Porn addiction and sex addiction experts from Compulsion Solutions answer your most pressing questions. We’ll answer your question too… e-mail Porn Doc.

Dear Porn Doc:

The Christmas season brings up a lot of mixed emotions for me. As a person who struggles with sex addiction, I find myself caught between creating new traditions with my wife and kids and remembering a lot of not too good holiday seasons growing up. I notice that I feel much more triggered to act out during the holidays. Does this ever get better? How can I manage this time of year better?

Porn Doc:
The holiday season provides a platform for many feelings, thoughts, memories, and experiences…not just for people struggling with sex addiction. The stress of finding the right gift, the stress of finances, and the overall time pressures all produce a difficult environment for someone struggling with an addiction. We find that sex addiction, the urges to act out sexually arise from living in response to your history. That being said, what is your history? Particularly around the Christmas season? Examine what was going on for you during these times—most likely, your earlier experiences laid the foundation for you.

As you now begin to both rebuild your life as a person in recovery, look at your addictive behavior as an adolescent response to wanting to avoid, to escape, to soothe. Are you using these same strategies now with your own family that you did as a youngster? How would you like to really enjoy the Christmas season with your family?

Hopefully you are working on these deeper topics in counseling. You do not need to keep living in response to your history. A brief article on the difficulties of maintaining sobriety during the holidays can be found on our blog site, Holiday Triggers and Cheering for Yourself.

Dear Porn Doc:

I am having difficulty finding a 12-step sponsor in my SA program. Is this something I can or should work on with my therapist? Not sure if I should keep them separate or not and would appreciate your opinion.

Porn Doc:
This comes up a lot with the men I work with too. Personally, I see the 12-step work you do and your personal therapy as two separate tools. That being said, talking about your experiences of doing your step work and the feelings that come up for you do need to be explored in therapy. The actual step work is best suited as self-study or with the help of a sponsor. Your therapeutic work asks you for a deeper exploration of root causes and belief systems and your 12-step work can serve as an excellent part of this process.

You mention that you are having difficulty in finding an SA sponsor. There are a number of things you can do to help:

• Bring it up at a meeting. Often a sign up sheet is passed around and you can let the acting secretary know that you are indeed interested in sponsorship.
• You can visit SLAA website on sponsorship for information on how to look for a sponsor as well as the SA website too.