If you are struggling with a porn addiction and intimacy issues, you are in the right place. Katie Ziskind, and the team at Wisdom Within Counseling near Fairfield, Connecticut specialize in helping couples gain more emotional, sexual, and spiritual intimacy. First, how is intimacy broken? What gets in the way of intimate connection? Things that break intimacy are numbing and addictive behaviors, like pornography, use, sex, addiction, affairs, betrayals, and alcohol and drug use. Often, these addictive behaviors are rooted in unresolved childhood trauma and painful life experiences. Instead of numbing out due to pain, loneliness, anxiety, or frustration, you can gain positive coping tools. The sex and intimacy therapists for porn addiction at Wisdom Within Counseling help you build a healthy relationship with yourself and your partner.
To begin, click below for a phone consult to work with a sex and intimacy therapist in Stratford, Connecticut to overcome your porn addiction and help you cope in a positive way.
From sex and intimacy therapists, what are signs of porn addiction?
If you have a pornography addiction, you may be masturbating more than a healthy amount. Masturbating to pornography too much can lead to chaffing, scabbing, burning, and irritation. From too much self-pleasure and masturbation, your genital area may be in pain or sore. You might be in physical pain from masturbating too much when you compulsively watch pornography. When you have a pornography addiction, it may feel that your anxiety is impacting almost everything.
When suffering from a porn addiction, you may feel a compulsion to watch porn, every day or multiple times a day. There is an impulse to watch more pornography to feel an escape from emotions. At times, you may need to watch more and more pornography videos to get the same feeling or high as you once did. You may feel that your self-confidence is in the pit.
Are you unable to stop watching pornography?
When you have a pornography addiction, you may not being able to stop watching pornography. There may be shame, guilt, self-hatred, and a cycle of low self-esteem that goes along with pronography addiction. When addicted, watching pornography can get in the way of work, family time, and other responsibilities. You may find yourself isolating or withdrawing socially to watch pornography compulsively.
The team of sex and intimacy therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling near Trumbull, Connecticut can help you understand how to cope with intense emotions in alternative ways besides pornography. Usually, there are feelings of inadequacy, fear of failure, anxiety, disrespect, loss, grief, and neglect underneath a pornography addiction. Sex and intimacy therapy can help you learn about when in your adolescent years your pornography addiction began and how you used porn to get through. It is common for pornography addicts to lie about use or minimize their use within a committed, romantic relationship.
You may feel distracted at work or when you are with your family members with cravings to watch porn.
When you have a pornography addiction problem, you may feel anxiety or overwhelm when you don’t watch it. Also, you may constantly be thinking about when you can watch pornography again. Your romantic partner may have asked you to stop watching pornography.
There are intense emotions like guilt, shame, anxiety, fear, and anger that you can talk about with your sex and intimacy therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
A part of you may feel unclear about what intimacy truly is and want professional intimacy therapy. And, deep down, you want to create secure, living, and passionate relationship with your romantic partner. From marriage, sex, and intimacy therapy, you get a safe place to release different emotions and build a deeper sense of intimacy.
At times, you may feel you need to keep your pornography addiction secret from your spouse or romantic partner. Your excessive pornography use can lead to conflicts and betrayal in your intimate sex life and romantic relationship. The Stratford, Connecticut Wisdom Within Counseling intimacy therapists help couples deal with porn addiction together.
To begin, click below for a phone consult to work with a sex and intimacy therapist in Stratford, Connecticut to overcome your porn addiction and help you cope in a positive way.
How does a pornography addiction negatively impact intimacy for couples?
Pornography addiction can lead to obsessive thoughts about sex and unrealistic expectations around sexual intimacy. A person who watches pornography compulsively needs other stress management tools.
What the pornography industry displays is not a true representation of how to create an intimate sexual life. A person with a pornography addiction may expect to act out things they see in pornography with their romantic partner. Also, when suffering from a pornography addition, you may not be able to feel sexual pleasure unless you watch pornography. Instead of being sexually aroused from your romantic partner in real life, you can only become sexually aroused from pornography videos.
A real human being or your sexual partner may no longer turn you on in the same way they once did when you suffer from a pornography addiction.
