Today’s guest is Toronoto-based therapist Sandra Lax.

Let’s get right to it.

Here’s the interview!

Interview with Therapist Sandra Lax

Brian: Sandra, welcome to the show. We’re so glad to have you today.

Sandra: Thanks, Brian. It’s great to be here.

Brian: Absolutely. I’m going to get right to the first question. I want people to understand more about you and your work.

Questions: Can you please describe to us what your area of expertise is, and what types of problems do you typically help your clients with?

Sandra: Yeah. I began my career working at The Meadows, which is an in-patient residential facility for trauma, mood disorders, and addictions. What I really found was that I love working with sex addiction. I specialize now in working with spouses and partners who are impacted by the trauma of betrayal. My other area which goes really well with that is being a certified Daring Way facilitator which means that I teach the research and the work of a woman named Brené Brown, who many people are familiar with.

The work around sex addiction and Brené Brown’s work – which is centered around wholehearted living – go really well together. I look at myself as a vulnerability warrior, which means that I’m passionate about working with people so that they move from shame to wholeheartedness and construct their lives in a really bold and courageous way.

I have a friend who says, “Life really starts when we begin to get uncomfortable.” I think that shows up a lot in my work and specialization. That’s what really draws me and that’s what I’m super passionate about.

Brian: Excellent. I usually save this question towards the end of the interview but I’d love to know – given that you’re teaching the work of Brené Brown…

Questions: Could you give us the big bottom line? What’s the big takeaway that you’ve learned from this work that’s really going to revolutionize people’s lives, if there is something?

Sandra: I think that life really begins when we get uncomfortable, and the way that we connect in life to ourselves and to others is through vulnerability, and the only way to do vulnerability is to be courageous. I really think that those three things shape how we live our lives best. Those are some of the biggest things that I walk around the world with. I also work with people to adapt these into their lives. I think that’s the “one-two-three punch”.

Brian: Okay, great. I’d love to unpack that a little bit as we go through the interview today. I do have some prepared questions, and I’ll start asking you those. I assume some of the gold nuggets (about Brene Brown’s work) will also come out of this conversation.

Back to the mention about working with sex addiction; we’ve only had one person on the show talk about that, but I think you’ll have some unique things to bring to the table with that.

Question: If somebody – or maybe a couple – comes into your office and one of them is a sex addict, how do you start working with them in order to help them heal? How is it that you actually treat that?

Sandra: The first part of it is through education. There are so many misconceptions about what sex addiction is and what it isn’t. Most people hear sex addiction and they think of perverts and pedophiles. Sex addiction is really rooted in addiction that almost looks like a substance addiction, much like alcoholism or drug addiction. It has certain qualities to it, so I try and do a lot of education around that.

Let me break that down for a moment. Addiction is rooted in preoccupation, having a lot of thoughts about something like alcohol – in this case, it’s particularly sex, being unable to resist the urge. That preoccupation comes with that nervous system escalation and sole focus. You can’t focus on anything else in this particular addiction. It’s rooted in objectifying, it’s rooted in looking around at – what are the ways that someone can get that sexual hit (almost for survival) – the same way that someone might think that they need that drink in order to survive. Sex addicts believe that they need that hit of sex in order to do the same.

The third thing that we tend to look at within the addiction field is our escalation. If we compare sex addiction to drug addiction it’s like someone may start with marijuana, and someone may start viewing pornography. Then all of a sudden, they’re at the massage parlor. Similar to someone who starts with marijuana, they’ve now graduated to cocaine and then heroine. The sex addict can look similar in the sex arena. They start perhaps with viewing pornography, they’re next at a massage parlor, they are then engaging in a more high-risk sex such as sex with prostitutes and anonymous partners. There’s usually a continuation of this despite negative consequences.

People also ask me, “Does someone have to be having sex all the time for it to be considered sex addiction?” No. We look at the consequences much like if someone’s drinking; is there an impact on their work? Are their relationships crumbled as a result of it? What’s the impact to their own sense of self-worth and self-esteem? Are they experiencing distress because of this? There’s a lot of shame that surrounds that addiction. That shame is also what contributes to the cycle continuing. That’s usually where I hold the space with people in the first session around, “Let’s talk about what it is so that we know what we’re dealing with here.” So, I’d say the first step is education.

In my practice now, I’ve started to work exclusively with betrayed spouses. I will often refer the person struggling with addiction to a sex addict-specific counselor and I will do the work with the spouse. That’s as much work is I’m doing with the individual sex addict at this point.

Brian: I have a curious question after that.

Questions: Let’s say that somebody has a spouse who they know has been cheating and having sex outside of the marriage. Is there some sort of level of grace that they should have with that partner?

I have a wife and neither of us are sex addicts. I would be pretty upset if I found out that she was having sex outside of our marriage, obviously. But, if she had sex addiction, is there some extra level of grace that she should get (or the spouse should get) in that situation?

How do you go about determining if that’s what the issue is, and then being able to deal with it rather than just saying, “Oh, you cheated on me? We’re through.”

Sandra: It’s a great question. I think the answer for that is that you deal with the truth. All addictions lie in secrecy and silence. There’s a double life that happens anytime you’re bringing truth to it and saying, “This is what I see happening,” or “This is what I found in your phone,” or “Someone left a message,” or “I was viewing our emails and saw that this is happening.” I think the first step is to meet untruth with truth.

First, you have to unpack, “This is what’s really happening,” then get support. Contacting someone who is trained to work in this area is a way to unpack. Then assess for, “Is this a sex addiction? Is this infidelity?” Because it can look the same initially until there’s further assessment. I think those two steps are really important to working through and to getting on working on it.

Brian: Okay great.

Question: Now, if you are in the situation where you have a spouse that’s cheating and both are willing to work on it – it takes two to tango, so they say – what’s the difference between treating the individual – and that could be the individual with the addiction or the betrayed spouse as you work with – versus treating the couple together?

Sandra: I think all elements are equally important. We have something called a three-legged stool in this field, and particularly sex addiction therapists use it quite often. The greatest ability for a full, sustained recovery, and changing the nature of the dynamics in the relationship – in a way that is guided towards a really fulfilling, loving, and connected relationship – is something that we call the three-legged stool. Both individuals are in counseling and there’s also a couple’s counselor.

If you think of it, it’s three-legged; the individual counselor, the counselor for the spouse, and then the couple-ship work. It tends to yield the best results because, like many addictions, it takes some time to work through and heal. Actually, the research says it takes three to five years of pretty intensive work getting to sobriety, healing from betrayal, and then bringing the relationship to a place that is really sustaining and fulfilling.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely.

Question: About going through the healing process on the part of the betrayed spouse, what is it they’re typically dealing with?

I have a fair amount of folks I hear from that say, “Yeah, I have a spouse that cheats. They’ve been cheating for a long time.” These people just put up with it because they don’t want to leave their relationship. There is some codependency involved in the relationship. They’re either financially dependent on the person or they’ve got children and they don’t want to separate the family. There are all sorts of reasons why people choose to stay. What is it that the folks who are betrayed by the – let