Tragically, for years, even decades after their abusers have stopped hurting them, survivors of child abuse frequently perpetuate the abuse they received as children. Abuse survivors are often among the many people who are barely aware that they use sex as a form of self-harm.

Many abuse survivors (and other deeply hurting people) are addicted to self-abuse such as cutting themselves, or abusing themselves with too much or too little food, because such destructive behavior seems to bring a minor degree of relief. So it can be with sex addiction.

In other webpages I have mentioned women and men who found themselves addicted to fantasies about repulsive sex acts (usually accompanied by masturbation and sometimes porn). These sex abuse survivors felt disgusted and degraded by what they were doing, and yet they could not stop.

In another webpage I referred to a man who, as a child, had been molested by his mother and now, to his horror, he finds himself fantasizing about having sex with older women and even acting out these fantasies in a dangerous way. In that page we mentioned the genuine comfort, and hence a lowering of the craving, a man gained from getting his fill of the pure, satisfying love of God and even finding in God the tender, unconditional love of a perfect mother as well as a father.

The central importance of love in breaking a sex addiction must not be underrated. Sex abuse survivors have frequently had it drilled into them from their most impressionable years that love is sex or that the only way they will get anything remotely like love is through sex. They are frequently starved of love and brainwashed into thinking that no one would want them except to use for sex. In the book of Proverbs is a heart-wrenching truth: “to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet” (Proverbs 27:7). By getting our fill of God’s love, the bitter will be less attractive.

There are other keys to finding freedom from degrading sex, however, and I would like to discuss them here, rather than confine them to a webpage that is likely to have only a narrow audience. To have sex with someone is almost to sell your soul to the person. If a sexual high is not part of a deeply personal, life-long union, it is highly damaging. In one form or another, vast numbers of us find ourselves enslaved by some aspect of depersonalized sex that corrodes our dignity and sense of self-worth.

Vast numbers of us find ourselves trapped in a guilt cycle, feeling compelled to find some sort of sexual high to comfort ourselves and dull the lonely, icy pain of guilt. But as soon as we come crashing down from the fleeting high, the devastating guilt returns, having been inflamed more than ever by the last sex. This vicious circle sends us plummeting downwards in an out-of-control tailspin. As impossible as it seems, however, we can be freed from the death-grip of sex addiction.

Sex addicts and/or sex abuse survivors feel they have been cheapened and so are tempted to act cheap. The exciting reality, however, is that no matter what your past, you are of infinite value. This is certain because the majestic Lord of the universe paid what cost him far beyond the combined wealth of a thousand galaxies – the willing death of his irreplaceable Son – just to be your best friend. On the cross, the exquisitely pure Innocent One swapped places with you. He took upon himself your depravity – and suffered the full, terrifying consequences – so that you could be adorned with the perfection of his holiness, and enjoy the eternal honor that accompanies this status.

This staggering truth is taught throughout the Bible. Here’s my favorite summary:

2 Corinthians 5:21 God made him who had no sin [Jesus] to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The mind-boggling consequence of this divine exchange is that the instant you surrender to the power of Christ’s forgiveness, you become in God’s all-seeing eyes as pure as crystal, as holy as God himself. The Judge of all humanity – the One before whom every human must one fateful day stand exposed to give full account – pronounces you innocent and would defend your innocence to the death. In fact, defending you to the death is exactly what your crucified Lord has done.

The moment you yield to Christ, you gleam in heaven’s eyes with a purity so dazzling that it is way beyond what any virgin could enjoy who does not have spiritual oneness with the holy Son of God. Having restored you to pristine innocence, the Lord instantly exalts you to the status of divine royalty, making you a treasured child of the glorious King of kings, destined to reign on heaven’s throne for all eternity.

Someone could hand you a check for a hundred million dollars and you pocket it, thinking it is fake and continue to live in poverty. Tragically, many Christians are like that. Christ has given us more than we can get our head around but because it seems far too good to be true, we hardly believe a fraction of it and continue to live in spiritual poverty. For us to be freed, we must believe that we truly are spotless virgins in God’s piercing eyes, and crowned with eternal dignity.

Our self-image is far more critical than most of us realize. We use it to plot our course through life. If our self-image is faulty, we will never reach the heights we were born for because we will be wrongly convinced that we will never get there.

I have found that people who are enslaved to depravity are usually those who cannot forgive themselves. They cannot rise from the mud because they see themselves belonging in the mud. And those who cannot forgive themselves are the very ones who cannot believe that God has forgiven them and cannot forgive those who have hurt them.

The three types of forgiveness – believing in God’s forgiveness, forgiving oneself, and forgiving other people – move together. If just one of the three keeps you down, it will hold back progress with the others. If we treat someone else as unforgivable, it is little wonder that we end up worrying if we ourselves are unforgivable. The way we treat others boomerangs back to us. So do your best to work simultaneously on all three types of forgiveness. Even a little progress on one front will help inch forward the other types of forgiveness.