With a human partner, sexual activities and intimacy will be very different that what pornography videos portray. Working with the marriage, sex, and intimacy therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling near Trumbull, Connecticut can help you develop realistic expectations of intimacy. Recovering from a pornography addiction means gaining education on how to turn towards your romantic partner emotionally, mentally, and sexually rather than porn. A mixture of couples therapy and individual therapy sessions can be very helpful.
Sex with a long-term spouse can become playful, adventurous, fun, and erotic through the process of sex and intimacy therapy near Stratford, Connecticut.
The porn addiction and intimacy therapists help couples overcome other addictive behaviors too.
Your pornography addiction may have been a negative coping tool or a crutch to get you through painful life experiences. Pornography addiction and other addictive behaviors, such as alcohol and drug use go hand in hand.
You may have used pornography, drugs, or alcohol to numb out for decades into the past. These addictive behaviors help your mind to numb out and escape from different stressors of your life. However, you never truly deal with the emotions when using addictive behaviors to numb out. Working with the sex, marriage, and intimacy therapists near Trumbull, Connecticut at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you cope with intense, frustrating emotions in a healthy way. As well, you can overcome addictive behaviors and build a healthy, loving relationship with your romantic partner.
Instead, the addictive behaviors, including pornography addiction, working too much, alcoholism, and drug use just mask the pain. Your pornography addiction may allow you to get by. However, you never really learn how to cope in a positive, healthy, or holistic way. When treating porn addiction, the Wisdom Within Counseling intimacy therapists in Connecticut help you rebuild intimacy on a spiritual, emotional, and physical level.
To begin, click below for a phone consult to work with a sex and intimacy therapist in Stratford, Connecticut to overcome your porn addiction and help you cope in a positive way.
How do pornography addiction and intimacy therapy relate to complex trauma?
You may have a complicated relationship with your family members and use porn to numb out. When you think about your upbringing, your parents, your grandparents, and even your spouse, you feel torn, distress, and anxiety. Many people who struggle with a pornography addiction also struggle with trust and intimacy issues. It is very normal to be unsure if you can trust your romantic partner with these deeper parts of yourself. It can be difficult to trust after experiencing trauma. Working on trust issues in relationships can be a wonderful benefit of intimacy counseling. At Wisdom Within Counseling near Stratford, Connecticut, you can talk to a professional intimacy specialist who you can trust. Sex and intimacy counseling is your safe, confidential space to learn about yourself and gain positive coping tools.
True intimacy is about self-awareness, being mentally present, and self-love. But, being intimate with a partner can be difficult when you have trust issues from past trauma. Intimacy therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you get over some complex and difficult life experiences. Whether you are struggling with grief, trauma, loss, or PTSD, therapy can help you learn grounding and centering tools.
When struggling with pornography addiction and other addictive behaviors may be present too. You may be using porn, alcohol or drugs to cope with trauma experiences. Many people needing the help of a Wisdom Within Counseling intimacy therapist in Milford, Connecticut report that they grew up experiencing complex trauma.
In addition to pornography addiction, you may find yourself addicted to work.
It might be normal for you to put all of your energy into work after suffering from childhood trauma. People who have survived childhood trauma and have complicated family dynamics may turn to work.
Work-a-holism is common after childhood trauma, sexual abuse, and neglect because it provides a sense of power and stability.
To begin, click below for a phone consult to work with a sex and intimacy therapist in Stratford, Connecticut to overcome your porn addiction and help you cope in a positive way.
However, being a workaholic can make it very difficult for you to build a positive, loving, meaningful, and erotic sex life with your partner. Working too long can leave you exhausted and depleted. You may have a closer relationship with your boss and coworkers than you do with your spouse and children when you are addicted to working.
Pornography addicts may also be addicted to work
Turning to work as a normal symptom of growing up in a childhood that was chaotic, unstable, and emotionally draining. Work may provide you with a sense of accomplishment.
Finding a healthy work-life balance is part of intimacy counseling in Stratford, Connecticut at Wisdom Within. You are not alone if you identify as a workaholic or a pornography addict. If you find yourself taking on overtime hours and feel proud of your work career, but it gets in the way of your sex life, Wisdom Within Counseling can help.
