FOR WOMEN
At the Center for Intimacy Recovery we recognize the unique way women are impacted and shaped by familial, social and cultural messages, especially in the areas of intimacy, love and sex. We seek to provide a safe and supportive place for women to be heard, seen and validated.
Choose One of Our Areas of Focus Below
LOVE AVOIDANCE
Fear of intimacy is the fear of being emotionally and/or physically close to another individual, even while longing for connection.
Fear of intimacy is the subconscious fear of getting too close to someone even when yearning for closeness. It most often appears in people’s closest relationships because those are experienced as the most threatening. This is why it can exist in people who are introverts as well as extroverts.
Fear of intimacy is the subconscious fear of getting too close to someone even when yearning for closeness. It most often appears in people’s closest relationships because those are experienced as the most threatening. This is why it can exist in people who are introverts as well as extroverts.
Fear of intimacy usually originates as a coping mechanism in dealing with painful childhood experiences of intimacy around our first experiences of intimacy. If it was experienced as a child in a painful way because it was inconsistent, conditional or overwhelming, then it’s actually a healthy reaction to be protective against experiencing that pain again. Eventually, though, as adults, that protective reaction causes us to lose out on the beautiful gifts of safe intimacy.
Fear of intimacy can often be overlooked and misdiagnosed as a lack of commitment, anxiety or having high standards.
It can manifest in a variety of ways such as:
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Struggling to find relationships
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Difficulty in staying in relationships
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Being overly focused on the other person in the relationship
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Shutting down emotionally
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Losing attraction as the relationship becomes closer being able to handle the beginning of relationships and then finding yourself
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Creating a distance in relationships by finding fault with others
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Avoiding intimate situations through compulsive behaviors ranging from sex to work
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Serial dating
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Withholding affection
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Preferring pornography to being with another person
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Sexual dysfunction including loss of interest in sex, difficulty in having an orgasm or being present
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Feeling that others attempts to be close are smothering or unreasonable
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Intellectually not emotionally connect with others
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Sending mixed signals of wanting to be close and then pulling away
At the Center for Intimacy Recovery, our team of clinicians understand intimacy disorders. We are here to work together with you to overcome the obstacles to intimacy and experience it on a whole new level.
Contact us today to schedule an appointment.
WHAT IS LOVE ADDICTION?
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The difference between love and “love addiction” is the compulsivity in seeking out love and relationships or the obsessiveness with the person who is the object of love.
Love addiction can be confusing because love itself is often an intense high feeling.
Countless songs, literature and movies all convey how powerful an emotion love is.
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Some common signs of love addiction are:
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You are consumed by your relationship
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You jump from one relationship to another
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You find yourself trying to recreate the “high” feeling in your relationship
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No matter how much your partner shows his/her love for you, it doesn’t feel enough
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You repeatedly find yourself in high-drama relationships
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Your self-esteem is based on your relationship or being loved by someone
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You often become obsessed with your partner
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Your tend to ignore other parts of your life because of your relationship or while seeking one
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You use love or your relationship as a reason to not do other positive things for yourself
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You find yourself lost in your relationships
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You or your partner use love or sex as a way to manipulate the other
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You wonder or have been told that you might have unrealistic expectations regarding loving and giving in relationships
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You find yourself jealous when your partner spends time with friends or family
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You need to be in constant contact and engagement with your partner
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You find yourself putting your partner’s needs above yours to the point of detriment to yourself
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You feel that if someone loves you then you are worthy and lovable
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You feel that being in love or in a relationship will solve your problems
Love addiction serves the same function as all other addictions. The love addict uses love or relationships to avoid painful or uncomfortable feelings.
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Recovery from love addiction begins with discovering and owning the behaviors of love addiction. It then entails dealing with the underlying roots that often are connected to unmet needs for love, affirmation and self-worth in childhood. This concludes with the ability to have healthier, more meaningful relationships and the ability to keep them in balance with the rest of one’s life.
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If you believe you are experiencing signs of love addiction we can help in your journey to better balance and a better relationship.
Contact us today.
BETRAYAL TRAUMA
The pain is so deep that it can be disorienting. You may feel disoriented at times, lose your train of thought and vacillate between pain, rage, fear and anxiety.
