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Developmental history from childhood

The phase of childhood from birth to age 6 is a critical time of sensitivity, during which time, templates are created which shape future interpersonal interactions. During this sensitive period of development, a child acquires a variety of new abilities and skills that are a necessary part of child development. There are five sensitive period categories, which include language, order, sensory skills, motor skills, and social skills.

Many people experience some type of wounding during their early development and learn to numb their pain by self-soothing with one or more compulsive behaviours. As adults, they may continue to struggle with the compulsive misuse of alcohol, drugs, spending, food, sex, relationships or the Internet. All addictions feature a very complex emotional and biochemical process that have origins in childhood trauma and the deprivation of authentic intimacy and bonding during development.

Socially induced pathology appears between the ages of 4 to 5 and 8 to 9.The onset of male sexual imprinting is from aged 3 to 4 and peaks at 8 to 9, with an upper tail at about aged 13. These sex and relationship templates (set up in childhood) become activated at puberty and develop and continue throughout adult life.

4 Ways in which juvenile sex and relsp templates are developmentally vulnerable to socially induced pathology:

· Explicitly neglecting to monitor and reinforce healthy sexual rehearsal play.

· Punishing or humiliating children for their rehearsal play.

· Prematurely inducting children into sexual rehearsal play.

· Coercing children into age-discrepant sexual rehearsal play.

Our early attachment styles are established in childhood through the infant/caregiver relationship. Four distinguishing characteristics of attachment are:

1 Proximity Maintenance - The desire to be near the people we are attached to.

2 Safe Haven - Returning to the attachment figure for comfort and safety in the face of a fear or threat.

3 Secure Base - The attachment figure acts as a base of security from which the child can explore the surrounding environment.

4 Separation Distress - Anxiety that occurs in the absence of the attachment figure.

Templates are setting up traits that will play out in Adulthood, which the child did not vote to have at work in their life. Get some help from The Kairos Centre. See what you cannot see. Begin to change that which you begin to better understand.

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Gary McFarlane (BA, LLM, Dip, Certs), Accredited EMDR Practitioner.

Key words: sex addiction, addicted, partner, porn addiction, recovery, sex drive, therapy, sex therapy, podcast, relationships, relationship counseling, relationship advice, addiction, couples, couples therapy, sex therapy, emdr, love addiction, behavior, psychology, codependency, sex life, neuroscience, sex ed, sober, sobriety, sexual dysfunction, relationship issues, sex coach, sexual, trauma, ptsd, sex science, The sex porn love Addiction Podcast, The Singles Partners Marrieds and Long Time Marrieds Podcast, Gary McFarlane, porn addiction, what neuroscience says, neuroscience, young adults, sex, sex addict, porn, recovery, porn addiction issue, porn addiction in teens, sex addiction in teens, sex hormones, hormon

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Sex Addiction is different to Porn Addiction. Sex & Porn Addiction are different to Love Addiction. They all get set up in 3 ways:

1. Opportunity: Material accessed too early in childhood development

2. Trauma: Just as it says on the label of the can! But make trauma age-related and its impact on the immature developing brain, not what is going on in wars between Russia & Ukraine, Israel & Hamas

3. Insecure Attachment: A disruption in the early years bonding between the child and main caregivers

Definition of sex addiction: A pattern of sexual behaviours which pre-occupy your thoughts and are out of control. You cannot stay stopped for a sustainable period or consistently and it has harmful consequences and the behaviour serves a function in your life and it is used primarily to anaesthetize some negative feeling state. (The important criteria which makes it an addiction, rather than a love of sex, is that it serves a function).

Love Addiction: We all want love and affection and to feel special to at least one person. We need attachment and instinctively seek connection, especially romantic connection. There is nothing dysfunctional about wanting love and affection and connection.

Love addiction, however, is a compulsive, chronic craving and/or pursuit of romantic love in an effort to get our sense of security and worth from another person. During infatuation we believe we have that security only to be disappointed and empty again once the intensity fades. The negative consequences can be severe and yet the love addict continues to hang on to the belief that true love will fix everything.

Therefore, they eventually get back up after the hurt of rejection and try the chase again and again, even when love from at least one other, is in front of them. Caused by “Attachment”, mostly set up in childhood, it seeks to fill a perceived void, that will never actually be filled.

