A Trauma- and Faith-Informed Search
into the Nervous System and Belonging
for Sexual Addiction Recovery

Written By Kolbe Young

Ok. I’m going to cut to the chase:

There’s a certain kind of ache that never really goes away.

It’s not meant to.

Yes, it’s attached to your addiction, but it’s not the same as your addiction. It leads you to act out, yes, currently, I would agree…

but deep down, it’s not only a desire to act out. I mean it is, but it isn’t. It’s more than just acting out.

Confused? Not convinced?

You’ll get to practice something that just might begin to crack open what I mean. Maybe, just maybe.

So bear with me as I try to lay out some points that I believe are important for anyone in the throws of sex addiction healing. I really believe you’ll learn something from it.

I’m going to begin by saying that God doesn’t take your desire away because he wants you to stay miserable. No, He doesn’t take it away because He designed your body and soul to long…

to long for communion,

safety,

and reverence.

So many of us grew up being taught that our longings were dangerous.
Something to suppress.
To white-knuckle.
To shame.

But, here’s a truth:

When longing is exiled, it doesn’t die.
It just hides.
And finds secret ways to cope.
Suppressed desire doesn’t purify desire – it distorts it.

And when the heart is neglected,
the body will cry out – subconsciously, compulsively –
through addiction, self-rejection, and shame.

Especially where sexuality and sensuality become the content of the compulsion.

So what am I getting at really?

That even the parts of your self that reach for relief in hidden ways
are carrying something sacred about your story.
Something that doesn’t need more condemnation.
But rather, communion.
And compassion.

In time, if the body and soul are given what they need, addiction and trauma can be completely transformed into a rebirth, a new springtime of joy and spontaneity typified by an inner child within us who finally learns to belly cry – and belly laugh.

Our Longing was Designed For More

Here’s another thought to wonder about:

You were made for union, not just abstinence. Union with yourself, your neighbor, and with our God.

And your longings for sex, intimacy, and validation are not sinful in themselves.
They are directional – neural circuitry whispering the deeper emotional and spiritual truths of who you are – specifically, individually, as the unrepeatable person that you are.
Your desires were placed in you by God, to lead you through “the flesh” toward His Presence.

But the hard reality is that we become disillusioned to our longings the more that we misuse them, resulting in sinful actions (in as a much as the action was willfully and consciously done). Or we experience our desires as misplaced, also resulting in shame, self abandonment, and isolation from others. This disillusionment creates a lack of trust, and therefore a necessary disconnection out of self-protection to prevent any internal mayhem from breaking out between the parts of self involved, namely the part misusing longing and the part afraid of what that means spiritually and relationally.

And if we are to ever rebuild that trust with our longing, we have to create bridges with our bodies and minds for the heart to speak again within the desires of the flesh. And for that process to begin requires us to really listen to the story of how those longings got misplaced and misused in the first place.

If you start getting curious while asking this part to share with you, you’ll likely find that your ache is colored by more than just the Fall.
Your ache has passed through trauma.
Through loss.
Through nervous systems shaped in households and churches that didn’t know how to hold it.

And so… the ache often got warped.

Longing collapsed into compulsion.
Desire hardened into dissociation.
Spirituality became strategy instead of surrender.

And in the absence of emotional safety,
our bodies learned to cope.
To soothe.
To survive.

But we weren’t made merely to survive.
We were made to thrive by being alive together.

How do you do that?

You slowly invite the parts of yourself to be seen,
held,
co-regulated,
healed in relationship.

That’s why self-regulation alone will never be enough – helps, but is never enough on it’s own.

You need the Body of Christ.
You need others.

And the cool thing is that Catholic anthropology never tires of reminding us of that fact. Mother Church has always invited us to see ourselves more so as human beings who are many things:

embodied, relational, rational, willful, emotional, and spiritual beings.

And so our faith reminds us that we are not a set of isolated faculties, no, but rather a unified whole that is complex, messy; imperfect, beautiful, paradoxical, and in all of that… made in the image and likeness of God, who is many persons in one being. In a similar way, we mirror the Trinity by our multifaceted, angsty, moody selves.

Science not only confirms this, it lays out a specific clinically-attuned narrative for the rise, fall, and redeeming nature of our longings.

Nervous System Theory, Felt Safety, and the Abuse of Our Sexuality

From the lens of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), we understand that the mind is not just the brain’s activity—but a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information. This means your patterns—your pain, your pleasure, your attempts at control or escape—are not simply moral failures (in so far as behavior is concerned) but deeply patterned attempts at regulating your inner world in the absence of felt safety.

Here’s how this happens:

See, when we feel unsafe in our bodies – whether from trauma, attachment wounds, chronic shame, or early misattunement – our nervous system enters a state of protection. We move into sympathetic fight/flight or dorsal shutdown – not by choice, but by design (not to doom us, but to remind us, to wake us up to pay attention once we can access safe faces and places to process).

And here’s where Polyvagal Theory helps us go deeper.

Developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, Polyvagal Theory reveals that our autonomic nervous system is always scanning for cues of safety or threat – something he calls neuroception. When we don’t find those cues in our environment or relationships, our system adapts to survive. Over time, we build implicit memory patterns – grooves of protection – that shape our behavior beneath conscious awareness.

Sexuality is one of the most powerful expressions of our neurobiology. It is relational, spiritual, embodied, and primal. But without sufficient safety, co-regulation, and spiritual/moral containment, sexuality can become a shortcut; a dissociative strategy to jump from one state (pain, loneliness, fear) to another (pleasure, control, relief), bypassing the actual emotional pain we never learned how to feel through to resolutionin order to naturally, progressively bounce back to a ventral vagal state of regulation.

This is the tragedy of sexual compulsivity:

We don’t feel safe enough to complete the stress response cycle,

so we reach for something that mimics the intimacy, connection, and release we’re craving.

But it’s not actually integration.

It’s survival.

We learn to escape into sex, fantasy, or compulsive validation, not because we’re evil—but because the body remembers a time when presence (to one’s inner and outer world) was not safe – but sexual stimulation and romantic validation was safe. And while it’s natural and good for sexuality and relationships to offer pleasure, co-regulation, and neuro-felt-safety (as they should), when we were never taught another way to feel safe other than through sexuality, this then creates an implosion inwards into an addiction as the means of regulating a dysregulated nervous system.

Over time, this hijacks our development. We don’t build the robust, flexible neural pathways needed to regulate in safe, attuned ways. The craving for touch, recognition, or arousal becomes the only signal the nervous system trusts to return to a sense of aliveness or agency.

In essence: the body skips steps. We bypass the discomfort that would lead to deeper integration, and instead rehearse a loop that never satisfies the ache.

And yet… (hear me out on this point)

These patterns are adaptations, not your identity.

Adaptations.

Not identity.

Parts of yourself, not your whole self, not your core self.

As Dr. Thomas Lewis puts it:

“The brain is an organ of adaptation. It encodes experience. When we are young, the pattern of our emotional environment gets laid down in our nervous system like grooves in a record.”

These grooves run deep.
But they are not destiny.

And since the brain is changeable…

With safety, presence, and attuned practice, new grooves can form.

You don’t have to live stuck in survival.

You don’t have to keep misreading your ache (pre-action) as inherently sinful, shameful, or dangerous (Though a part of you may still feel that way, and that’s okay too for now. That can soften appropriately also.)

You just need to become safe enough… to feel what’s actually there.

The Body as Testament

Your nervous system doesn’t lie.

It prophesies.

It keeps speaking even when misinterpreted theology silences you.

It keeps aching for safety, relief, and connection even when your will tries harder.

And if you’ve been caught in cycles of compulsive behavior – pornography, masturbation, fantasy, emotional/sexual affairs – this isn’t just a behavioral/moral issue.

On a deeper level – the level where real transformation occurs – this is a physiological, emotional, relational wound crying for relief.

Because your addiction is a trauma response.

What does that mean?

Like I’ve been introducing: your addiction is regulating your system out of dysregulation at a basic, fundamental level.

That is foundational.

Your body learned, through experience, the behavioral strategy of sexually acting out as the only option in the context of limited resources. And it is highly, highly likely that you were stuck with no other option because what you were feeling was so overwhelming to your system, it was traumatic. Especially if the trauma was a relationship that spanned years, decades, or an entire childhood.

So trauma leaves the system overwhelmed – and needing a way out.

A way into a felt sense of relief, somehow.

Maybe your system found sex as an outlet for feeling alive, in control, validated, seen, desired, wanted, enough, powerful… everything you didn’t feel when you traumatized or flooded by the subsequent emotional flashbacks.

And every time you were activated in a trauma flashback (conscious or subconscious), your system began scanning – seeking out the next time it could down-regulate from hyperarousal or up-regulate from hypoarousal.

And so, your system kept coming back to sex again and again, every time you felt a similar negative feeling that reminded your body of the first time you felt that way (and every time after that too).

What began as a one-time, curious, exploratory grasp for relief,

turned into a habit of seeking relief,

turned into the only way to find relief,

turned into a compulsion

which turned into unprocessed, festering shame, self-loathing, regret, grief (not to mention all the original unprocessed trauma still living in your body).

This further dissociated your brain from your body’s emotional and sensual, tactile contact with the world in real time.

Over time, this created the insidious phenomenon of addiction:

Where, despite wanting to stop, trying to stop, and even being convinced of the harmful outcomes –

you cannot, for the life of you, do anything to stop.

To not act out.

This is the tragedy.

The first couple chapters in a long tale of healing.

Sometimes you have to plummet into hell in order to gain enough momentum to arise back on earth.

So. Your addiction. It is not your identity.

Your trauma. It is not your fault.

But.

Both are your responsibility to heal.

