In the previous post (What is happening down under at the personal iceberg of the betrayer? -Part 1-) we started our journey down under the personal iceberg of the betrayer to shine a light on the question of why he became a sex addict and acted out. We explored the two deepest layers of his personal iceberg, the attachment construction and the gender construction or the shaping of being a man. If you are ready to continue the diving and exploring journey, put on your diving gear again, check if you have enough air in your bottles and if your light is working and jump in the water and dive down the iceberg, till we get to the next level of the trauma construction.
Complex Sexuality Shaping
When we get down to the layers of the complex trauma shaping, we will stop at the level that transcendent from the gender shaping to the sexuality shaping. At the same time that we are creating our self-construction (gender construction) we are also in the construction of our own sexuality. The same question that I ask my clients about being a man I ask them for this layer; how much time do we really spend in understanding and building a healthy sexuality? Again the answer will be never or none. In this case I would say it is even a little worse because we do not even talk in our families about sexuality. It is one of those topics that are not touched at the dinner table and also not outside of the dinner table. So while we grow up we are in this weird place where we know that sexuality exists, every adult has a sex life (or not?) and nobody really talks about it and nobody explains to the young man growing up what healthy sexuality really looks like.
What does this non-communication about sexuality produces in a man that is growing up and has to explore and make meaning of his own sexuality all by himself? Here are some results of this reality:
- Patterns of guilt associated with sexual self and sexuality
- Harmful messages and misinformation about human sexuality
- Withholding and preventing sexual and gender education
- Systems of indoctrination, control, and disempowerment versus honest education
- Sexual denial and sexual neglect
- Lack of sexual autonomy, which means a lack of permission to say actually “yes” or “no” if something does not fit
- Sexual underdevelopment (lack of accurate information, and deficient maturation process)
- Lack of sexual healthy integration; the unhealthy way is the compartmentalization
- Patterns of fear and discomfort of sexual self and human sexuality
That means a lot of young men grow up with no clear understanding around their sexuality, no words to express their needs and desires in a healthy and relational way, a lot of shame and guilt around their own sexuality and a huge mystification about sexuality. The irony actually is, that sexuality is a very important aspect and part of our adult life. If we do not have vocabulary to express ourselves with our sexuality, if we have never learned to understand our own needs and desires and share them in a healthy way with a partner, that means we never really could integrate sexuality in our self-construction. Plus, the feelings of shame and guilt around our own sexuality are not helpful at all to have a healthy sexuality and they come out of the reality that we do not talk about it and at the same time we feel pleasure around sexual activities and interactions.
The next big aspect in today´s world in terms of sexuality is the internet and the very easy access to pornographic material. As we do not have a culture of talking about sexuality and there is a lot of interest in young man (and woman) towards sexuality as it is something very normal and healthy, they try to find information about it. The internet is the first place to go today. And what they are learning in the internet about sexuality is a sexualization and consumerism and a very easy access to it. It does not teach young men the relational aspect of sexuality nor the respect for boundaries – their own boundaries or the ones of others – sexuality is always available, and man are always ready to have sex. A lot of the ideas go back to the stereotypes we have talked about in the gender shaping. Those two parts – gender and sexuality – together with the body build the triadic core of the self-construction.
Another aspect that plays a very important role in today´s sexuality is the influence and the impact of social media in the construction of the sexuality. What are the messages that young men are receiving from the social media about men and sexuality? If you go back to the list of the gender shaping, you will find a lot of the stereotypes and how they are presented in one way or another in social media. Here are three aspects coming together; the first is the easy access to social media, the second one is the culture of not talking about things, which means young men have no possibility to really check information or stereotypes if they are true or healthy or relational and the third is that they are often alone in front of the social media, there are no parents or adults that really guide them and help them to have a critical view towards information shared or received in social media.
