Category: 12 Steps
How Sex Addiction Recovery Uses Live Support Groups
The following is adapted from an article from Scott Brassart, Director of Online Education for both addicts and partners. He is also involved in the creation, production, and dissemination of online information, treatment manuals, books and workbooks, and other written materials. Additionally, he teaches the Sex Addiction, Porn Addiction, and Healthy Intimacy workgroups.
What Is a Sex Addiction Treatment Program?
A sex addiction treatment program is a structured approach to help address compulsive sexual behaviors that have created problems in your life. These programs typically include professional evaluation, individual therapy, and some form of group support to build accountability.
Treatment may happen in a residential setting, where you live at a facility for several weeks, or on an outpatient basis, where you continue daily life while attending scheduled sessions. Many programs now incorporate virtual components, making expert care accessible regardless of your location.
The goal is not just to stop problematic behaviors but to understand what drives them. Programs often address underlying issues like trauma, attachment difficulties, and emotional regulation challenges that fuel addictive patterns.
Why Do Treatment Programs Include Live Groups?
Recovery from sex addiction is rarely a solo journey. Live support groups bring together people facing similar challenges, creating a space where you can speak openly without judgment. This peer connection helps break the isolation that often accompanies addiction.
Group settings also allow you to learn from others. Hearing how someone else handled a triggering situation or worked through a difficult week gives you practical strategies you might not discover in one-on-one therapy.
The real-time aspect matters, too. Unlike pre-recorded content or message boards, live groups require you to show up at a scheduled time. This builds structure and accountability into your week, both of which support long-term recovery.
How Do Live Groups Work in Practice?
Live in-person or online groups typically meet on a regular basis at one location or via video conferencing platforms like Zoom. A trained facilitator or written format guides the session, keeping discussions focused and ensuring everyone has space to participate. Sessions typically last anywhere from one to two hours, depending on the program.
Most groups follow a path that aids in identifying addictive patterns, understanding triggers, building healthy coping skills, and developing a relapse prevention plan.
Participants agree to confidentiality guidelines before joining. What gets shared in the group stays in the group. This creates the safety needed for honest conversation about topics that feel difficult to discuss elsewhere.
What Happens When You Combine Individual Therapy with Online Groups?
Individual therapy and group support serve different purposes, and combining them creates a more complete recovery experience. In individual therapy, you work through personal history, trauma, and the specific thought patterns that drive your behavior. Groups give you a place to practice what you’re learning with real people in real time.
Therapists often recommend group participation as an adjunct to individual sessions. The group becomes a testing ground for new skills: setting boundaries, expressing emotions, asking for help. You also receive feedback from peers who notice things you might miss about yourself.
This approach addresses both the clinical and social dimensions of addiction. You get expert guidance for your specific situation while building a network of people committed to the same recovery goals.
What Should You Look for in an Online Group?
When evaluating programs, start with the format of the group. Try several meetings and then decide which one you feel will be most helpful.
Look at the structure and duration of the workgroup. Give yourself enough time to move beyond surface-level discussion into meaningful work. Programs that offer multiple levels or follow-up options can support your growth over months or years.
Consider also whether the program addresses your specific situation. Some groups focus on men dealing with sex or porn addiction, others on relationships, processing trauma, and still others on couples working to rebuild trust together. Finding the right fit increases the likelihood you’ll stay engaged.
What Are the Benefits of Virtual Groups Over In-Person Meetings?
Virtual groups remove geographic barriers. You can participate in a specialized program regardless of whether one exists in your city. For people in rural areas or those with limited local resources, online access can mean the difference between getting help and going without.
Scheduling flexibility is another advantage. Many online groups meet during evening hours or on weekends, making it easier to attend without missing work. You also save travel time, which makes consistent attendance more realistic over the long term.
Some people find virtual settings less intimidating than walking into a physical meeting room. The screen provides a degree of psychological distance that can help you open up, especially in early sessions when trust is still forming.
What Role Does Peer Support Play in Recovery?
Peer support helps normalize your experience. When you hear others describe patterns similar to your own, it reduces the shame that often keeps addiction hidden. You realize you’re not alone, and that recognition itself can be healing.
Groups also build accountability. Knowing you’ll report back to others next week motivates you to follow through on commitments you’ve made. This social structure reinforces the habits and behaviors necessary for lasting change. Over time, peer relationships often deepen. Many people form connections that continue outside the formal group setting. Some stay in touch with their original workgroup members years after completing the program.