Working so much can take a large toll on your intimate and romantic relationship. You may be numbing out in multiple ways in addition to your pornography addiction. Instead of turning to work, porn, drugs, or alcohol as negative coping tools, you can feel confident turning to your spouse as a trusted friend and romantic partner.
To begin, click below for a phone consult to work with a sex and intimacy therapist in Stratford, Connecticut to overcome your porn addiction and help you cope in a positive way.
The intimacy therapists in Milford, Connecticut at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in complex trauma recovery.
Growing up in a traumatic environment in your childhood can leave you to feel the need to numb out.
Identifying as an adult child of alcoholics means you grew up in a traumatic environment
As a child, you had to be the parent to your parents who were emotionally immature. If you identify as an adult child of alcoholics, you may be suffering from trauma, grief, and PTSD symptoms. Your parents were unstable, angry, and verbally abusive when they were drinking alcohol. As a youngster, you may have had to grow up too fast, or faster than your peers. There were dishes being thrown out of anger and high conflict fights that scared you. As a child you just knew you didn’t want to bring friends over to your house because you were embarrassed of how your parents acted when they were drinking alcohol and drunk. In your childhood, going over to other people’s houses was an escape and relief from the dysfunction, alcoholism, and fighting in your own home.
Having high conflict parents leads to trauma symptoms
In your childhood, you may have had a parent or caregiver who lied to you. As a child, when your parent cheated, lied, or was dishonest, this leaves a lasting impact into adult years. It can be hard to be honest when you never had a role model who showed you the benefits of honesty in relationships. Having a parent who lied all the time can lead to trust and intimacy issues in adult years. Trust issues and intimacy issues can lead to porn addiction and addictive behaviors.
For instance, dealing with parental separation or divorce can cause trust issues in your own marriage. If you have unresolved feelings about your parents‘ marriage and divorce, these can play a role in your own marriage issues.
When you didn’t know if you could trust your parent or caregiver to be honest, you may be suspicious or anxious when it comes to trusting your romantic partner. The team of Stratford, Connecticut sex, marriage, and intimacy therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you build a trusting, healthy, and loving intimate relationship.
To begin, click below for a phone consult to work with a sex and intimacy therapist in Stratford, Connecticut to overcome your porn addiction and help you cope in a positive way.
Growing up with a parent who had mental health issues leads to trauma symptoms
Having a parent with bi-polar disorder, depression, or an anxiety disorder can lead to flight, fight, and freeze trauma and PTSD responses. In your childhood, having a mentally unstable parent who was happy one day and suicidal the next day can lead to intimacy issues in adult relationships. You might feel incredibly stressed out to this day from having a parent who had mental health issues when you were a child. When you think about your childhood, you feel that you were a burden to your parents. This is a sign of low self-esteem and self-worth from growing up in an environment of childhood trauma.
Intimacy, sex, and marriage therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you gain empathy and love for yourself.
Rather than shaming and blaming yourself for your parent’s emotional and mental problems, you can be compassionate to yourself through intimacy counseling. After experiencing childhood trauma, you might numb out when you feel overwhelmed. Instead of numbing out, you can regain confidence, self-worth, and better your self-esteem.
As well, as a child, dealing with a parent who had a drug addiction themselves is traumatic. Maybe, you had a parent who was domestically violent to you.
Childhood trauma can cause a person to turn to numbing behaviors like, porn, drugs, working too much, and alcohol.
In general, childhood trauma experiences leave a lasting impact on intimacy skills in adult years.
If in your childhood, you where sexually abused, this can cause PTSD. It can be really hard to face these traumatic experiences alone. It is very normal for people who have suffered from emotional, physical, or sexual abuse to turn to pornography addiction and numbing behaviors, and struggle with sex and intimacy.
To begin, click below for a phone consult to work with a sex and intimacy therapist in Stratford, Connecticut to overcome your porn addiction and help you cope in a positive way.
Intimacy therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling in Stamford, Connecticut can help you handle and release emotions in a healthy way.
Sexual abuse in childhood can cause you to suffer from intimacy issues in your marriage now.