We all want love and affection and to feel special to at least one person. We need attachment and we instinctively seek connection, especially romantic connection. There is nothing dysfunctional about wanting love, affection and connection.

There is a difference between a Compulsion and an Addiction, even if the journey to recovery is the same. Here is a link to my whiteboard video to help better understand all of those distinctions - https://youtu.be/Sd_28nqNK1A

Get some help from The Kairos Centre. See what you cannot see. Begin to change that which you begin to better understand.

Help someone: https://igg.me/at/ThekairosCentre

Help is here for you: bit.ly/pornaddictionhelp

Gary McFarlane (BA, LLM, Dip, Certs), Accredited EMDR Practitioner.

Keywords:sex addiction, addicted, sex counseling, partner, porn addiction, recovery, sex drive, sex addiction recovery, therapist, therapy, talk show, sex therapy, podcast, sobriety, counseling, relationships, relationship counseling, relationship advice, addiction, couples, relationship therapy, couples therapy, sex therapist, online counseling, emdr therapy, emdr, sex therapy, addiction, conflict management, love addiction, love addiction therapy, behavior, marriage, marriage advice, psychology, codependency, sex life, neuroscience, sex ed, sober, sobriety, sexual dysfunction, relationship issues, sex coach, sexual, sexual trauma, trau

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The report found that 58% of respondents had seen violent pornography, including strangulation and rape scenes, before age 18, with girls more likely than boys to witness such content. Children are exposed to increasingly extreme online pornography, with concerns that new restrictions may be easily circumvented through VPNs. Worry was expressed, that even with new rules, users could bypass restrictions, as VPN usage in the UK had already increased significantly.

70% of respondents had seen it, with an average age of first exposure being 13. Boys were more likely than girls to have seen pornography and vulnerable children, including those receiving free school meals or having disabilities, were more likely to have encountered it by age 11. Children are more likely to stumble upon pornography on social media sites like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok than on dedicated porn sites, with many discovering it by accident rather than actively seeking it out.

X (formerly Twitter) is the most common source (outstripping the dedicated porn sites!). Other social media sites where porn is accessed, includes Snapchat at 29%, Instagram at 23%, TickTok at 22% and Youtube at 15%.

All of this is a big deal because of what is being set up in this early childhood development stage, which will play out in adulthood. Consider the definition of Porn addiction which I use:

"A pattern of sexual behaviours which pre-occupy your thoughts and are out of control. You cannot stay stopped for a sustainable period or consistently and it has harmful consequences and the behaviour serves a function in your life and it is used primarily to anaesthetize some negative feeling state. (The important criterion, which makes it an addiction, rather than a love of sex, is that, it serves a function)".

Many view the phase of childhood from birth to age 6 (and beyond) as a critical time of sensitivity, during which time, templates are created which shape future interpersonal interactions. During the sensitive period of development, a child acquires a variety of new abilities and skills that are a necessary part of child development.

There are five sensitive period categories, which include language, order, sensory skills, motor skills, and social skills. For example, The onset of male sexual imprinting is from aged 3 to 4 and peaks at 8 to 9, with an upper tail at about aged 13.

Get some help from The Kairos Centre. See what you cannot see. Begin to change that which you begin to better understand.

Help someone: https://igg.me/at/ThekairosCentre

Help is here for you: bit.ly/pornaddictionhelp

Gary McFarlane (BA, LLM, Dip, Certs), Accredited EMDR Practitioner.

Keywords:sex addiction, addicted, sex counseling, partner, porn addiction, recovery, sex drive, sex addiction recovery, therapist, therapy, talk show, sex therapy, podcast, sobriety, counseling, relationships, relationship counseling, relationship advice, addiction, couples, relationship therapy, couples therapy, sex therapist, online counseling, emdr therapy, emdr, sex therapy, addiction, conflict management, love addiction, love addiction therapy, behavior, marriage, marriage advice, psychology, codependency, sex life, neuroscience, sex ed, sober, sobriety, sexual dysfunction, relationship issues, sex coach, sexual, sexual traum

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"It was aged....and I came across my [parents] stash of porn. I kept going back to view when they were out and took a few to my my room. They never knew".

