Sexual Addiction Group Meeting

Group Work in Sexual Addiction Recovery

One of the approaches most commonly used in helping the spouses of sexual addicts is the recovery group. These groups provide opportunities for people to share their experiences about being partners with someone who is in the recovery process. They are generally led by facilitators who are tasked with keeping the groups on target and meeting therapeutic goals, while, simultaneously, allowing sufficient freedom for the group that its members feel appropriate exploring their individual needs. One concern I had when approaching this assignment came from my experience as a friend to person who had experienced systemic childhood sexual assault by a parent and entered into group therapy as an adult to deal with her own sexual addiction issues. Her descriptions of her group made it sound less like a recovery group and more like a venue for people to hook up with one another and live vicariously through the sharing of individual sexual experiences. Because of hearing about her experiences, I was concerned that a group work environment had the potential to reinforce pathology at least as much as it had the potential to help eliminate pathology.

I chose to attend the phone meetings held by the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) Women's We are Not Alone Phone Meeting Group. The group offers telephone meetings every night of the week, from 7pm-8pm all days except for Fridays, when the meeting is 9pm-10pm. Newcomers are required to attend an introductory meeting. The phone numbers for both the introductory meeting and the regular meetings are confidential. There are no prohibitions on attending the group other than those participating must be women and they must be over 18 years of age.

At the first meeting, I was very pleasantly surprised with how highly structured the meeting was (S.L.A.A., 2014). My concern that participants might be able to turn the group into a means of reinforcing negative behavior were put aside when I heard the co-chair's introduction in the first meeting. Like many 12-step programs, these meetings are facilitated by members, whom they referred to as co-chairs. This facilitator began the meetings with the same basic introduction. Other members of the meeting participated by providing readings of the 12 steps, the 12 traditions, and a selected reading addressing the topic of the scheduled meeting. Furthermore, the sharing section of the meeting was actually somewhat limited. It was of limited time duration. Furthermore, members were told not to use profanity or to engage in explicit discussions of sexual activity. When I heard those rules at the outset of the meeting, I was curious as to how a facilitator would enforce such a rule, given that the nature of a sexual addiction recovery group suggests that there would be some discussion of sexual behavior. Furthermore, cross-talk, or talking while other members were sharing was discouraged. When this did occur during a meeting, the facilitator of that meeting did not speak loudly or otherwise attempt to engage the person who had originally interrupted the person speaking. Instead, she addressed the issue afterwards, reminding the interrupter of the rules and asking for respect for people while sharing. I had mixed feelings about that approach. On the one hand, I appreciated the fact that she did not allow the meeting to devolve into a disagreement; on the other hand I felt that not interrupting the person who had interrupted another but was not sure how one could prevent this type of cross-talk without actually cutting people out of a conversation.

One of the common themes that I observed in the group was a childhood history of abuse, particularly sexual abuse. Over the course of several different meetings, most of the women mentioned childhood sexual abuse. This comes as no surprise, given that "one study found that 82% of sex addicts reported being sexually abused as children" (Herkov, 2006). Furthermore, they seemed to discuss a lack of intimacy in all of their personal relationships, especially those relationships in their families of origin. Give that "sex addicts often describe their parents as rigid, distant and uncaring" this theme is not surprising (Herkov, 2006). Moreover, it appears that many of these women are repeating the patterns of their childhoods in establishing emotionally distant interpersonal relationships.