"The most tender place in my heart is for strangers”: sexual addiction, the fear system, and dissociation through an attachment lens

Abstract

Sexual assault and other forms of abuse on a young child and its psychological aftermath cascades down through the decades of a person’s life. Apart from shattering the mind and sense of selfhood, it later manifests in what we would consider as the client’s repetitive, reckless, and self-harming behaviour. When working with clients with complex trauma, we soon learn that paradoxically these harmful ways carry meaning and make sense within the context of the child having spent the majority of their time with an abusive, frightening, and unpredictable attachment figure I named “scaregiver” (Badouk Epstein, 2015). Fran, a survivor of familial organised abuse, was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). She had many parts, some suicidal, some had an eating disorder, some parts were disabled and others very capable. This paper focuses on Fran’s sexual part and consequently her sex addiction. While still in recovery, the secure base and the relational journey which we embarked upon demonstrate how a non-pathologising and non-objectifying approach to the client’s many attachment cries eventually paved the way towards the growth of a sense of safety, intersubjectivity, and the abandonment of her sex addiction.