Help for the Significant Others
You are not alone in this, and you do not have to figure it out by yourself. Online help for family, friends and spouses of porn addicts has expanded significantly in recent years, giving access to support from the privacy of home. Here are the main types of online support available, what to expect from each, and how to take the first confidential step toward healing. Many of those affected experience what clinicians call betrayal trauma. This includes symptoms like hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, difficulty sleeping, emotional numbness, and a deep loss of trust in your own judgment.
Betrayal trauma is not the same as general relationship distress. It is a specific psychological response to the violation of a deep attachment bond. The nervous system reacts as though it is in danger, because in an emotional sense, they are. That is why generic relationship counseling or general therapy sometimes falls short for those betrayed.
A 2025 meta-analysis published in BMC Psychology found that couples’ therapies significantly reduced PTSD symptoms and depression in both addicts and their partners, reinforcing the clinical value of structured, trauma-focused intervention for relationships affected by post-traumatic stress.
Therapist-facilitated online workgroups are structured, multi-week programs led by betrayal trauma experts. They combine education about betrayal trauma with guided group discussion in a safe, moderated environment. Sessions usually meet weekly via Zoom.
Individual online support pairs you one-on-one with an expert in betrayal trauma or sex addiction recovery. This is often the most personalized option because the expert can tailor every session to what you need most that week.
Peer support groups and forums are led by those betrayed rather than experts in the field. Twelve-step fellowships like S-Anon and COSA hold virtual meetings where members share their experiences in a confidential setting. These groups are free and widely accessible, and many meet multiple times per week across different time zones.
How to Evaluate Whether an Online Program Is Right for You
Not every online program is built with the same level of rigor or sensitivity. Before you sign up, look for a few key markers of quality that distinguish credible support from well-meaning but unqualified offerings. First, check who is facilitating the program. Trained experts with credentials in sex addiction treatment or betrayal trauma, such as Certified Sex Addiction Therapists (CSATs), bring a level of expertise that general wellness coaches cannot match.
Second, consider the structure. A well-designed program has a clear curriculum, defined session lengths, and stated goals for each week or module. Open-ended drop-in groups can be helpful for community, but structured workgroups tend to produce more consistent progress because they build knowledge and skills sequentially, with each session layering on the one before it. The most effective online help for those affected puts your healing at the center, addressing your trauma, your boundaries, and your choices about the relationship on your terms.
What to Expect During Your First Weeks of Online Support
Starting any form of support when you’re in emotional crisis can feel daunting. Knowing what typically happens in the first few weeks can ease some of that anxiety and help you walk in prepared.
Early sessions usually focus on psychoeducation. You will learn about what betrayal trauma is, why your body and mind are responding the way they are, and what the typical recovery trajectory looks like. This information alone can be profoundly stabilizing. Understanding that your reactions are normal, and not signs that something is wrong with you, helps you begin to reclaim trust in your own perceptions and instincts.
As the weeks progress, the focus typically shifts to practical tools. You’ll work on setting boundaries that protect your well-being, processing grief and anger in a supported environment, and exploring what you need going forward. Group settings add a dimension that individual work cannot replicate: hearing other voice the exact feelings you’ve been carrying in silence is one of the most healing aspects of this work. Many participants describe the shift from isolation to connection as the single most important change in their early recovery. You realize that the shame you’ve been carrying is not yours to hold, and that other people have walked this same road and found solid ground again.
Help with SCA YouTube Videos
Be an ISO Outreach volunteer and help make SCA YouTube videos for our channel. Our next project is to make short (2-3 minute) videos on your shares about Chapter 2: The Twenty Questions (from our Big Book). I would like your input (either audio or text) on any of the following questions. You can send it to me either on here scannereditor@sca-recovery.org or at outreach@sca-recovery.org. Your voice and personal information will not be used and your content may be edited . Please consider helping us out by sharing your experiences, hopes and program tools that may have helped you with the question: Chapter 2: Twenty Questions
1. Do you frequently experience remorse, depression, or guilt about your sexual activity?
2. Do you feel your sexual drive and activity are getting out of control? Have you repeatedly tried to stop or reduce certain sexual behaviors but inevitably found that you could not?
3. Are you unable to resist sexual advances or turn down sexual propositions when offered?
4. Do you use sex to escape from uncomfortable feelings such as anxiety, fear, anger, resentment, guilt, etc., which seem to disappear when the sexual obsession starts?
