1. Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Katrina a mother of four adult children. I am a Relate trained couples counsellor and Psychosexual Therapist, Sex Addicting Therapist,highly experienced in helping partners and individuals overcome relationship/sex/sex addiction and marriage issues.
2. What led you to train in that therapy?
I just fell in to it. I was having therapy many years ago and the therapist suggested I did a 6-week induction course so see if I would like to become a therapist. That was 14 yrs. ago!
3. Tell me something about the therapy that clients may not know?
Being a sex therapist for 6 yrs. now I realised that many couples and individuals are having unfulfilled and sometimes unhealthy sex. Both men and women are suffering in silence and they do not need to. People are embarrassed to go and seek help for such issues such as erectile dysfunction, or loss of libido, vaginal pain,an in balance of couple desire, or performance anxiety, there is help out therefor them which can change their sexual experience forever.
As regard to sex addiction, one in twenty are addicted to sex of some kind and that is a conservative estimate, and with the ease of access to porn on the internet I sense it will only get worse especially with the youngsters.It is an addiction that is easy to hide, to keep it secret, hence why some of my clients have been suffering with this addiction for 20 yrs. or more,addiction thieves in the shadows!
The NHS are slow to accept that there is a problem and if they do, they do not have the resources to manage it and so very little help is out there for addicts but there is help and it has a high success rate.
4. What makes this work so interesting or rewarding for you?
To see couples, individuals lives change, to see women who have never experience the pleasure of an orgasm arrive to therapy with a big grin on their face having had their first orgasm (in the privacy of their own home I may add).
When working with addicts to see a broken individual enter my therapy room totally consumed with addiction knowing I have the skill to help them change their life forever is so very rewarding. I also work with the partners of addicts explaining that they did not cause it, they cannot control it, and they cannot cure it, they are not the problem but there suffering/pain is enormous and very real. It is like a three-legged stool, working on the recovery of the addict, the recovery of the partner of the addict and the recovery of the relationship, lots of work is needed, often is seems a massive mountain to climb but clients do climb and make incredible process.
5. How do you start your day?
Walking my two old Labradors round my 10-acre garden and then do a 20-minute-high intensity and arms exercise.
6. What do you do when you are overwhelmed or stressed?
Go for a walk and engage in some mindfulness.
7. What are you currently reading?
I have many work books on the go, The Attachment Theory Workbook by Annie Chen, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal by Sheri Winston, Don’t Hold My Head Down by Lucy-Anne Holmes.
8. What are you listening to?
Spotify - Ludovico Einaudi, and Ted Talks.
9. What does nourishment look like to you?
Talking to girlfriends and my children, cuddling my dogs.
10. How do you make space for play?
I struggle with this; I seem to be on the go all the time so I have to make a conscious effort to stop and play but that play maybe gardening which ends up being hard work !! This area I need to work on.
11. Please share some words of wisdom you’ve learned over the years…
Self-compassion, be kind to ourselves and self-care, look after yourself. To believe that we are good enough and what we do is good enough. To recognise our strengths and except that we do have weakness but that’s OK. That we will make mistakes but we can learn from them, that no matter what happens you will come out the other side and indeed a stronger person. Talk , communication is such an important part of our well being , you are not alone, share your feelings,and last but not least laugh, smile, have fun, if you are not make changes in your life so you do, you area special person and deserve to live life to the full, be your authentic self,be you.
