Our clients come in wanting many different things from their individual therapy. Some are sexually inexperienced and harbor enormous anxiety about engaging with anyone intimately. Some clients want a safe place to discuss how sexually unfulfilled they feel in their partnerships. Others have very specific sexual traumas they have known they have needed to address for years and are finally ready. All of our clients are incredibly brave and courageous to come in and be vulnerable with a new therapist, share their stories, their pain and work towards a new beginning so that they can get the happy ending they so desire. Our goals for you are what you most want for yourself – a healthy, happy, fun and connected sex life. We want your shame and secrets vanquished. We want congruence for you; where everything you think, say and do aligns in an integrated way. We have the experience and the tools to help you achieve these goals in partnership with your consistent, committed work.
Much like adults, adolescents have constant access to screens and can become compulsive in viewing internet pornography and/or video gaming. Pornography is sadly becoming our children’s first sexual education with very damaging effects on their long-term sexual health. We take a very careful approach to treating young people with these compulsive behaviors, including a great deal of education on how these practices will influence their natural sexual response cycle. Yet like adults do, young people benefit enormously when a therapist takes a non-judgemental, compassionate stance in which their therapist is truly listening to them. All of us at Psychotherapy Works feel genuinely passionate about helping young people develop positive, healthy full lives.
Many people that struggle with various sexual dysfunctions (i.e., erectile dysfunction) struggle with underlying sex addictions. Sex and pornography addictions are complicated process addictions; they come in many forms and have many origins. Some are cross addictions with other substances like alcohol, cocaine and marijuana. Much like a food addict must learn to have a healthy relationship to food and eating once he or she is in recovery, so too does someone with a sex addiction need to learn to have a healthy relationship to sex and sexuality. Most all addictions are coping mechanisms people use to try to escape discomfort, pain or trauma. Your therapist will not only help you on your road to sobriety but they will help you get to the root of the underlying pain or trauma so that you can heal the origins and not simply band-aid the unwanted behaviors. Your therapist understands the shame that sexual addictions often bring up for our clients. She will take a caring, compassionate stance while working from evidence-based training to help you achieve the change you desire. We will help you stop living a double life and attain true recovery; not merely sobriety or abstinence.
Vaginismus (the clenching of the vaginal walls such that penetration is not possible) and Vulvodynia (pain in the vulva) are two common female sexual problems that our therapists often help clients with. A detailed sexual history will be taken and various somatic psychotherapeutic techniques (such as EMDR) will be used in sessions to help clients reprogram the body-mind sexual response cycle. Often your therapist will recommend that you work with a dilator kit at home or simultaneously consult with a vaginal physical therapist during your work. A holistic approach must be taken to achieve long-term, healthy gains.
Our therapists truly specialize in helping men that have anxiety over their sexual performance including erectile problems, rapid ejaculation, delayed ejaculation and other anxiety-related sexual problems. Your therapist will begin with a gentle, compassionate yet thorough analysis of your sexual history, including assessing for any type of negative sexual and other traumatic experiences. This work is very holistic in that all areas of your life will get addressed as sexual dysfunctions never occur in a vacuum.
Only the bravest of couples come in after infidelities to repair their partnerships. This is extremely hard work for the couple and very gratifying for the therapists here at Psychotherapy Works. Often a betrayed partner feels she or he has been shot out of familiar blue skies and damned into a very dark, lonely, scary place. He or she is often experiencing PTSD-type (post traumatic stress disorder) symptoms as discovering cheating behaviors can be extremely traumatic to the unsuspecting partner. By stark contrast, the cheating partner is often experiencing a strange kind of relief at ending his or her double life, yearning to have a new beginning with their partner (yet not knowing if forgiveness will ever be possible). He or she is having a very opposite experience – out of the shadows and now in the light of honesty. Our therapists are well-trained with concrete therapeutic techniques and tools to help recovering couples HEAL. This is not a quick process but we have hundreds of success stories of couples’ who have made it through. All of us are humbled by your bravery to come in– to trust our training and our expertise so that you can do the hard work necessary to recover and begin again.
Treatment for all couples looking to enhance their sex life. Perhaps one partner has a higher libido than the other; perhaps there has been difficulty with sex and intimacy since the beginning of the relationship. Couples often need to rekindle a better sex life after having children or after the discovery of an infidelity. Many times one or both partners struggle with some type of sexual dysfunction such as erectile dysfunction or vaginismus. Our staff is well trained to help you with these and many other sexual issues and, if we cannot, we will refer you to another excellent clinician who can.
