Sex Therapy

For individuals:

Are you someone who never liked sex?
Do you have trouble getting or staying aroused?
Have you lost the sexual desire you once had?
Have you never been orgasmic?
Do you feel ashamed about the way you function sexually?
Are you upset about still being a virgin?
Does past sexual trauma make it hard for you to enjoy sex now?
Are you sexually addicted or compulsive?

For couples:

Does it feel like you are incompatible sexually?
Do you fight over the frequency of sex?
Has a sexual dysfunction such as a pain disorder or premature ejaculation created a pattern where you have come to dread sex?
Are you unhappy in a sexless marriage?
Are you trying to heal from infidelity?

Having sexual issues is terrifying and often feels shameful. I’d like you to know that most of these upsetting sexual problems have solutions. I know that you feel concerned, and possibly even hopeless and frightened about addressing them. If the problems were simple, you could have solved them yourself.

Listen, it’s not your job to be able to solve these problems yourself. You can’t be your own doctor. You don’t have the knowledge. You don’t have the practice. If you’re in a couple, you don’t have the objectivity to get through the hurt and disappointed feelings.

I have been working with individuals and couples with all of these sexual issues as an AASECT-certified sex therapist and Diplomate for well over two decades, and I have received national and international recognition for my work. Over these decades, I have learned a lot, through clinical experience, teaching other professionals, getting advanced training, innovating, -- and sometimes-- experimentation. See About Dr. Z for more info

I have developed strategies, techniques, resources and relationships with other professionals that help me solve these sexual problems. Let me give you a little idea about what the treatment process might be for some of these vexing issues.

If you’ve never been comfortable with your sexuality or never had desire, I will always take a bio-psycho-social approach. I can help you assess where you have come from using my Milestones of Sexual Development Model (Click for Link).

Through our sex therapy sessions, we can assess and work through some of the deeper issues which have inhibited you. And I will connect you to some wonderful medical professionals, who can check to see whether there are any underlying hormonal issues which have derailed your sexual development. This can be a longer process than some other simpler sexual problems, but it’s incredibly gratifying, because you will get to feel much more whole and your self-esteem and sexual self-esteem will blossom.

If you’re pre-orgasmic, and you’re a woman, you’re in luck. There are wonderful books and movies that will assist us in teaching you about your body. I know what all the resources are. You’ll learn to be relaxed in your body, and you’ll get comfortable with masturbation. As neuropsychologists are fond of saying, “neurons that fire together, wire together.” The brain is plastic, and you will learn how to feel comfortable allowing yourself to get aroused enough to orgasm. What a great feeling!

Couples work involves me being able to create a safe place where you two can talk about painful sexual issues and disappointments in a secure, neutral, holding environment. I think that my age, my sense of humor, and my clinical skills all work together in an important way here.

For instance, when I work with couples who are not in synch sexually, we do a lot of exploration. We look at what your sexual relationship was like in the beginning, often when things worked better, and then we explore what has changed. I have a special assessment tool which helps us systematically look at what each of you likes and does not like sexually. We can talk about this safely, with no recrimination. And I’m there as a neutral listener who is paying really close attention to what each of you is saying, so I can correct any ways you are not hearing each other and soothe any hurt feelings. Together, we can work on trying out some new sexual moves and activities, which might bridge the pleasure gap between you. Sometimes, there are easy solutions. For instance, using my sexual activities data collection form, we can pinpoint a time when one of you made a comment or a criticism that hurt the other person and shut them down.

I often use the BodyMap exercises I developed in working with couples. (Click Here to see my SexSmartBodyMaps©) It’s common that one or both of you have not been comfortable talking about the ways he or she do and do not like to be touched. Once lust is gone, for many people, arousal depends on getting the kind of touch that you like. Sharing BodyMaps, the two of you can learn to up your pleasure quotient.

When I work with couples in happy but sexless marriages (what I called the “Panda Syndrome” in SexTalk), it’s honestly never a short process, but over time, we usually can reestablish a sexual connection. We begin by taking a full history of what each of you feel led you personally to retreat from sex.

It’s not unusual to have to sort through assorted hurts and disappointments and misunderstandings. There may be sexual dysfunctions that created hurt and disappointment, and we have to work together to either solve the dysfunction or to navigate around it (which is totally do-able, if you can give up a perfectionistic view of sex.) It’s sometimes a good idea to incorporate watching erotica together, because that gets the engines going.

Often, we have to go through a grieving process, because years, and often decades, of pleasurable sexual connection have been lost. But it’s worth it. Because a sexual connection is a powerful glue that holds the two of you together even more tightly than you are now.