how sex therapy can help you
How Can Sex Therapy Help You? And Is It Really Just Talking About Sex All Day?
When people hear the words sex therapy, they often imagine lying on a couch discussing the most embarrassing moments of their sex life while someone with a clipboard silently judges them.
Thankfully, that’s not what happens.
In fact, one of the biggest surprises clients tell me after their first session is:
“Oh. That wasn’t nearly as awkward as I thought it would be.”
Let’s start with the basics.
Sex therapy is simply therapy with a focus on sex, relationships and intimacy. Sometimes that means talking about sex directly, and sometimes it means we spend weeks talking about anxiety, shame, stress, relationships, grief, trauma, ADHD, body image, menopause, parenting, or that feeling that you’ve somehow become flatmates who occasionally share a Netflix password.
Because sex doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
Unfortunately.
Top Tip Number One – You don’t need to be in crisis to come to sex therapy.
You don’t have to wait until things are falling apart. You don’t need to have stopped having sex altogether. You don’t even need to know what the problem is.
“It’s just not how it used to be” is reason enough.
So, what can sex therapy help with?
Pretty much anything that sits at the intersection of sex, intimacy and relationships.
That might include:
Differences in desire between partners.
Pain during sex.
Erectile difficulties.
Problems with orgasm.
Sexual anxiety.
Sexual trauma.
Vaginismus and vulvodynia.
Compulsive sexual behaviours.
Pornography concerns.
Affairs and betrayals.
Shame around sex or sexuality.
Kink and BDSM exploration.
Non-monogamy.
Questions around identity.
Navigating sex and intimacy after illness, menopause or becoming parents.
Simply wanting a better sex life.
And yes, sometimes people come because they just want permission to say things out loud that they’ve never said to another human being.
Honestly? That’s a pretty big deal.
To start working with me, click the link below.
“But surely talking about it won’t change anything?”
I hear this all the time.
Whilst I wish I possessed magical powers, unfortunately I do not.
What I do know is that understanding ourselves changes things.
Sex therapy isn’t about me telling you what positions to try or sending you home with a shopping list from Ann Summers (although homework occasionally happens).
Together we’ll explore what’s happening, where it may have come from and, most importantly, what might help.
Sometimes that means education.
Sometimes that means learning how anxiety affects arousal.
Sometimes it means understanding attachment patterns.
Sometimes it means discovering that you’ve spent your whole life believing things about yourself that simply aren’t true.
And sometimes it means learning that there is absolutely nothing “wrong” with you in the first place.
Top Tip Number Two – You are allowed to go at your own pace.
You do not have to tell me your deepest darkest secrets in session one.
You can swear.
You can laugh.
You can cry.
You can tell me you’re embarrassed.
You can tell me you think the whole thing feels weird.
And if there are questions you don’t want to answer?
That’s okay too.
Therapy is a joint enterprise. It cannot be done to you.
Perhaps the thing I wish more people knew is that sex therapy isn’t really about sex.
Not entirely.
It’s about connection.
It’s about understanding yourself.
It’s about reducing shame.
It’s about feeling less broken and more human.
And sometimes it’s simply about giving yourself permission to have the life, relationships and sex that you actually want rather than the life you think you’re supposed to want.
Because life’s too short for bad sex, endless shame and suffering in silence.
If you have any questions or there’s something you’d like me to answer in a future blog, get in touch below.