When Is a Residential Treatment Center Appropriate for Pornography or Sexual Addiction?

Do I—or someone I love—need to go away from home to deal with pornography or sexual addiction? I get this question fairly often. In this short space, I’ll introduce some major themes to consider. Admittedly, this is a bigger subject than one blog can address and there may be varying opinions. I’m sure others have much to say that would be beneficial, but here are some factors to think about if you’re considering whether a treatment center may be helpful for you or someone you love.

1. Are you out of control and unable to stop destructive sexual behavior or sexual sin?

This is pretty self-explanatory, but someone else may have to help you see and own the true destruction your sexual addiction is causing. Our sinful natures lead us to usually be very deceptive about the depth of our sin and the effects of it on us and others.

Even if you’ve put some positive stop-gaps into place (such as accountability, filters, and support groups) but find they’re not helping, you may need more drastic interventions. If you’re getting lost in hours upon hours of viewing pornography or other sexual sins and you know it’s affecting and interrupting your normal life (work, marriage, family, community) you probably need time apart from your day-to-day routines to get help and look more intently at your problem.

2. Are you involved in self-destructive or destructive-to-others behavior that goes beyond viewing porn?

This is related to the previous point but also involves admitting that you can’t trust yourself not to engage in destructive or harmful behaviors. I’m not primarily talking about physical behaviors (although that might be the case), but ones that get you more embedded in your out-of-control sexual addiction, resulting in much more relational, emotional, and spiritual damage—to you and others. These are actions that cross multiple boundaries; they may include interactive “live” encounters online involving another person, hours spent in sexual chat rooms, time spent in places known for frequent, anonymous sexual encounters, visiting prostitutes, serial affairs, and so on.

Please note that if you have accompanying mental health struggles that are harmful or destructive in nature, you need to address them before considering a treatment program for sexual addiction. These include serious depression, alcohol or prescription drug addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorders, or personality disorders. If you have suicidal ideations or are suicidal, this needs to be addressed before you focus on your sexual struggles.

3. Are you lacking the necessary human resources and support system or do you need more help than they can supply?

Some simply don’t have adequate human resources and support systems available, either because the people are not there or they may not be trusted. You may not have helpful accountability partners, counselors, spiritual leadership, or others who can help you create restrictions and boundaries, help you come up with a care plan, and, more importantly, help you carry it through. Or you may have what appear to be reliable resources but later find they’re not available when most needed.

Sometimes those who find themselves with ample resources are least likely to seek residential care and are willing to utilize what they have successfully. Conversely, those who have exhausted their resources, for whatever reason, may need the benefit of residential care to fight sexual addiction.^[1]

4.  Do you need to see more of the “roots-and-shoots” underpinning or reinforcing your struggles and habits regarding sexual addiction?

You or your loved one may already be getting help in some way but begin to see underlying, life-dominating patterns that are not being addressed and cannot be addressed in sporadic helping venues (even weekly meetings or counseling). Sometimes, using available resources doesn’t automatically produce the needed insight as to why these behaviors began in the first place, what function they serve, or how they can be defeated. Most sin and its accompanying fruit have complex root systems that need to be discovered, repented of, and put to death.

An away-from-home, concentrated time of getting help can complement other support systems. In such cases, people can benefit from a concise, condensed period of helping tools that take place in even two weeks, four weeks, or a month. Even a weekend seminar can help you understand the heart issues that drive your sexual addiction.

But perhaps you’ve become aware of some deep, crippling, tainted, or destructive world- and life-views pressing in from your past that can’t be addressed as thoroughly or intensively as needed. Perhaps you and your spouse have both come from destructive family dynamics or sexual abuse and you carry these wounds into your marriage. You know, instinctively, that somehow this all may be impacting your own rush into the sexually prohibited as a believer . . . but you don’t see the tie-ins or know how to break the cycles. You may have some understanding of the issues from a counselor, but you feel like it’s not enough and you’re still not able to say “no” to sin and sexual behaviors you know are sinful. A residential treatment center may be helpful to you.

