Sex Therapy Intensives
For individuals, couples, and relationship constellations who’ve ever worried they’re “too much,” this is a space to bring all of you, even the parts you thought didn’t belong.
A sex therapy intensive is like a retreat for your intimate life. It is a focused, extended session designed to help you make meaningful progress in areas that feel stuck. Unlike traditional weekly therapy, intensives give us several hours together, creating space to slow down, go deeper, and work through challenges in a more concentrated way.
Your Sex Therapy Intensive may involve:
- Exploring the connection between past experiences and current sexual or relational patterns
- Learning and practicing tools for communication, intimacy, and pleasure
- Strengthening self-awareness and regulation skills
- Creating new ways forward that celebrate both safety and desire
Because I specialize in both trauma and sex therapy, our work together is always collaborative and consent-based. You set the pace, and we decide together what feels important to explore. Nothing is rushed, and safety is always the priority because that’s actually how the deepest growth happens!
This dual expertise means I understand how past experiences can impact current intimacy, and I’m equipped to help you navigate both with care and skill.
“What actually happens in sessions?” Sex therapy intensives are not about sexual activity in session (don’t worry, you aren’t the first to wonder). Think of it as a supportive, structured therapeutic process where we partner together to address concerns and open the door to greater connection, confidence, and intimacy.
“Can I do this alongside individual therapy?” Absolutely. Sex therapy intensives can complement ongoing individual work. By providing focused time on relational and sexual concerns, many clients see enhanced progress across all their therapeutic settings.
In sex therapy intensives, we co-create a space that is both protected and playful, where curiosity is welcome, desires are celebrated, and no topic is off-limits. We’ll use clear, collaborative consent language so you can explore without fear of overstepping or being judged.
You can expect a mix of warmth, genuine connection, and deep listening, along with practical tools for communication and boundary-setting. We might work with imagery, language, and reframes to transform shame into acceptance and possibly even creative fuel. Just like traditional psychotherapy, sessions are confidential, providing a safe container for your most vulnerable explorations.
As we practice together, you’ll build skills you can immediately apply, whether solo or with partners. You’ll start noticing fewer loops of self-doubt (“I’m bad for wanting this,” “I’m the only one”) and more confidence in speaking up for what you want and don’t want. Your partners will likely feel safer opening up, knowing that communication is clear and mutual.
If you’ve ever worried you’re “too much” or “too weird”—including around sex—this work helps you reclaim those parts of yourself as strengths, not flaws. You’ll leave not just with insight, but with concrete tools and lived practice in using them.
The result? More expansiveness, more connection, and more authentic joy in your relationships and sexual expression.
Let’s explore if a sex therapy intensive is a fit for you!
The Flow.
Let’s see if a sex therapy intensive is a good match! We’ll talk through what you’re hoping for in the “nutshell version” of what’s bringing you here and what success might look like.
Everyone attending needs to be on this call since we’re focusing on the relationship as a whole. If you identify as a system/having parts, one representative is perfect (though others are welcome to join or observe from the wings).
Before we meet, you’ll reflect on some prompts I’ll send to help clarify your intentions. I’ll review your responses, then we’ll use this session to further understand each other, get the vibe and co-create focused goals and directions.
Sometimes we discover the timing isn’t quite right for a sex therapy intensive, which is valuable information, too.
This portion is available in-person or via telehealth, presuming all parties are located within Connecticut due to license requirements.
We meet in-person at my office for focused, uninterrupted work. We’ll start by settling in, then dive into either our planning session goals or continue building on previous intensive work.
Bio breaks happen as needed (there are even restaurants downstairs for post-session celebrating). We’ll end by creating a realistic action plan—think calendar entries and strategic post-it notes.
Together, we’ll decide if another intensive would serve your goals or if you’re ready for the check-up phase.
Integration support for what you’ve discovered, problem-solving around any obstacles that have popped up, and creating sustainable plans for your continued growth.
Reach out for your free 30-minute consult call:
FAQs for curious clients
Well, those might actually be sources you turn to! In fact–not a joke–those might be options worth trying first, and perhaps my services will not be needed. Though you will be learning strategies that can be taught in those contexts, these are being integrated into psychotherapy. As a psychotherapist, I will be attuning to specific dynamics of your relationship and sharing what I observe through a lens of trauma and sex therapy.