And now you know a bit more of where the traumatic roots lie:

beneath the guttural trunk of your shame and the low-hanging fruit of your addiction.

So now what?

Keep doing what’s been working well enough some of the time.

Then add on from there. Add in something else.

You might also consider getting more co-regulating support in a group or individual trauma/addiction therapy.

Let’s mention a few good, general, wholesome practices that are a great foundation—if you have them in place. If not, don’t sweat it. Keep reading. Keep doing. You’ll know more of what I mean later on.

Grace Builds Upon Nature, And Yet…

There’s more to the frame.

Neuroplasticity is real.

Grace is real.

And they’re not in competition.

• Confession: can help deactivate shame through relational vulnerability. (But still has also activated a lot of shame for many due to presumably ill-informed confessors)
• Eucharist: can be a sacred encounter of co-regulation with the Body.
• Contemplative Prayer: can enhance mindfulness and emotional attunement.
• Resting on Sunday: can train the prefrontal cortex to rest, reset, and receive.
• Meditation on Scripture: can help to integrate the narrative self with Divine meaning.

All beautiful, foundational practices.

But here’s the thing:

If you’re not safe enough to feel… you’re not safe enough to heal.

So even if your soul (your spirit and mind) are saying all the right things, mentally and verbally,

if your body does not feel safe, it won’t land deeply enough.

And you won’t be able to fully actualize the grace offered to you until you create more safety.

Because safety creates more neural capacity to know and act on grace and not remain stuck in survival states with nothing but addiction, dissociation, denial, and avoidance as tools to regulate between states.

In this mode of being, you will inevitably – and tragically – stay stuck.

And you will come to resent God (if you haven’t already), life, your own efforts at healing, and even your very existence.

But it doesn’t have to end there.

This is your pivot:

You can recognize your pain as your catalyst.

You can fall forward each time you fall into your old patterns.

How do you do this?

Well:

True healing begins with prudent presence—not performance.

With co-operating safety—not strategy.

With specified compassion—not condemnation.

Below is a tool to do exactly that.

I hope you find it helpful.

A Practical Tool for Calming the Compulsion

(Adapted from the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model)

Try this next time your urge to act out arises:

1. Pause & Notice
“I’m feeling the urge to ___. Something in me is seeking relief.”
You are not the urge. You’re the observer of it.

2. Orient
Look around. Name 3 objects.
Feel your feet. Ground into the moment.
Say: “I am safe right now.”

3. Track Sensation
Where do you feel the craving in your body?
Stay there for 30–60 seconds.
Gently ask:

“What would I have to feel if I didn’t act out right now?”

This opens the door to begin connecting with the root of the pattern.

4. Reorient the Energy

• Do 10 slow squats
• Wring a towel and exhale deeply
• Place a hand on your heart and one on your belly:“You are allowed to feel this in a regulated and moral way. You belong.”

5. Connect
Journal. Text a safe friend.
Pray:

“Jesus, help me become a sanctuary for what aches in me.
Let Your love meet me in this ache, so I no longer have to numb it.”

With practice, this becomes less about resisting and more about rewiring, allowing your body and nervous system to experience a new outcome.

A Personal Note

I’ve walked with men and women who have lived under decades of shame, spiritual scrupulosity, and isolation in these patterns. I’ve also lived the ache myself.

And I’ve seen that real change is possible – not by force, but by learning to become safe for your own longing.

When the nervous system is no longer treated as the enemy…
When your story is no longer hidden in secrecy…
When grace touches the flesh and the fragmented places…

This is when healing begins.
This is when shame loosens its grip.
This is when communion becomes possible again.

What’s Next

If this letter resonates, I’m working with another therapist to create a small trauma-informed recovery group for men navigating unwanted sexual behaviors.

This will be a sacred but also clinical space for nervous system healing, psychic reintegration, and spiritual reconnection.

We’ll gathering interest now. If you want to learn more, you can reach out to us here.

And if you’re navigating this alone right now, please know:

You’re not beyond help.

You’re not too far gone.

You’re not dirty.

You are a whole person, worthy of love, healing, and belonging.

With you in the process,

Kolbe

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For Further Reading & Healing, I Recommend…

• The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel van der Kolk
• Be Restored – Dr. Bob Schuchts
• 20 Practices for Embodied Healing – Jan Winhall
• Unwanted – Jay Stringer
• The Drama of the Gifted Child – Alice Miller
• Anatomy of the Soul – Curt Thompson
• The Holy Longing – Ronald Rolheiser

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P.S. If you’d like to be guided more deeply through this work, I’m designing a course that will be a gentle pilgrimage into the soul, body, and Presence. Join the waitlist here if you’d like to know when it opens.

To schedule an appointment with the Catholic Therapy Center, please locate our contact page: https://catholictherapycenter.com/contact/.

To view Kolbe’s article and other resources on his site, visit https://www.healingwithkolbe.com/blog/becoming-safe-for-your-own-longing

To contact Kolbe, visit https://www.healingwithkolbe.com/contact