That is the very typical answer that I have been given by a large percentage of my adult clients when taking them through my History Taking Questionnaire. I ask them 188 questions over three 50 minutes sessions and their answers help me and them to build a profile understanding of the client from birth to current adult age; in order to answer the key question - for working with in EMDR and/or my Recovery Programme - 'What happened to you back there during childhood development'.

It is not about allocating blame to parents. I say to clients that before allocating blame to parents, they would need to first consider the parents who parented their parents to see the batons and scripts handed to their parents; by implication - for the client to 'get it/understand' what the client is likely to be passing on to their children - despite their parents filtering off the worse excesses of what happened to then, so as not to pass the same excess to their children. Get it?

It is about 'curiosity', not blame inquisition. It is about getting into the sandpit with the client.

Answering the question 'What happened back there' - helps to better understand the brain's choice of preferred self-soothing behaviour for the adversity which was impacting them back there in childhood. (The client does not choose the type of compulsive behaviour. The brain chooses). That repeat (order from the menu!) over time, unwittingly became a compulsive response to a real or expected or perceived 'look alike' similar adversity.

They have embarked on the hamster wheel; created a 'go-to'; carved out a habit; etched on the brain a neural pathway, to manage emotions by escape and camouflaging the adversity for a while. Problem: They are skipping the developmental brains training to use more positive life-skill coping strategies which other children are learning. Problem: They have to begin anew in adulthood to now learn for the first time, those postponed learning that were tools in the toolkit armoury which other children acquired.

Problem: They are unaware that what is also happening at that early age, is that the physiology of the body was being changed to become 'use dependent' on the very potent neurochemical mix being secreted into their immature brain - called Dopamine, Serotonin, Oxytocin, norephrinepine - which are as potent as illegal street drugs.

Get some help from The Kairos Centre. See what you cannot see. Begin to change that which you begin to better understand.

Help someone: https://igg.me/at/ThekairosCentre

Help is here for you: bit.ly/pornaddictionhelp

Gary McFarlane (BA, LLM, Dip, Certs), Accredited EMDR Practitioner.

Keywords:sex addiction, addicted, sex counseling, partner, porn addiction, recovery, sex drive, sex addiction recovery, therapist, therapy, talk show, sex therapy, podcast, sobriety, counseling, relationships, relationship counseling, relationship advice, addiction, couples, relationship therapy, couples therapy, sex therapist, online counseling, emdr therapy, emdr, sex therapy, addiction, conflict management, love addiction, love addiction therapy, behavior, marriage, marriage advice, psychology, codependency, sex life, neuroscience, sex ed, sober, sobriety, sexual dysfunction, relationship issues, sex coach, sexual, sexual tr

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Newspaper headline: "Joe is 10 years old and he is on The Sex offenders register and he has not yet kissed a girl".

How can that be? Is that really true? Surely not! Ok my goodness!

Even though that is not in the content of her Report, here is what the Children's Commissioner - Dame Rachel de Souza - says in the foreword of her Report, dated 19 August 2025:

"Shockingly, as this report highlights, pornography is no longer something that children might seek out in adolescence. Today it has become something many children stumble upon accidentally while they are still in primary school. It is something that is shown to them without even looking for it on the same social media sites that were designed to help them connect with other people and be entertained. And it’s not just any pornography. It is violent, extreme, and degrading often portraying acts that are illegal - or soon will be.

Two years ago, I published “A lot of it is actually just abuse”, a landmark report on the scale of children’s exposure to pornography online. At the time, the findings shocked me and many others. We found that the average age a child first saw porn was 13 years old. This has not improved; children are encountering violent and harmful material often before they are even old enough to understand what they are seeing.

This report should be read as a snapshot of what rock bottom looks like. I hope we will be able to look back at the findings, which were gathered in the final weeks before Ofcom’s children’s codes came into force, and shudder at how things used to be......"

Get some help from The Kairos Centre. See what you cannot see. Begin to change that which you begin to better understand.

Help someone to access the Recovery Programme: https://igg.me/at/ThekairosCentre

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Gary McFarlane (BA, LLM, Dip, Certs), Accredited EMDR Practitioner.

