Comprehensive Sex Addiction Recovery Services for the Entire Family.
We want to offer to help you in a unique way. We have seen so many families that are impacted by sex addiction struggle to find the right resources or to even know where to start looking. If you are lucky maybe you accidentally fell into the hands of a therapist you trust but what about your spouse or a couple’s therapist? Maybe you have already suffered from trauma in couple’s therapy where fears and acting out behaviors are minimized and misunderstood because a sex addiction is not identified. While the addicts who first get discovered are often thrust, even if unwillingly, into an enormous amount of support, the partners of sex addicts are often left trying to manage the betrayal trauma, working full time, take care of the house and kids, and while the addicts are now leaving the home a few nights a week to go to meetings, the partner is home left feeling as alone and unseen as they did before. And while the parents are in this state what are you able to do for your children and figure out what they need? Maybe you are new and have just had the trauma of a discovery. Or not so new but feel like the work has stalled and shouldn’t it feel better than this but you don’t know what or how. Off the Crooked Path wants to provide wrap-around services that keep anyone from falling through the cracks and allow you to have the option of choosing the a la carte services that make the most sense for your family. These services won’t leave anyone behind.
Sex Addiction Assessments
There continues to be increased awareness by the lay community and the therapeutic world of sexual compulsivity and sexual addiction. For many clinicians, sexual compulsivity is revealed often after there has been a relationship and trust built. Maybe there are also other addictions co-occurring that the client was more comfortable bringing into the room. If you are a therapist who wants to have your client assessed, a partner who wants your spouse assessed, or you believe that you might have a sex addiction, see below for the range of services provided:
Package One
We will meet with the client over a period of three meetings, either virtually if out of state or in person. We will use a combination of years of experience of interviewing and online assessments and on the third meeting we will provide our treatment recommendations. We will meet with the client first for those treatment recommendations and then have a one time collaborative meeting with their treating therapist to discuss treatment recommendations moving forward.
Package Two
In addition to the support of Option one we will support the treating therapist for a period of three months to six months on a weekly or bi weekly basis in order to implement the treatment recommendations and get a foundation of sexual sobriety.
Package Three
In addition to the above options we can schedule in person meetings in the state of the therapist and client on an as needed basis to both assess, collaborate, and supply continued support.
Ready to Book Your Complimentary Consultation?
The Trauma of Discovery
Regardless of how the discovery of your partner’s
infidelity or sexual acting out happened, the experience of betrayal trauma is the same for everyone in the immediate aftermath. Maybe there were behaviors you have always questioned, like secrecy, denial, gaslighting. Maybe you have been suspicious, or maybe you just could not understand how someone who is so successful in other parts of their lives could be so completely checked out and unreliable as a partner and sometimes as a parent. Maybe you never suspected a thing and found out completely accidentally. Maybe you justified the complete lack of sexual intimacy in your partnership by blaming yourself, your body after having children, your lack of “adventurousness,” or your exhaustion and stress because you are overcompensating for all the ways your partner has left you alone. Maybe you thought if you tried harder, changed yourself, made things easier, appreciated them more, made your home and your kids perfect, that things would change and get better. But then they never did, or not for long. And now you found out that your partner—who you trusted and committed yourself to—has been acting outside of your relationship. You might feel confused, angry, and ashamed. You might not know where to get help and who is safe to talk to. You might be afraid of people’s judgment or ruining your partner’s relationship with family and friends.
Off The Crooked Path offers a variety of supportive coaching packages for partners who have discovered sexual betrayal and are interested in a variety of support options (à la carte).
A la Carte Support Options
Speaking Engagements
Religious and Spiritual Abuse Treatment
Groups & Coaching
Virtual Groups For Partners & Addicts
Sex Addiction Sober Coaching
Couples Intensives
What Do We Tell Our Children?
Children living in the home of active sex addiction also experience living with the lies, deceit, gaslighting, disconnection, rages and conflict in their parents’ marriage. They are often exposed to sexually inappropriate material, too much information about their parents’ sex lives or sexual experiences that they do not have the ability to identify, process or have words for. Telling one’s partner about a sexual addiction through the disclosure process makes logical sense to most people, both addicts and their significant others. It is a process of breaking things down with the hope of building them back up, and since the two people involved are both adults who have an intimate relationship, they have the necessary basic requirements and background credentials to be involved in the process. They can consent. Saying the same thing for children of a sex addict, regardless of their age, is not a subject that has the same consistent message behind it from addiction therapists.
There is not a lot of research on sex addiction disclosure to children. While many professionals in the field of sex addiction talk about the importance of disclosure to children and why it is essential that it be age appropriate, there are not a lot of concrete steps that showcase how to do this. The quantity of research on this topic is small, influenced by the ethical difficulties in obtaining data on sexuality from minors. The research there shows that having a sexually addicted parent can act as a risk factor for their children.
I believe the reasons why parents and clinicians can be resistant to disclosing sex addiciton children in many ways is quite obvious. We want to be fierce protectors of our children. We want to keep them from any harm and in particular we want to keep them from the pain, trauma, fear and deep shame related to sex addiciton. Many couples where there is sex addiction often might not even know how to talk to their children about healthy sexuality let alone sexual compulsivity. And so many partners of sex addicts work so, so painfully hard to try and keep their children from experiencing the impact of the addiction. When it comes to disclosing sex addiction to children, while it might seem easier and less painful to avoid disclosure on the premise that ‘it’s too difficult for them to understand, they might be traumitized,’ or ‘what they won’t know won’t hurt them,’ the singular fact remains that if the addict and their partner do not disclose the addiction to their children, they are constantly risking their relationship with the child and the child’s own trust, development, emotional stability, and even the child’s own healthy sexual development day after day. And while a disclosure to children will most certainly be painful and have unknown reactions and consequences, the chances of trauma, powerfully negative emotions, and long-lasting consequences all rise significantly when parents do not choose for a disclosure and choose instead to believe that they have successfully protected their children. And it is further complicated when it is sex addiction which still carries so much stigma, confusion, and misinformation for adults let alone children. Parents are terrified of the potential rupture in their relationships with their children. But here, when it comes to a therapeutic disclosure to children the adults have to take their own fears, shame, grief and take care of themselves so that they can put the needs of their children first.