Emotional discomfort is one of the primary pain agents that will move the addict to the first level of the addiction cycle and cause them to disconnect from their feelings. Emotional discomfort is basically a family of origin issue. The sex addict never learned how to identify feelings while growing up in his or her family. Consequently, many sex addicts have very primitive emotional skills. Therefore, when they have a painful feeling, they act out sexually to feel betterI remember knowing that when I felt any kind of emotional discomfort as an addict, whether it was hopelessness, anger or confusion, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it to identify it. Whatever uncomfortable emotional feelings I had, I knew that if I just acted out in some way, it would go away temporarily. The interesting thing about this is, it worked! My addiction did medicate the emotional discomfort I was feeling temporarily. Emotional discomfort for many sex addicts is the pain agent that moves them forward into the next steps of the cycle of addiction. Once you identify the emotion, you can begin to shift so that the addiction cycle doesn't have to continue.