Sexual Reflections: A Workbook for Designing and Celebrating Your Sexual Health Plan

by Alexandra Katehakis

Sexual A Workbook for Designing and Celebrating Your Sexual Health Plan, by Alexandra Katehakis, Ph.D., helps you uncover and embrace your unique, optimal sexuality. Carefully researched, designed, and clinically tested, the Workbook gives you a powerful new program to achieve your authentic sexual expression. Meant to be used with your therapist (complete with therapist instructions in the Appendix), this cutting-edge body/mind Workbook assists you in attaining personally satisfying and sustainable, healthy sexual experiences that fully align with your own ethical and erotic values. Prepare for some “Aha!” moments as the Sexual A Workbook engages you and your therapist in unblinkingly honest, individually-tailored exercises and conversations. This sex-positive guide celebrates and strengthens your unique healthy emotional and erotic intimacy with a partner. The Workbook begins with concrete actions supporting abstinence from sexual behaviors that destroy relationships (such as infidelity) or compromise integrity (such as sexual compulsivity). Having a healthy, satisfying, and therefore sustainable sex life takes a lot more than abstention from problematic sex. Constructing a positive sexuality starts with understanding all aspects of your sexuality -- physical, emotional, cognitive, interpersonal-intrapsychic, and spiritual—and is most objectively done in tandem with your therapist. The Workbook’s sections lead you step by step through each of these aspects by presenting thought-provoking questions and emotionally evocative art, by inviting your responses with your own words and images, and by processing your reflections in the next session.Forthright and compassionate, Workbook sections first explore your awareness of your sexual responses, your ability to name and track bodily impulses, and your capacity to trust those impulses as a personal guide to what feels sexually right or wrong to you. Later sections consider how well you maintain healthy boundaries with a lover, how comfortably you can discuss preferred sexual experiences with appropriate others and how your spiritual beliefs might bring joy and meaning, rather than shame or guilt, to your sexual life. Weekly “homework assignments” and processing sessions cover the section topics and help you confirm which sexual acts are okay, not okay, or perfect for you through your bodily-based emotions. This tailored-to-you mind/body process hones your inner reflections, so you and your therapist can help you identify and live your unique, genuine—and thus genuinely sustainable--Sexual Health Plan. Sexual A Workbook puts your sex life in your hands as your new skill of tracking your bodily activation guides you to your personal truth. Weekly homework assignments assist you in bridging the gap between what you think fits you sexually versus what your bodily-based emotions telegraph to you about specific sexual acts. Together, your mind and body help you create your Sexual Health Plan that integrates and expresses both your ethical and your erotic values. Sexual A Workbook for Designing and Celebrating Your Sexual Health •Encourages you to reflect on your physical self, thoughts, emotions, personal and sexual values, preferred sex acts, dating and relationship concerns, and spirituality—all to guide you toward a tailored understanding of your sexuality.•Gives you accessible techniques to track bodily and emotional activation. This personal barometer will help you to distinguish sexual arousal from sexual shame or trauma repetition, and to discover your own sexual truth. •Presents art and creative writing to access memory and activate healing and hope.•Guides you in defining an individualized, joyous, and thus sustainable Sexual Health Plan that supports your genuine erotic and ethical values.

Genres: Sexuality

150 pages, Paperback

Published April 18, 2018

About the author

Alexandra Katehakis, Ph.D., MFT, CSAT-S, CST-S is a Marriage Family Therapist, Certified Sex Addiction Therapist/Supervisor and Certified Sex Therapist/Supervisor, and Clinical Director of Center for Healthy Sex in Los Angeles. Dr. Katehakis has extensive experience in working with a full spectrum of sexuality; from sexual addiction to sex therapy, as well as and problems of sexual desire and sexual dysfunction for individuals and couples. She has successfully facilitated the recovery of many sexually addicted individuals and assisted couples in revitalizing their sex lives. She earned her Ph.D. from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.

Dr. Katehakis has lectured for the U.S. Journal Training Conference series, the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health, the UCLA Annual Attachment Conference, the Psychotherapy Networker Annual Conference, the Couple’s Conference, Women’s Association of Addiction Treatment, Mt. Sinai Medical School, AIDS Project LA, Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society, Phillips Graduate Institute and Pepperdine University and teaches workshops on healthy sexuality in retreat settings, such as the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.

Alexandra has been a guest on several national radio, podcast, and news media programs including NPR, Inside Hollywood, Dr. Drew Live, Conversations with Alanis Morissette, Voice America, Sounds True, and WebMD. She has been a regular guest blogger at Psychology Today, Huffington Post, PsychCentral and has published in the Journal of Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity and the American Journal of Play. Additionally, Alexandra has been featured as a sex addiction and sex therapy expert in publications from New York Magazine, NBC News, Men's Health, Rolling Stone, the LA Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and the Washington Post.

She is the author of Sexual Reflections: A Workbook for Designing and Celebrating Your Sexual Health Plan (2018), Sex Addiction as Affect Dysregulation: A Neurobiologically Informed Holistic Treatment (2016), Erotic Intelligence: Igniting Hot Healthy Sex after Recovery From Sex Addiction (2010), co-author of Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence (2014), and a contributing author to Making Advances: A Comprehensive Guide for Treating Female Sex and Love Addicts (2012) — all available on Amazon.

Professional affiliations include member of the teaching faculty at the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals (IITAP); certification/membership/supervisor American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT); membership American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (AAMFT); and membership California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT). MFC 36902

Dr. Katehakis is dedicated to continuous improvement of her knowledge and clinical skills and is a member of Dr. Alan Schore’s monthly study group since 2007 and other peer consultation groups. Most recently, Dr. Katehakis received the IITAP 2018 Leadership Award and was the 2012 recipient of the Carnes Award, a prestigious acknowledgement for her significant contributions to the field of sex addiction. She is also the 2013 co-recipient of the Clark Vincent Award for her role in writing sections of the clinical textbook Making Advances, the 2015 Book of the Year Award from AASECT for Mirror of Intimacy, and the 2016 Clark Vincent Award for Mirror of Intimacy.