5. Do you spend excessive time obsessing about sex or engaged in sexual activity?
6. Have you neglected your family, friends, spouse, or relationship because of the time you spend on sexual activity?
7. Do your sexual pursuits interfere with your work or professional development?
8. Is your sexual life secretive, a source of shame, and not in keeping with your values? Do you lie to others to cover up your sexual activity?
9. Are you afraid of sex? Do you avoid romantic and sexual relationships with others and restrict your sexual activity to fantasy, masturbation, and solitary or anonymous online activity?
10. Are you increasingly unable to perform sexually without other stimuli such as pornography, videos, “poppers,” drugs/alcohol, “toys,” etc.?
11. Do you have to increasingly resort to abusive, humiliating, or painful sexual fantasies or behaviors to get sexually aroused?
12. Has your sexual activity prevented you from developing a close, loving relationship with a partner? Or have you developed a pattern of intense romantic or sexual relationships that never seem to last once the excitement wears off?
13. Do you only have anonymous sex or one-night stands? Do you usually want to get away from your sex partner after the encounter?
14. Do you have sex with people with whom you normally would not associate?
15. Do you frequent apps, websites, clubs, bars, adult bookstores, restrooms, parks, and other public places searching for sex partners?
16. Have you ever been arrested or placed yourself in legal jeopardy for your sexual activity?
17. Have you ever risked your physical health with exposure to sexually transmitted diseases by engaging in “unsafe” sexual activity?
18. Has the money you spent on pornography, videos, web-camming, apps, phone sex, or hustlers/prostitutes strained your financial resources?
19. Have people you trust expressed concern about your sexual activity?
20. Does life seem meaningless and hopeless without a romantic or sexual relationship?
DEAR LOVER, RELATIVE, FRIEND OF A SEXUAL COMPULSIVE By Bradley W.
Right about the time of my 30th birthday, I met this gorgeous guy — a mutual friend introduced
us. I manipulated our next meeting and finally got him over for lunch where I learned he had had
“some gay experience.” That was the green light I was looking for. I chose to ignore the subtle
reticence I perceived in him. That reticence turned out to be his particular brand of sexual compulsion
which, without going into detail, had kept him from mature, intimate relationships. I didn’t know
then that the way I kept myself from mature, intimate relationships was to systematically fall in
love with people who had another priority: sexual, alcohol or drug addiction. This way I could be
guaranteed the victim role (a role I’ve been comfortable with since childhood) and blame any lack of
intimacy, sexual satisfaction or joy on him. Very clever: I didn’t take any responsibility for my happi-
ness; it was all up to him. This recipe for trouble is my particular brand of sexual compulsion: I’m a
co-sexual compulsive — someone whose life became unmanageable due to someone else’s sexual com-
pulsion.
This gorgeous guy chose to tell me about his sexual addiction, and the suffering it caused him, at the
beginning of our relationship. My first thought upon hearing his dramatic and painful story was to
make up to him his suffering and pain with my love and compassion. I wanted to save him. Later I discovered that this desire is the top part of the co-addict/addict ratio: GRANDIOSITY over low self-esteem. Needless to say, I didn’t save him. Fortunately for him, he (and perhaps God) saved himself.
Paradoxically, it was this relation-ship that catalyzed MY being saved from a lifetime of unhappiness and
perhaps even suicide.
In the beginning I kicked and screamed. I made ultimatums; I forced him to stop certain relation-
ships; I berated him. I rewarded him with love and I punished him by withholding it. All in all, I con-
tributed to both our low self-esteem and I became a controlling maniac giving up my friendships,
my creative work, my life. I was even becoming physically ill as a result of this obsession with some-
one else’s life. I became a supreme spy. I liked to say that I could tell what he was up to by reading the
molecules upon entering a room that he was in or had been in. To be right became my only objective.
He found SCA, but I didn’t need a program. I was in therapy and that was enough. Yet I was still in extreme pain, slipping further and further from reality.Everything was contingent on his
each and every sign of affection. Sex, and how well he performed it, was the most important sign of his
love for me. I became a different kind of a sex addict, constantly manipulating sex with him. A
friend urged me for six months to try Al-Anon, a 12-Step program for relatives and friends of alcoholics,
for lack of some other place to go. Finally I got there on my hands and knees. Even though it was hard at
first with all the emphasis on alcohol, I saw quickly that the core issues were the same and felt at
home with these people who were getting better. Eventually I met others in the rooms whose lovers were sexual compulsives. Bob R. was one of them. It was his idea to start a meeting based on Al-Anon for relatives and friends of sexual compulsives. I qualified at the first SCA-Anon meeting on November 24,1987. It still meets on Tuesdays at 6:30 PM at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center on 13th Street in Manhattan.