Keywords: sex addiction, addicted, sex counseling, partner, porn addiction, recovery, sex drive, sex addiction recovery, therapist, therapy, talk show, sex therapy, podcast, sobriety, counseling, relationships, relationship counseling, relationship advice, addiction, couples, relationship therapy, couples therapy, sex therapist, online counseling, emdr therapy, emdr, sex therapy, addiction, conflict management, love addiction, love addiction therapy, behavior, marriage, marriage advice, psychology, codependency, sex life, neuroscience, sex ed, sober, sobriety, sexual dysfunction, relationship issues, sex coach, sexual, sexual trauma, trauma, brain, sex science, The Sex Porn Love Addiction Podcast, biology, gender, Gary McFarlane

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Put these tools into your armoury of resources to help you communicate more effectively:

John Grays 'Men are from mars and women are from Venus' is still worth a read. Also (although a somewhat provocative title) 'Men don't listen and women can't read maps' - is worth reading.

Both books remind us that there is a difference between how masculinity and femininity communicate. There is a big difference between 'Hearing' and 'Listening'.

There is a difference in how we communicate when we are in conflict with someone. There is a difference in how we communicate when we are in a 'Parent role', 'Adult role' or Child role". (That is the theme of TA (Transactional Analysis - for which you can do a 3 years degree to understand the dynamics).

There is a difference between Sympathy and Empathy. There is a difference between Narcissism and Empathy. (I describe Empathy as the antedote to Narcissism).

There is a difference in how we communicate when '...now is not a good time for me...', but we are forced to do communication. It can quickly go downhill.

There is a difference in how we communicate when there is a power imbalance. There is a difference in how we communicate when Shame is at work (very much applicable to those with Sex/Porn/Love Addiction - remembering my mathematical formula - SHAME + NARCISSISM = SEX/PORN ADDICTION.

Know the terrain in which YOU are communicating. Remember that the biggest aspect of effective communication is what we take in with our eyes.

Get some help from The Kairos Centre. See what you cannot see. Begin to change that which you begin to better understand.

Help someone to access the Recovery Programme: https://igg.me/at/ThekairosCentre

Help is here for you: bit.ly/pornaddictionhelp

Want to access past episodes for a small monthly fee - Here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1117412/support

Gary McFarlane (BA, LLM, Dip, Certs), Accredited EMDR Practitioner.

Keywords: sex addiction, addicted, sex counseling, partner, porn addiction, recovery, sex drive, sex addiction recovery, therapist, therapy, talk show, sex therapy, podcast, sobriety, counseling, relationships, relationship counseling, relationship advice, addiction, couples, relationship therapy, couples therapy, sex therapist, online counseling, emdr therapy, emdr, sex therapy, addiction, conflict management, love addiction, love addiction therapy, behavior, marriage, marriage advice, psychology, codependency, sex life, neuroscience, sex ed, sober, sobriety, sexual dysfunction, relationship issues, sex coach, sexual, sexual trauma, trauma, brain, sex science, The Sex Porn Love Addiction Podcast, biology, gender, Gary McFarlane

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Sex addict, your body demeanour is going to give you away. Know the facts about the body and how you main have trained it to 'tell on you'!

When we first meet someone we form a very strong impression of them within the first 40 seconds. We form a lasting opinion of them within the first 4 minutes. Our opinion will influence the way in which we respond and behave towards that person until something happens to cause us to change our mind. Even then, changing our mind is a process and is not immediate.

Our voice and body language communicate about 93% of our message. Let’s break that down a bit more. Dependent upon the statistics that you read, anything from 55% to 70% of what is communicated and we take in, is what we gain visually, using our sight. In other words what we see. 38% comes from what we hear (tone, pitch of voice etc) and only 7% comes from the actual words that we hear. Remember words are ambiguous.

The way someone dresses influences opinion. As a speaker, if I dress in a way that is insensitive, inappropriate or is causing you to pay more attention to it; perhaps I have been culturally insensitive in my dress sense; then for quite a long time you will have been absorbed with that fact. You will have stopped listening effectively and be distracted in your thoughts, although you will have been “hearing” noise coming out of my mouth. There is a great difference between listening and hearing.

If you detect a nervous disposition from me as I am speaking to you, my nervous disposition and shaking hands will be giving you mixed messages and reduce the impact of what I am saying. What is the importance of all of this?