Sex therapy intensives are an accelerated form of therapy that allow you to go deeper by experiencing uninterrupted therapy time. For those with trauma and/or neurospiciness, this longer yet concentrated time provides time to settle in and transition out of sessions. It also reduces the frequency of coordination of schedules–that’s hard enough without adding in therapy!
Correct, you might already be attending weekly couples/relationship counseling. All of us will coordinate (with your consent, of course!) the purpose and goals for this adjunctive therapy with me.
Excellent! We’ll all coordinate together to best set the intentions/goals for this adjunctive therapy with me.
Nope. That’s important healing you two are doing together, and my role will remain specific to only sex therapy intensives.
Sometimes clients can feel a little caught off guard by what I might notice. Though this can feel vulnerable, I offer my observations with gentle curiosity.
Yes, which we will review together. The electronic health record I use includes Z Codes from the DSM-V-TR. Z-Codes are defined as “Other Conditions That May Be a Focus of Clinical Attention.”
One option is this, which is somehow simultaneously precise and vague:
- Z70.9: Sex Counseling, unspecified
No. (And don’t worry, you aren’t the first nor will you be the last person to wonder this.)
Yep, arousal can occur. You are welcome to keep the information private (ie, to yourself); if not, we can explore the meaning (ie, shame? Delight? Information for what to bring home to apply?) in session.
The seemingly simple answer is that I don’t hold secrets. Together we’ll find a way to apply the skills you are gaining to share what is likely weighing heavily on you and therefore impacting your relationship. We’ll also be distinguishing secrecy from privacy.
Perhaps. There are some situations where this does make sense–I’ll need to learn more in our screening call together.
We’ll be applying the framework of consent: they don’t need to “want” to attend, however all parties need to be “willing.” And “willing” doesn’t mean being proverbially dragged kicking and screaming.
I use “scientific” language to describe parts of the body and sexual actions, yet as you share your personal language and term preferences (particularly as they relate to the specifics of you and your body), I will start using them with you.
Fuck. I’m sorry, and wish it weren’t an anticipated experience for some people. If my language hurts or harms, I want to know and make amends. I take seriously learning and updating my knowledge, and this includes learning through what my clients share. That said, it is not your responsibility to educate me (ie, recreating expectations for those with oppressed identities and social locations to bear the burden of teaching), yet we can explore where my growth is in order to differentiate what your needs are from the “at home work” for me to do on my own.
You don’t! And part of what we might be addressing in the intensive is increasing comfort with being in a gray zone (by which I don’t mean graysexual, but that’s an option, too).
There’s no question too small or too silly, so reach out and ask me!
FAQs for curious providers*
*which are equally meant to be read by curious clients! And also worth noting: sometimes a client is themself a provider.
It’s simple: we’ll talk about sex. And talking about sex from a trauma specific lens is my jam! I became a sex therapist because it’s an area I’ve been interested in since before I even knew they existed.
(A therapist friend created a joke tagline for me: “I create a safe place to talk with your clients about sex so that you don’t have to.”)
It includes those who:
- Are seeking sexual enrichment and communication, particularly after growth in healing from any form of trauma (ie, not just limited to sexual trauma)
- Are having sexual incompatibility, including desire discrepancies, with their partner(s)
- Don’t know how to talk to partners about their sexual desires
- Don’t know how to talk to partners about their realization of changing sexual desires, sexual identity, sexual orientations, etc.
- Changing the status of their relationship
- Experiencing trauma re-enactments during sex that are not fully resolving with individual therapy
- Have dissociated parts/members of their system having opinions about sex–be it curious with desires of their own or angry and threatened by sex
- Have dissociated parts/members of their system having opinions about gender–be it curious their own gender or threatened by the genders of the adult self or other members of the system
Those seeking to address:
- Relationships with frequent and high conflict
- When an individual (or one or more partner) has substance use, gambling or other process addiction that is highly/significantly impacting them. (How do we “measure” this, you ask? Well, it depends!)
- A person with recent trauma and very high intensity and frequency of symptoms that are not yet receiving therapy (or other healing modality) specific to their trauma
- Those who might want to first rule-out underlying medical conditions, such as for erectile dysfunction (aka erectile disappointment), vaginismus or vulvodynia.
I hear your concerns. You also have the option to consult with me (or any number of sex therapists out there, happy to share a list!) for your own growth as a therapist!
Yes! I’d love for our field to have more explicit inclusion of sexual health and desires!
My policy with clients and therapists alike is that if they have existing weekly therapists that their original therapeutic relationship remains primary. End of story.