of an
individual so that no matter which directive is
followed, the response will be construed as
incorrect…a punishing and inescapable
dilemma.”
Cultural contractions set up a
sexual double bind for women.
Using sex to meet brain needs
• Women have a larger communication center in
their brains than men
• Emotional center is larger in a female brain
• Her brain insists that communication, connection,
and emotional sensitivity are primary values
• Her culture does not. Her mate may not. She will
find a way to create an illusion of connection even
if it means exterminating her relational needs.
This will make her angry and depressed.
Sex and Love Addiction—
A Result of the Double Bind
• Sex and love addiction is a desperate
attempt to live within narrow, damaging
sexual margins
• It’s not about morality
• It’s a disease of cultural inheritance
• To cope with a double bind, a woman
lives a double life
Addiction thrives in
contradiction and isolation
A Dis-ease of
Psychological Isolation
“Clinical experience informs us that
one of the most, if not the most,
terrifying human experiences is
psychological isolation”
Dr. Jean Baker Miller
Psychological Isolation
Creates Shame
• Psychological isolation is more than being alone
• It is the feeling of being “locked out” of human
•
•
connection
It is the belief you’re shut out of a relationship
because there’s something wrong with you
The word “loneliness” does not quite capture the
shame of psychological isolation
Words from a Recovering Woman
“It’s one thing if I’m addicted to a man or
sex…it’s another thing if it’s because I’m
lonely. That must mean I’m a total loser.”
McDaniel, Ready to Heal
Strangers to Connection
• A child will go through amazing psychological
•
•
•
gymnastics to avoid the pain of psychological
isolation
For a child, loneliness feels like death
When children experience terrifying isolation,
they think it’s their fault
Psychological isolation creates shame and a
belief that “something is wrong with me”
Mother Daughter Brain
• Because of her ability to observe and feel
•
•
emotional cues, a girl actually incorporates
her mother’s nervous system into her own.
The “nervous system environment” a girl
absorbs during her first two years becomes a
view of reality that will affect her for the rest
of her life L. Brizendine, M.D. “The Female Brain”
“epigentic imprinting”: absorbed by cellular
microcircuitry at the neurological level
“Little girls do not tolerate flat
faces”
“The Female Brain “ L. Brezendine M. D.
• Connecting through talking activates the pleasure
•
•
•
•
center in a girl’s brain: major dopamine and oxytocin
rush
Rush similar to orgasm
Her brain is designed for social bonding. A machine
built for connection.
A girl can read from facial expression whether or not
she is being listened to. She knows before you do if
your mind is wandering or not.
These skills have been diminished/called dependency
in patriarchal culture that values competition and
strength more than connection.
Isolation and Human Bonding
• Psychological isolation produces fear.
• In isolation, a child will not fully develop
proper neuronal connections necessary
for human bonding and attachment.
• First 3 months of life: female skills in eye
contact and face gazing grow 400 percent;
skills do not grow for boys during this
time.
• Chronic fear causes significant problems
for a child’s brain chemistry and selfdevelopment.
“for the infant and young child, attachment relationships
are the major environmental factors that shape the
development of the brain …human connections create
neuronal connections.”
Dr. Daniel Siegal, The Developing Mind
Impediments to Healing
• Cultural shame
• Psychological shame
• Terror
• Strategies of Disconnection
• Mother wound
• Fractured friendships
• No place for a self
Addiction: The most powerful
strategy of disconnection
• A woman needs a relationship to have a
self, so she merges with her addictive
substance or process.
• She finally feels connected: warm,
energized, and more like herself
• All addictions are in service to her need
for connection
• How do we as professionals replace the
addictive relationship?
Respect for Strategies of
Disconnection
• Understand the need for strategies of
disconnection
• Know they are born from terror
• Know she must have a safe relationship
before abandoning her strategies
• This takes a long time
• She must feel desperately ready to change
• She needs you to hold the container for
healthy relationship. Be a model.
Strategies of Disconnection
Let me count the ways…..
• Being overly nice or compliant
• Being overly powerful or argumentative
• Using food, work, or other
substances/processes to escape feelings
• List your favorite strategies:
• _________________________________
• _________________________________
• _________________________________
Model and Mother
• Understand the relational template with
Mom
• Know the devastation of mother wound
• Expect addictive behavior with women to
be avoidant and/or intense.
• Be the safe, boundaried Mom
• Explore your own mother wound
Mother Blame
A dangerous path
• Understanding the mother wound is about
shame reduction and relational
understanding
• It is not about blaming women, which
ultimately furthers self-hatred
• All mothers are products of the cultural
double bind
• Replacement mothers are part of sexual
healing
Motherless Daughters
A legacy of pain
• Mother pain with abandonment
• Mother pain with suffocation (mom as
friend)
• Mother pain played out dramatically with
sexual partners
• Mother pain played out dramatically with
friends
Fractured Friendships
• Sex and love addicted women don’t have
friends
• They have acting out buddies
• They have sideline friends
• The have crushes
Acting-out friend
• the woman you call to accompany you on
a hunt (the search for a new partner or a
one-night stand). You count on her
because she’s witty, reckless and funloving. She usually won’t judge you for
what you are about to do because she’s
been there too. However, if her addiction
is stronger than yours, you can’t be sure
she’ll be available for you and you may
have to resort to a sideline friend.
The sideline friend
• women who seem to need your presence
to enjoy themselves. They typically bore
you, but you will spend time with them
because they make you feel important.
The Crush
• the woman you think you’re in love with
and hope will feel just as intensely for
you. To fill the emptiness inside, you
develop a crush on this friend and place
unrealistic expectations on the
relationship.
The crush continued
• You may become smothering, controlling
or demanding and drain the life out of the
friendship, ultimately chasing her away.
Unconscious of how this happens, you
repeatedly feel abandoned and betrayed.
Reclaiming Damaged Dreams
• You mean being a model mother isn’t
enough?
• Dreams re-visioned
• Move from addictive fantasy to healthy
dreaming and goal setting
• Long-term work
• Incorporate tasks