So, again there might be the question come towards you “why is this on the trauma level within the iceberg?”. Again I will give the same answer, that it is not healthy and not relational. Plus, the young men are exposed to it, and they do not have a real possibility to escape the shaping of their sexuality through family, society, internet and social media. They have to take it in and even if they do not feel good around those stereotypes they have no other model to integrate and they do not want to be excluded. So they take it in and build their self-construction around those stereotypes, ideas and concepts. And the next thing is the construction or shaping of the sexuality goes hand in hand with the construction of the gender. If one of those two is not healthy the other one isn’t healthy either. So here we are already in front of a shaping that is not healthy and not relational and also has no possibility to be really checked or guided from an adult.
Complex Body Shaping
If we swim up towards the water line the next layer of the iceberg will be the complex trauma body shaping. This layer is originally not in the iceberg of Dr. Minwalla. But in the model and especially when you walk through the 22 trauma rooms he presents the concept of the triadic core which is made out of the most sensitive psychological tissues; the gender construction, the sexual construction and the body construction. Those three tissues are intervened, meaning if you are hurt in one of them the other two are also impacted by it. When we grow up the first thing that we have is our body, so we construct ourselves around this experience. The next tissue is the sexuality. We need to have a body to really built some kind of understanding around our own sexuality. And hand in hand with the sexuality is the construction of the gender tissue.
Just take a moment and think about yourself growing up, being in puberty and someone in your family or in school or in the sports team makes a comment about your body. How does that land on you? How did you feel about that? What made it with your self-construction or your self-image or your self-esteem? Maybe if you heard this comment only once, it did not make a huge impact on you and you could put it aside. If this same comment was send to you repetitively, it impacts you and it hurts and it makes you feel less. If you go back for a moment and look at the list of stereotypes I have presented in the gender construction, there is the following “Be tough-athletic-strong and courageous”. If you do not fit into those categories, your body self-construction is attacked and if you are attacked repetitively it creates a complex trauma. You do not have a safe self-construction around your male body. This automatically affects your feeling of being a man (so the gender construction) and it most likely will also have a negative effect on your construction around healthy sexuality. If you are not man enough, because you do not have a masculine body, how can you be sexually attractive? I could go on with describing the impact those things have on the construction of the self in any of those layers, starting with the body. I hope you get my point here.
So, with that we have the deepest layer of the iceberg covered. We have the deepest trauma level, the attachment injuries as a base and on top of that the shaping of the gender, the sexuality and the body or self-image which are impacted by the family and the society. We all have to some degree our wounds and traumas in those levels. My experience in working with betrayers or sex-addicts is, the wounds they carry in those layers of their personal iceberg are deep and they never had the possibility to look at them in a healthy or healing way. Which means they carry those deep wounds with them and the pain connected to those deep wounds is often unbearable and it comes out in an unhealthy sexual way that hurts themselves in the first place and it hurts their partner and the intimate relationship they have formed. The sexuality that they experience help them soothe that pain and it is not a sexuality that connects and relates, its main function is to soothe the pain within them. They learn over time to use sexuality to soothe their nervous system and that is when it becomes a “strategy” for the nervous system. Whenever the system is under stress or in too much pain it “uses” the tool of sexuality, of acting out to calm the pain and soothe the system, so it can continue to function. Because our brain’s first job is to survive and also it has the capacity to relate its main interest is survival. If we are in emotional pain, our brain uses the fastest way to soothe the pain. Sexuality kicks a lot of dopamine in our nervous system and soothes temporarily the pain. That is why the addict goes back to that behavior over and over again, even when it is not healthy for him nor the relationship he is in.
Let´s leave the levels of the trauma shaping and go and see how this shaping impacts the next layers of the iceberg, the templates. But before we go to that next level of the iceberg, we will dive to the surface and take a break, get some air and rest for a bit. We have now an understanding of what is deep down in the iceberg happening and it hopefully starts to make sense why the trauma levels are so important to understand the “why” of the addictive behavior. I see you at the continuation of our diving exploration.
Gundolf