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Sex Therapy

Sex Therapy

Sexual Health & Intimacy Issues

Because your sexuality shouldn’t come with shame or pain.

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The quality of your sexual relationship with your partner can be either the source of great joy, satisfaction and closeness or frustration, disappointment and dissatisfaction. Sexuality is deeply personal—and when something feels off, it can affect everything: your confidence, your relationships, your ability to feel safe, connected, or even like yourself.

Whether you’re struggling with desire, pain, compulsive behavior, or the lingering effects of trauma, we provide a safe, nonjudgmental space to talk about what feels too hard to say out loud.

You Might Be Struggling With:

  • Low desire, mismatched libido, or arousal difficulties
  • Pain during sex or sexual avoidance
  • Compulsive sexual behavior or pornography use
  • Shame, anxiety, or religious conflict around sexuality
  • Sexual trauma or body-based trauma
  • Disconnection in emotional or physical intimacy
  • Identity questions or orientation confusion
  • Struggling to talk openly with your partner about sex

Affair recovery:

When a person discovers their partner engaging in sexual and/or intimate  behaviors outside their relationship it is often a source of conflict, pain and disconnection in their relationship.

Examples of this kind of behavior might be:

  • sexual acts with another person
  • sexting
  • viewing pornography
  • massage parlors
  • having deeply personal conversations
  • developing an emotional relationship with someone in a way that competes with or threatens the relationship

At Arizona Connection Counseling we help partners to deal with the overwhelming and devastating impact that such a discovery can have. We help you navigate how to move forward  by helping make sense of what has happened and supporting you as you heal. We find the best results when we utilize a combination of both couples and individual therapy to address these issues and restore trust.

What Therapy Can Help You Do:

Sexual health therapy can help you:

  • Understand the emotional and relational context of your sexual concerns
  • Rebuild intimacy with yourself and/or your partner
  • Heal from trauma or shame-based beliefs
  • Set healthy boundaries and explore consent
  • Explore sexual identity in a safe and affirming way
  • Reduce compulsive behaviors and increase self-regulation

Our Approach

Our therapists have specialized training in sex therapy, trauma work (including EMDR), and couples therapy models like EFT. We also offer faith-integrated counseling for clients navigating religious messages about sex.

Our approach is collaborative, body-informed, and deeply respectful of your unique story and values.

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You don’t have to navigate this alone.

Whether your struggle is medical, emotional, relational, or spiritual—we’re here to help you reconnect with yourself and your sense of safety, confidence, and pleasure.

Request an Appointment
Meet Our Therapists

Eating Disorders - It's Not About the Food

By Kelly Lopez

If it’s not about the food, what is it really about?

The eating disorder serves a function, it does a job. Despite the problems an eating disorder creates, it is an effort to cope, shield against, communicate, and solve problems. Behaviors may be a way to establish a sense of power or control, self-worth, strength, and containment. Bringing may be used to numb pain. Purging may be a way to release emotions. When one cannot cope in healthy ways, adaptive functions (behaviors) are created to ensure a sense of safety, security, and control.
According to Carolyn Costin*, some of the “adaptive functions that eating disorder behaviors commonly serve are”:
  • Comfort, soothing, nurturance
  • Numbing, sedation, distraction
  • Attention, a cry for help
  • Discharge of tension, anger, rebellion
  • Predictability, structure, identity
  • Self-punishment or punishment of "the body"
  • Self-cleansing or self-purification
  • Protection or safety (through creation of a small or large body)
  • Avoidance of intimacy
  • Proof for self-blame instead of blaming others (for exampl, abusers)
It’s not about the food, it’s a way of coping with low self-esteem, negative emotions, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, unstable home, difficulty resolving conflict and much more.
*Costin, Carolyn. The Eating Disorder Sourcebook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Causes, Treatments and Prevention of Eating Disorders. 3rd. edition, McGraw Hill, 2007.
Fuller, Kristen. “Eating Disorders: It’s Not All about Food.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 22 Mar. 2017

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-is-state-mind/201703/eating-disorders-it-s-not-all-about-food