Guides
Guides to desire, arousal and being in a body.
What is actually known about desire, arousal and intimacy, and where the confident claims run out. Free to read, no account, nothing sold.
Tools
Start here
- Therapist, sex therapist, or coach?Three different things, three different price points, and what each can legally do.
- What embodiment work actually isBelow the neck, before the thought. What a session looks like from the inside.
- Credentials that mean somethingAASECT, ICF, SEP, VITA — and the certificates that took a weekend.
- Red flags in this industryThe field is unregulated. Here is what a safe practitioner never does.
- Consent, scope, and what to expectRemote, talk-based, clothed, and yours to stop. What good practice looks like.
- Your first sessionWhat they ask, what you do not have to disclose, and how to tell if it fits.
- What this work costsTherapy, sex therapy, and coaching fees, and which ones insurance will touch.
- When you need a licensed clinicianThe clearest list on this site. If any of these apply, start there.
The body
- Feeling your own insidesInteroception, and why some people genuinely cannot tell hunger from dread.
- Going away during sexDissociation in intimacy — what it is, and why willpower is the wrong tool.
- The freeze that is not consentWhat the body does when it cannot fight or flee, and the shame that follows.
- Finding your noBoundaries as a physical sensation before they are ever a sentence.
- And finding your yesHarder than the no, for most people, and more interesting.
- The felt senseGendlin’s idea, and the two minutes that make it real rather than theoretical.
- Grounding, without the clichéWhat actually happens when someone tells you to feel your feet.
- Breath and arousalThe nervous system dial nobody teaches, and how to move it deliberately.
- Shame lives in postureWhere it came from, where it sits, and what changes it.
- Body image in the bedroomBeing seen when you do not want to be looked at.
Desire and intimacy
- Spontaneous and responsive desireThe single most useful idea in modern sex therapy, explained in five minutes.
- When one of you wants moreThe most common issue there is, and why it is not about the lower-desire partner.
- When your body and your mind disagreeArousal non-concordance, and why it matters more than almost anything here.
- Low desireMedical causes worth ruling out first, then the psychological ones.
- Permission to want thingsThe quiet rule most people are still following from age fifteen.
- Touch that is not a requestWhat happens to a couple when every hug is an opening bid.
- Performance anxietyThe spectatoring loop, and how attention gets back in the room.
- When sex hurtsA medical question first. Pelvic floor, vulvodynia, and who to see in what order.
- Erectile difficultyThe cardiovascular check first, then the anxiety loop that keeps it going.
- Fantasies you are embarrassed byWhat fantasy is for, and why it is a poor guide to what you want in life.
- Porn, expectations, and the bodyBeyond the addiction argument: what it does to attention and arousal.
Life changes
- Sex after a babyWhat is normal, what is not, and the timeline nobody gives you.
- Perimenopause, menopause, and desireThe physiology, the options, and the part that is not physiology.
- Intimacy as you get olderWhat changes, what improves, and what to stop measuring.
- Illness, surgery, and being touched againCancer, chronic pain, a changed body, and finding the way back.
- Antidepressants and libidoA real and under-discussed side effect, and the conversation to have with your prescriber.
- Dating again after a long relationshipA body that only knows one person, learning to be new.
Relationship
- Attachment, felt from the insideAnxious and avoidant as physiological states, not personality types.
- What a fight does to your bodyFlooding, shutdown, and why nothing said after that point lands.
- Repair, physicallyThe reconnection that has to happen in the body before the apology means anything.
- Intimacy after a betrayalWhy the body takes longer than the decision to stay.
- Open relationships and non-monogamyJealousy as physiology, agreements that hold, and finding a practitioner who is not judging you.
- Queer intimacy and embodimentBodies that were not in the script, and practitioners who know it.
- Gender, transition, and intimacyA changing body, a changing relationship, and affirming practitioners.
- Asking for what you want in bedThe hardest sentence in a long relationship, and how to build up to it.