When you grow up in an environment of childhood trauma, alcoholism and pornography addiction can develop. Maybe, you may have suffered sexual abuse, unwanted touch, molestation, or incest in your childhood. Surviving sexual trauma can lead to sexual and intimacy issues in your romantic relationship and marriage.
If you didn’t have caregivers or parents who were positive models of intimacy, it can be very hard to create a healthy intimate life in adult years. Perhaps, you watched your parents slam doors, yell at one another, and be straight up mean. As well, your parents may have called you mean names in your childhood. Growing up with painful life experiences where parents belittled you can lead to trust issues in adulthood. If you never could trust your parents, it may feel difficult to build intimacy and trust with your romantic partner.
If your relationships with your friends, family, and colleagues aren’t great, sex, marriage, and intimacy therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling can give you healthy relationship tools.
Leanring how to navigate conflict and speak in respectful, calm ways can be parts of intimacy therapy. Our team of marriage and intimacy therapists can help you and your partner have intimate, emotionally secure conversations to foster closeness and connection. Likewise, a mixture of individual and couples therapy sessions can support more meaningful connection, relaxation tools, and self-confidence.
To begin, click below for a phone consult to work with a sex and intimacy therapist in Stratford, Connecticut to overcome your porn addiction and help you cope in a positive way.
How can the intimacy therapists near Milford, Connecticut at Wisdom Within Counseling help with porn addiction problems?
You may crave a sense of security as well as emotional and sexual connection with your partner. Your pornography addiction and other addictive behaviors will hinder the ability to create intimacy. Intimacy comes from being mentally present rather than being in a numbing mindset. Rather than running from uncomfortable emotions, you can identify triggers to your pornography addiction. You can learn to confide in your spouse and turn to them instead of pornography. Essentially, you can explore your sexuality, your intimacy needs, and communicate better from intimacy counseling. Working with the sex and intimacy specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling in Stratford, Connecticut can help you and your spouse create a healthy sex life.
Working with an intimacy therapist near Stratford, Connecticut can help you deal with porn addiction and intimacy issues that cause marital problems.
From intimacy therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling, you can find ways to talk about your childhood trauma with your spouse. Being vulnerable and letting your spouse in can be parts of intimacy therapy. Your intimacy therapist can guide you both in sharing deep emotions that fuel problematic behaviors.
Instead of feeling disrespected or belittled by your partner, you can feel supported emotionally.
Couples can learn how tone of voice has such a big impact on what is being said. In intimacy therapy, you and your partner can have deep, intimate conversations on topics you may feel scared to talk about by yourselves. You can learn how to ask for what you need and want from your intimate, romantic partner when you are feeling anxiety. Instead of feeling like aggressive or angry language is your only option, you can learn how to talk about your deeper emotions like fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, or fear of failure.
Intimacy therapy can help you build a coping skill toolbox and find alternatives instead of using pornography.
Instead of drinking alcohol, use pornography, or drugs, you can turn to healthy, holistic stress management skills. You can gain alternatives such as meditation, yoga, painting, journaling, and cooking just to name a few. Right in your intimacy therapy session near Trumbull, Connecticut, you can learn mindfulness meditation skills. At Wisdom Within Counseling, the sex and intimacy therapists support individuals and couples in healing from complex trauma. If you grew up in a dysfunctional family environment, you are not alone.
When you need intimacy therapy, your mind may feel in chaos with anxiety, like you are stuck on a hamster wheel.
Deep down, you may struggle with negative self-talk and never feel that you can be good enough. Mindfulness meditation skills can help you let go of worries and anxiety by connecting your mind into your body. More so, mindfulness meditation skills can be something your intimacy therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling near Stratford, Connecticut teaches you. Rather than feeling overwhelmed with negative thoughts and self-sabotaging beliefs, mindfulness meditation can be a way to feel inner peace.
A body scan meditation can lower anxiety and be a tool you can use outside of intimacy therapy. Mindfulness meditation helps you be present and connected your mind and body. Building your positive coping toolbox can help you release emotions in healthy ways.
To begin, click below for a phone consult to work with a sex and intimacy therapist in Stratford, Connecticut to overcome your porn addiction and help you cope in a positive way.
