Sexual Addiction therapists in Lake Oswego, Oregon OR

Sexual addiction is rarely about sex. It is about the need beneath the behavior—the longing for comfort, closeness, relief, or escape when life feels overwhelming or emotionally out of reach. Many men carry shame about the ways they cope with loneliness, stress, anxiety, or disconnection, especially when their coping involves pornography, affairs, or secret sexual behavior. You may have tried to stop many times, promised yourself it would be different, or felt the cycle of guilt and remorse that seems to repeat itself. The behavior is not the real problem—it’s a response to something deeper that was never given a safe place to be seen or understood. My work with men around sexual compulsivity is grounded in compassion, truth, and embodiment. We slow down the cycle to understand what the behavior is trying to soothe—emotional numbness, unspoken shame, unresolved relational wounds, grief, stress, or the feeling of being overwhelmed and alone. We look at how your nervous system responds to pressure, how you learned to cope, and what it feels like when you try to connect in ways that are real. The goal is not just to stop the behavior. The goal is to help you feel again—to be in your body, in your relationships, and in your life with openness and presence. Sex is powerful because it is wired to connect us. When that need for connection becomes tangled, hidden, or carried alone, it can turn into desperation or secrecy. But when we bring compassion and awareness to the underlying need, the impulse begins to soften. You learn how to soothe yourself in healthy ways, how to connect without fear, and how to stand in your integrity—not from willpower, but from wholeness. You are not broken. There is a deeper story inside you that is asking to be heard.