So this is a success story. It’s been a painful and joyous road to recovery. I can’t count the times
I’ve laughed and cried, or the number of friends I’ve made. Today, this man and I are on a Spiritual
path of recovery, even though for us our lover relationship has ended. But I am very grateful to
this partner of four years and I love him very much. Most SCA-Anon members remain in their relation-
ships and are learning that true intimacy is possible one day at a time. SCA-Anon and Al-Anon give us
tools to feel our original feelings underneath the anger and rage, and tools of communication with the
ones we love.
Anyone interested in starting an SCA-Anon meeting can structure it from a combination of literature from Al-Anon and the co-dependency unit of Golden Valley Health Center in Golden Valley, MN.
We recommend that members of SCA-Anon address issues such as low self-esteem, control and shame.
Can You Recognize Your Own Denial?
from a blog by Scott Brassart on December 29, 2025
One of the interesting things about addiction is that most addicts think they don’t have a problem. They think, Sure, if someone else was engaging in the same behaviors that I’m engaging in, that person would have a serious issue, but it’s OK for me because…
This is their denial.
Generally speaking, denial is a series of internal lies and deceits that manifest externally. In other words, addicts lie to themselves first, and then to others. It is lying to themselves that is most important because, based on that imperfect foundation of manufactured truth, their behaviors seem utterly reasonable to them in the moment of their obsession. Outsiders can easily dismantle this house of cards, but addicts cannot (or will not). They repeatedly defend their manufactured truth (their lies and deceit) until their world disintegrates into one crisis after another after another. And even then, they don’t give up easily.
With addiction, denial takes several different forms, the most common of which are listed below.
- Blame/Externalization: My partner has gained a lot of weight since we got married, and that’s unattractive to me.
- Entitlement: I work hard and I support my family, so I deserve to have some fun.
- Justification: If I was in a relationship, I’d be having sex all the time, so why can’t I be sexual all the time when I’m single?
- Minimization: All I’m doing is snorting a little cocaine when I have sex. It’s not like I’m using meth or injecting.
- Rationalization: Everybody looks at porn and plays around with hookup apps. That’s just life in the modern world.
- Victim Mentality: Everybody wants so much from me. I just feel overwhelmed and at the mercy of everyone in my life. And my only relief, the only time I feel in control, is when I’m using porn.
To combat denial, addicts must first uncover the lies they tell themselves (and then others). Then they must reframe those lies into truth by using responsible language. Typically, healing from sex addiction, porn addiction, and paired substance/sex addiction presents challenges that can’t be dealt with solely in one-on-on therapy. In fact, most sex, porn, and substance/sex addicts require external reinforcement and support from fellow recovering addicts if they hope to permanently change their deeply rooted patterns of behavior.
Language Without Accountability
- I only did a few lines.
- I usually wear a condom.
- I get sensual massages.
- One thing led to another.
Language With Accountability
- I was high on cocaine.
- I’ve had unsafe sex four times.
- I see escorts.
- I decided to get high and act out sexually.
When denial is uncovered and addressed in this way, it loses power over the addict. Without such work, addicts can (and will) find ways to ignore the seriousness of their addictive behaviors so they can continue with those behaviors. Unfortunately, without honesty, this willful ignorance – this denial – can go on for years.
SCA Womans Meeting
The Problem of Porn Addiction
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Hitting Bottom?
There’s a common belief in addiction recovery that keeps people stuck longer than they need to be: the idea that you have to hit “rock bottom” before things can change. It sounds convincing—but it’s not true.
Waiting for things to fall apart often leads to more loss, more disconnection, and more pain. It can quietly reinforce the idea that help is only justified after irreparable damage is done. In reality, recovery doesn’t begin at rock bottom. It begins with awareness.
That moment might look like:
- Realizing you can’t stop, even when you’ve tried
- Noticing patterns you’ve seen before starting to repeat
- Experiencing a rupture in your relationship
- Or simply recognizing something doesn’t feel right anymore
It doesn’t have to be catastrophic to matter. You don’t need to lose your family, your career, or your sense of self to take this seriously. In many cases, choosing to seek support early reflects clarity, insight, and a willingness to do something different.
Awareness of Addiction can raise your “Bottom” and help you to change direction before things escalate.