Positive coping tools instead of pornography are available from working with a porn addiction and intimacy therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling near Milford, Connecticut. Instead of turning to pornography, you can learn how to turn to your spouse or romantic partner for intimacy. With the safe, confidential help of the sex and intimacy therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling, you can decrease anxiety and feel confident about yourself.
By healing from childhood trauma, you can build and create a healthy sex life with your partner.
Build a healthy relationship to your body after porn addiction through working with a Stratford, Connecticut intimacy therapist
In addition to alcohol, addictive behaviors, pornography addiction, drug use, you might find yourself struggling with your relationship to your body. After a sexual, physical, or emotional trauma in your childhood, you might find that you are struggling to accept and love yourself. You may put yourself on multiple fad diets per year.
Or, you may be stuck in a cycle of restricting calories, over exercising, dieting, or binge eating. Eating disorders and disordered eating habits can be perpetuated by body image issues rooted in childhood trauma. Wisdom Within Counseling near Stamford, Connecticut offers you an opportunity to love and accept yourself, no matter your body shape and weight.
Right now, you might feel negative thoughts about your body take over your mind.
You may feel restless, anxious, or like you are on a hamster wheel all the itme. When you feel anxiety or tension, you can use positive skills you gain from your intimacy therapy sessions to cope.
Rather than turning to your porn addiction, you can build a positive sexual connection with your partner through intimacy therapy.
To begin, click below for a phone consult to work with a sex and intimacy therapist in Stratford, Connecticut to overcome your porn addiction and help you cope in a positive way.
Working on your relationship with your mind, body, and spirit can help you improve the level of intimacy you can give to your spouse and the way that you cope with stress.
Holistic therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling can give you positive coping tools. Learning how to cope with stress can help you feel more confident about your body shape and weight too. It is common for people who struggle with trauma, low self-worth, and porn addiction to have body image issues.
Instead of turning to fast food, self-hatred, or the fad diet cycle, you can truly love yourself.
Furthermore, from positive coping tools, you can have outlets for family issues, work, and stress rather than your pornography addiction or addictive behaviors. Holistic coping tools, in general, can help you be more present mentally during sexual experiences with your partner. From being mentally and emotionally present, you can truly enjoy sexual pleasure verses always feeling a need for more.
The Wisdom Within Counseling intimacy therapists near Stamford, Connecticut can help you build an intimate, loving relationship with your spouse.
Rather than feeling like pornography is your only option, you can gain positive coping tools through intimacy therapy. It might feel overwhelming to deal with work, family, and life stress as a whole. Working with the Wisdom Within Counseling intimacy therapists near Milford, Connecticut can help you grow personally and in your romantic relationship.
Many times, these behaviors create problems in romantic and intimate relationships. Rather than feeling like you need to numb out or hide a part of yourself, you can learn to be honest. Honest communication is an important part of building healthy relationships. You can feel confident and courageous handling any emotional or stress of any kind from intimacy therapy in Stamford, Connecticut. Instead of turning to a pornography addiction, intimacy therapy can help you learn to deal with stress in a positive way.
The team at Wisdom Within Counseling near Bridgeport, Connecticut specialize in pornography addiction and other addictive behaviors.
A mixture of couples therapy and individual counseling near Bridgeport, Connecticut can help you create a positive, meaningful, authentic, erotic, and loving sex life with your romantic partner. It is possible to heal from loss, grief, trauma, and PTSD. With an intimacy therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling, you can learn about when, how, and why your relationship to porn developed into an addiction.
As well, you can freely talk about influences such as how childhood trauma has played a role in your addiction, intimacy, and trust issues. The sex, marriage, and intimacy therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in helping couples create a loving bond and build meaningful connections. Often, addictive issues that cause marital problems may be traced back to painful events like sexual abuse or when your own parents were getting divorced. Self-awareness and self-compassion are benefits of counseling.
From counseling with a sex, marriage, and intimacy therapist, you can learn why you seek out intimacy through porn rather than your spouse or romantic partner. The Wisdom Within Counseling sex, marriage, and intimacy therapists would love to help you gain a healthy relationship with your romantic partner as well as confidence and clarity.
