This can include a deep-rooted sense of unworthiness, efforts to block or numb residual feelings, finding pleasure in extreme risk-taking, compulsive deprivation and re-creation of the trauma experience. Many of these responses can manifest in the form of the compulsive sexual behaviors that are seen with sex addiction. If, however, you didn t attend a treatment program for sexual addiction and are starting your quest for healing mostly on your own, a relapse plan is something that you should prepare. What is a relapse plan? It isn t a plan so that you can go and indulge in sexually addictive behavior. A relapse plan is what actions or steps you will take when you feel those incessant and impossible urges that could cause you to slip. There are several stereotypes that often come to mind when people hear the term sex addict. Sometimes the term is used synonymously with sex offender, and although the two terms can certainly coexist, they can also be mutually exclusive. Many people think a sex addict is that creepy-looking person they tend to avoid, the person who is unsuccessful in pursuit of relationships, the social outcast, the person without means and resources, or the person with the corny pickup lines in bars. Throughout my career, I have spent innumerable hours on porn and sex addiction treatment, treating individuals and couples with chemical dependency addictions like alcohol, heroin/opiates, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, etc. I feel qualified to speak about addiction treatment and about what I have witnessed and claimed from a clinical therapeutic perspective that pornography addiction is the primary addiction of them all. She also grieves the loss of her addiction because she used it like a crutch for a long period of time. Finally, whatever she used her addiction to cover up begins to emerge. This is often some kind of early trauma. The repair stage. This serious period of healing from sex addiction and its underlying causes can last from one to three years. Getting Attached When we pair up into long-term relationships we begin a process of bonding with one another that is a beautiful and profound intertwining of two lives. In this mysterious attachment, we actually start to physically operate as one biological organism. The book Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment says, Numerous studies show that once we become attached to someone, the two of us form one physiological unit.