5. Do you need more convincing that you’re worse off than you believe?

Many people caught in the throes of sexual addiction and sin have perfected the arts of denial, excuse-making, and blame-shifting . . . and are, overall, self-deceived. That’s the nature of addiction and the fallen heart.

You can even stay “safe” and hidden within a group designed to help you confront your porn problem. It can be easy to say, “Sure, I’ve got a problem, but not like these other guys.” And in this kind of setting, it might take months for you to realize you’re in exactly the same predicament as them.

There’s nothing like being around others who know they’re self-deceived and game-players beginning to see the reality of their behavior and the true nature of their hearts—and becoming dreadfully honest! Yes, this can happen in a weekly small group, but if you need an undistracted dose of reality and grace over an extended period of time, away from the stresses, pressures, and routines of life that can keep your sexual addiction in place (and you in the dark), you may need to consider an away-from-home venue.

6. Do you have the proper motivation for fighting sexual addiction?

People usually have lots of reasons to want to get better or deal with their problems. Some have to do with merely survival of life as you know it. You may be trying to save your job, save your marriage, stop feeling guilty, or rescue your reputation. How motivated are you to get better? The more personally motivated and persistent you are to leave sinful behavior behind, the more successful any counseling or support program will be. If you want radical change, you will not stop until you reach your goal. You will never tolerate the temptation to ease off the battle, even when things may start to get better.

Motivation based on externals alone—people pressuring you, facing potential negative consequences, or the possibility of your life falling apart—may result in a greater chance of slipping back into your sin. These external motivations don’t expose your heart, its motives or its response to the gospel. But sometimes we do need external pressure of the right kind to keep us facing our problem for an extended period—to help us discover the depth of our need and to be really broken by our sinful patterns. In most of these kinds of short-term settings, helpers and attenders will often be in-your-face and won’t let you retreat. In this case, residential treatment may help.^[2]

7. Are you committed to long-term transparency and change?

No treatment programs will ever change you as you need to be changed! However, they can be a catalyst and agent, and God can use them in the process of seeking deeper change. There is no magic in away-from-home or residential programs, and people can be guided to them prematurely. Attending a residential treatment center isn’t the cure-all but rather the beginning. It’s an opportunity for renewed conviction about everything that needs to happen after that program.

Even the effectiveness of the best of these programs depends on the aftercare, the action plan for the environment where you live your daily life. Many of us prefer to manage our sexual addiction and sin rather than seek to eradicate it. While we can hate what it does to our conscience, our lives, and our loved ones, on some level we also love our sin. That’s why we’re often so ambivalent about sin and change . . . it’s why we’re often on the verge of throwing in the towel. It will always be our choice whether we continue to live in the secrecy of shadows, in a life of game-playing.

Growth, walking in the light, and real change will always involve a commitment to transparency of life with trusted brothers and sisters in the Lord. True repentance will also welcome the intrusive questions from others, perhaps the permanent or temporary cessation from marital sex while trust is regained, and limitations on travel and internet access. Why? Because walking in freedom, rebuilding your character, and honoring Christ is of greater value than your own personal freedoms and pleasures.

The willingness to experience this loss of personal privacy and adopting a commitment to transparency, for the sake of defeating your sin patterns by the power of the Holy Spirit in you, will speak volumes about your commitment to long-term change.^[3] Some will feel that all this is like death—and to some extent, it is. But more than that, putting your sin and sexual addiction to death through Christ who lives in you is the road to real life (see Romans 6).

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^[1] Many thanks to my friend Philip Monroe, PsyD. Some of my thinking about this topic and in this blog is borrowed from his teaching. You can find more at his website: https://philipmonroe.com/.

^[2] Some of my thinking here is borrowed from Philip Monroe: https://philipmonroe.com/.

^[3] Some of my thinking here is borrowed from Philip Monroe: https://philipmonroe.com/.