It is important to maximise that which takes in most of the information whilst we communicate. That is the visual. Therefore, avoid having those important conversations sitting side by side, particularly with the television on. Text messages can be disastrous when dealing with important matters. Laying side by side and pillow talk conversations can become problematic if the subject has more importance to one of you than is realised by the other.

I am not saying not to do it, but I want you to be aware that the aim should be to maximise eye to eye and body to body visual contact.

Get some help from The Kairos Centre. See what you cannot see. Begin to change that which you begin to better understand.

Help someone to access the Recovery Programme: https://igg.me/at/ThekairosCentre

Help is here for you: bit.ly/pornaddictionhelp

Want to access past episodes for a small monthly fee - Here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1117412/support

Gary McFarlane (BA, LLM, Dip, Certs), Accredited EMDR Practitioner.

Keywords: sex addiction, addicted, sex counseling, partner, porn addiction, recovery, sex drive, sex addiction recovery, therapist, therapy, talk show, sex therapy, podcast, sobriety, counseling, relationships, relationship counseling, relationship advice, addiction, couples, relationship therapy, couples therapy, sex therapist, online counseling, emdr therapy, emdr, sex therapy, addiction, conflict management, love addiction, love addiction therapy, behavior, marriage, marriage advice, psychology, codependency, sex life, neuroscience, sex ed, sober, sobriety, sexual dysfunction, relationship issues, sex coach, sexual, sexual trauma, trauma, brain, sex science, The Sex Porn Love Addiction Podcast, biology, gender, Gary McFarlane

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When we are communicating, the information is passing through the filters of the different structures of the brain. Sex Addiction does damage the brain and so, damages the filters.

We all have filters. The message being transmitted is going through the receiver, but the receiver has filters and that means the message can come out the other end looking very different to what went in and was received. A damaged or compromised brain may incorrectly filter the message.

For there to be effective transmission and receipt, the equipment must be working well. Stress, headaches, worry, multi-tasking and distractions are some things which act as blocks to effective transmission. Fight, Flight Freeze, Brain damage, dopamine and other neurochemical highs or lows, are other compromises to the filtering mechanisms of the brain.

We need to learn to listen effectively and hear well. The speaker must have a clear idea of what they intend to communicate. The recipient must feel the message is relevant and be interested or greater levels of concentration will be required. The time and place must be appropriate. Both should be free from interference from strong emotions and past history! They must share the same language and not have coded meanings.

The problem we have is that on a lot of occasions many of those things are not present and so there are problems in transmitting and/or receiving. Filters may act as blocks. What is said is not what we want to hear and so we do not listen and/or we do not interpret it the way it was intended. That can all be happening consciously or even unconsciously. It is the unconscious which is perhaps more difficult to identify and address.

Don’t be entrenched and fixed in your views. Don’t be dogmatic. Leave scope for a different opinion. I demonstrate this in therapy by showing ambiguous picture and ask each person to describe what they see. Some cannot see all the different images contained in one picture. They need help. When pointed out, they exclaim with pleasure that they too can now see the differing images! But they needed help. Until they received help, many will hold firmly to their view that there is nothing further to be seen.

Life is not always Black and White. Sometimes we all need help to see and better understand that which we just cannot see or understand with our own five senses. Sometimes we need someone to help us introduce some colour into our black and white, all or nothing way of thinking. That so often is all that counselling is - just adding some colour!

Get some help from The Kairos Centre. See what you cannot see. Begin to change that which you begin to better understand.

Help someone to access the Recovery Programme: https://igg.me/at/ThekairosCentre

Gary McFarlane (BA, LLM, Dip, Certs), Accredited EMDR Practitioner.

Keywords: sex addiction, addicted, sex counseling, partner, porn addiction, recovery, sex drive, sex addiction recovery, therapist, therapy, talk show, sex therapy, podcast, sobriety, counseling, relationships, relationship counseling, relationship advice, addiction, couples, relationship therapy, couples therapy, sex therapist, online counseling, emdr therapy, emdr, sex therapy, addiction, conflict management, love addiction, love addiction therapy, behavior, marriage, marriage advice, psychology, codependency, sex life, neuroscience, sex ed, sober, sobriety, sexual dysfunction, relationship issues, sex coach, sexual, sexual trauma, trauma, brain, sex science, The Sex Porn Love Addiction Pod

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