Often, a partner is left isolated and alone because they are fearful of who to share this immensely painful experience with. Intense shame might hold you back from getting the support you need from your family or friends.
There are so many questions and decisions that seemingly need to be made. The first thing you need to do, before anything, is to start feeling safe again. Contact us today for support and a free consultation.
​Finding out that you have been betrayed by your partner is probably the most painful thing you have ever experienced. The very person who was supposed to be a source of comfort and safety has now become the cause of pain and danger. This is the unique pain of betrayal trauma.
The life you knew, the life you thought you knew, no longer feels real. Assumptions that you’ve lived with are now questions.
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CODEPENDENCY
Someone who is codependent has difficulty functioning as an authentic self.
Codependency is a term loosely used to describe people who feel extreme amounts of dependence on certain loved ones in their lives, and who feel responsible for the feelings and actions of those others.
They lose being their authentic self in arranging their feelings, thoughts and actions around something other than themselves. It can manifest in people who seem extremely functionable, who are caretakers, or who might be the person who people always depend on and who always gets things done. It also lays underneath addiction.
Some signs of codependency include:
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A need to be liked by everyone
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Having a hard time saying no
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Having poor boundaries
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Always feeling compelled to take care of people
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A need for control, especially over others
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Denying one’s own needs, thoughts, and feelings in place of what others need, think, or feel.
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Trouble sharing one’s feelings honestly
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Fixating on mistakes
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A need to always be in a relationship
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Intimacy issues
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Confusing love and pity
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Fear of abandonment
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Emotional reactivity
At the Center for Intimacy Recovery, our team of clinicians understand codependency at the confusion arising from it. We are here to work together with you to overcome the obstacles that codependency creates and to help you be more in touch with your own authentic self.
Contact us today to schedule an appointment.
SEX THERAPY, SEXUAL HEALTH, AND FUNCTIONING
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Sex can be a wonderful, fun, and beautiful experience. It can also be confusing, painful, lonely, or even shame inducing. At the Center for Intimacy Recovery, we approach all of our work from a sex positive and affirming view. We desire to help our clients to achieve a fulfilling and pleasurable sex life and we often help them address the things which may be getting in the way of that.
Additionally, women’s bodies often hold so much emotion. Those held feelings can manifest somatically where they show up in a variety of ways.While some of these require help and a diagnosis from a physician, all of them have an emotional piece that plays a role and it can be valuable to have emotional support from a therapist trained in these issues.
Topics that we address with our client include but are not limited to:
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Sexual play and exploration
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Alternative sexual practices
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Consensual non-monogamy
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Low sex drive or discrepancy of desire in a relationship
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Painful sex
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Difficulty having an orgasm
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Hormone imbalances
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Vaginismus
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Vulvodynia
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Aversion to sex
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Somatic symptoms such as:
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Women’s psychosomatic challenges
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Hormonal Imbalances
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PCOS- Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
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Vaginismus
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Infertility
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Perinatal depression and more.
TRAUMA & PTSD
Psychological trauma is the unique individual experience of a (single) event, a series of events, or a set of enduring conditions.
What is "Trauma?"
Psychological trauma is the unique individual experience of a (single) event, a series of events, or a set of enduring conditions, in which:
The individual's ability to integrate his or her emotional experience is overwhelmed, and may impact one of some of the following:
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The ability to stay present
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The ability to understand what is happening
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The ability to tolerate the feeling or comprehend the horror
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The individual experiences (subjectively) a threat to life, bodily, integrity, or sanity." - Saakvitne et al 2006
​When we're young, we have even less emotional and intellectual abilities to process painful experiences and can be easily overwhelmed. The ways that we develop to cope with that sense of overwhelm serve us well from experiencing something which feels too big. Often, those strategies that we developed at young ages, such as disassociating, shutting down, distracting ourselves with other behaviors, or many others, become so ingrained that they continue long into our adult lives even when they cease serving us well and interfere with our relationships or living life as we would like.
We help our clients discover the strategies that they developed early in life, often as a sign of the resourceful child that they were and then learn healthier ways to handle those feelings as adults.
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Contact us today if you find yourself repeating behaviors that don't serve you well. We'll help you find a new way.