Sex is highly addictive because it is divinely designed to cause a man and woman to be addicted to each other for their entire lives.

Being a sex addict does not make you a bad person. Most abuse survivors become addicts through no fault of their own. They are like people who become drug addicts because, when they were children, drug pushers cruelly tricked them into thinking hard drugs were candy. Even if becoming an addict were completely our fault, however, it would make no difference because Jesus took all the blame upon himself, making us totally blameless. Neither is it our fault that breaking free from an addiction feels impossibly difficult. That’s just the nature of addiction.

When Jesus is in our life, however, freedom is always open to us, no matter how impossible it feels. In fact, it is our spiritual birthright. This does not mean it will be effortless, however. Although God can, and sometimes does, instantly and painlessly remove an addiction, to do so produces spiritual weaklings. A link at the end of this webpage explains powerful reasons why God in his love and wisdom usually opts for us to endure a character-building battle with strong temptation.

We will get nowhere sitting around wishing that breaking an addiction were painless. We must so strongly want to be free that we are willing to endure whatever pain it takes; knowing that the relatively short-lived withdrawal pains are nothing, relative to the pain of lifelong slavery.

Every addict is tempted to think that getting a fix will lower the craving but the cold reality is that, despite the initial feeling of relief, each fix ends up inflaming the craving and deepening the addiction. Whether it be an addiction to self-harm or to sex abuse, the suffering it is like a drunk enduring hangovers and humiliation, losing his job, his house, his family and his dignity, in order to enjoy the “happiness” that alcohol brings.

A webpage that transformed the life of a sex abuse survivor, setting her free, is Attacking Sin’s Pleasure (link at the end of this page).

A link between self-abuse that involves inflecting pain on oneself, and sexually abusing oneself (casual sex, masturbation, or whatever) is that often a significant driving force behind both is a desperate longing to feel. These people would rather feel physical pain or undesirable sex than feel nothing. What causes them to be so numb that they can only feel such extreme things? They once suffered such emotional pain (often as a result of abuse) that rather than face it they disconnected from their feelings/emotions and now they are scared to reconnect. Remaining disconnected is uncomfortable, frustrating, unnatural and so unhealthy as to be dangerous.

It is like someone who injures his leg and as a temporary relief for the pain is given a local anesthetic to numb the entire leg. As the leg heals the need for the anesthetic goes. But suppose the person becomes so afraid of the return of any pain that he steals anesthetic and keeps injecting his leg year after year. He might not feel pain, but a totally numb leg still feels annoyingly uncomfortable and is also unhealthy. (Lepers lose fingers and so on, not because the disease eats them away but because leprosy causes a lack of feeling in those parts, causing them to injure and infect themselves without even knowing it. Rats have even been known to gnaw off lepers’ fingers while they sleep.)

So although getting in touch with your emotions and inner pain seems scary it actually ends up being deeply healing and often also significantly reduces the gnawing ache for sexual highs.

A final complicating factor is that whether you think of it as your subconscious, your inner child, suppressed memories, or something else, there could be a buried part of you that in ways you are hardly aware of is feeding a sexual addiction or hindering your efforts to break free. If these parts of you receive understanding, comfort and healing, you will be more empowered to fight the addiction because every part of you will be working towards the same goal.

Conclusion

It is highly understandable that hurting people end up in a destructive downward spiral of self-inflicted sexual abuse. By briefly examining many factors contributing to this, this webpage has a raft of ways of reducing the pressure to self-destruct and regain the dignity and fulfillment you deserve. Each factor is treated in greater depth in the links below.

To burst free, you do not necessarily have to address every issue mentioned but my goal in exposing these often hidden factors is to spare you the frustration and bewilderment of having to fight invisible enemies. Or think of it as if you were uprooting a bush. If you are strong enough you can tear it out of the ground immediately but if it refuses to budge, you will have more success if you loosen some of the roots a little.

Significant Links

Finding the Love you Need

Sex Crazy

Enjoying the Depth of God’s Love for You

Peace at Last

Defeating Guilt

Death Blow to Addiction

Attacking Sin’s Pleasure

Supernatural Power to Break Free

Self-Esteem

How to Change Your Self-Image & Boost Self-Esteem

Self-Harm

Cure for Self-Harm

The Hidden Dangers of Porn & Masturbation

How Masturbation Shapes One’s Sexuality (Brief, links to full, helpful exploration)

An innocent look?

Healing Hidden Parts of You

Healing your “Inner Child”

Recovery from Sex Abuse

Do-It-Yourself Healing from Sexual Abuse

Much More About Healing From Sexual Abuse

Why an Easy End to Addiction Keeps Us Weak

Life’s Mysteries Explained

Personalized support
Grantley Morris: healing@net-burst.net