08/22/2025
Most of us have been taught to think of our unhealthy behaviors—especially around s*x—as a form of self-medicating. The logic goes: we’re overwhelmed, anxious, or sad, and the behavior helps dull the discomfort.
And while there’s some truth to that…
It’s not the whole story.
We also pursue unhealthy s*xual behaviors to reenact the earliest and most significant traumas held in our bodies.
So instead of just asking:
“How am I trying to dull the pain?”
We also need to ask:
“How might I be reenacting it?”
Psychoanalyst Galit Atlas puts it starkly:
“Sexuality then might be reduced to becoming a portal through which one tries to repair, but instead actually relives distress or overarousal.”
One client, for example, was introduced to s*xual experiences by an older neighbor—moments where he felt excitement and arousal that ended in feeling used and ashamed.
As an adult, he keeps chasing novel s*xual experiences and videos…only to end up disconnected from his partner and ashamed.
In his religious circles, those desires were pathologized and he was encouraged to see an addiction therapist. Later in life he saw a s*x therapist who encouraged him to liberate himself from Puritan confines and be more shameless in his search for novelty.
Two opposite messages—yet both bypassed the deeper work of understanding the origins of his desires and outgrowing the scripts it set in motion.
What if we stopped pathologizing and normalizing, and started getting curious?
If you’re a leader, we can show you how to do this work through the Unwanted Guide Training (we have one more spot for a female therapist, coach, or leader). Groups start 9/15.
If you’re an individual, I’m now booking intensives for the fall and we have several online resources like The Sexual Attachment Conference (featuring Adam Young, Sheila Gregoire, and myself) and The Journey Course.
We don’t need to spend the best years of our life trying to find manage our behaviors. We can outgrow the old scripts and write a new s*xual story for ourselves.
All resources in my bio or email me at jay@heartofmanjourney.com for more info.
