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This is for
helping professionals, coaches, trainers and responsible adults.
If sexual education offends you, please retreat now.
On to Page 2: Sexual Abuse & Addictions
On to Page 3: Infertility,
Masturbation & Menopause
Our families tried to cope with insane traditions that were
mindlessly accepted from ancestors, and with insane commands from teachers,
priests politicians and marketers. We grew up with conflicting messages about
religion, success and sexuality - and some of us got lost. Heresy means
choice.
Most sexual dysfunctions result from physical or
psychological causes. Possible physical causes include diabetes, heart disease,
neurological diseases, hormonal imbalances, menopause, chronic diseases such as
kidney disease or liver failure, and alcoholism or drug abuse. In addition, some
medications, including antidepressants, can affect sexual desire and function.
Possible emotional causes include stress and
anxiety, worry about sexual performance, covert or physical incest, marital or relationship problems,
depression, guilt, or other effects of trauma.
Sex appeal is 50% what you’ve got and fifty
percent what people think you’ve got.
Sophia Loren
1. Sex Education
Many people will attempt to control your sexual behavior.
Sexual behavior that violates norms set thousands of years ago can bring
punishment, imprisonment and, in some countries, death.
The consequences of this sexual control include the reluctance of many
parents to prepare their children for adulthood. The results of this lack
of preparedness include single teenage mothers and immature adults who
are unable fulfill the responsibilities of partnership and parenthood.
Many children learn about sexuality in biology classes or childish
sex talk. Whether the parents were too shy, too religious or too
ignorant - their children will carry a burden.
Media sources of sexual education conflict with the needs
and goals of most people in most cultures. International media promote sexual
fetishes for commercial gain, ignoring the consequences to immature readers. The
top shelves of many magazine racks, like the dark corners of the internet,
promote and encourage the unpleasant consequences of sexual obsessions and
compulsions.
We coach people on how to express love, the skills of partnership
and parenthood, and alleviating the consequences of sexual abuse, sexual
obsessions, unwanted pregnancies, vanishing twins
and abortions.
Child Sexual Abuse
. Divorce and Children
2. Sexual Happiness
Long-term happiness, as opposed to short-term fun, rarely depends on
sexual activity. Sexuality offers a luxury for people who already enjoy
wonderful relationships - a distraction for others. People using sexual
activity to replace intimacy are doomed to failure - often desperately
searching for a perfect partner or some perfect sexual act to realize immature
fantasies of orgasmic oblivion.
Women often seem to feel more comfortable talking about sexual activities
than their male partners ... women have told us that orgasm is less important to
their happiness than feeling that their partners are sexually content or
satisfied; and much less important than feeling emotionally close to their
partners.
Men often tell us that their sexual happiness is more physical.
The satisfaction of a woman may be less important to such men, although
some men pride themselves on giving orgasms to women.
It seems that adults who seek sexual pleasure outside partnership
(prostitutes and affairs) are often fixated on their opposite-sex parents.
If happy partnership represents betraying a parent, then happy partnership
must be avoided. Such pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of happiness
is a common feature of cinema, television, lyrics of 'love' music and
much advertising.
We help people dissolve sexual bonds and relationship
entanglements. We coach people to find freedom from
emotional blackmail and covert
emotional incest. Identifying emotional
incest can be confusing because survivors often perceive themselves as special -
not as victims. Also, many people cannot even imagine that emotional
damage can occur without physical sexual contact.
Not all sex addicts are survivors of covert emotional incest and
not all covert incest survivors are sex addicts. However, the
consequences of emotional incest seem to underlie many sexual problems
given the relationship dynamics and their rather predictable impact
on emotions and beliefs.
3. Sexual Harassment at Work
Workplace harassment presents enormous potential
liabilities to individuals and organizations. Claims of sexual
harassment bring adverse publicity, loss of revenue, legal penalties
and the costs of replacing talented, experienced people.
Demeaning or sarcastic tonalities, unwanted body contact, borderline
comments, lewd non-verbal behavior or sexist jokes from a staff
member can precipitate devastating legal actions. As some managers
lack communication skills - we often coach managers to act
appropriately and with dignity at work. Some of them don't know how to do this.
4. Sexual Harassment by Professionals
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A sexual relationship between a helping professional and a client
is at least unethical and may be a criminal offense. According to some
studies, about 12% of male therapists and 3% of female therapists have
engaged in sexual intimacy with at least one client
(Holroyd
& Brodsky, 1977; Pope, Levenson & Schover, 1979). |
People tend to trust authorities who offer professional knowledge,
assistance and advice. Clients may flirt with and attempt to seduce
helping professionals. Perhaps they are acting out some transference
or perhaps they are responding to the first kind and supportive
words that they have heard for some time.
Sometimes, helping professionals take advantage of
people who cannot think clearly nor make informed decisions.
A health professional who rapes an unwilling client may be easy to judge.
A client who seduces a health professional, and later claims
diminished responsibility poses more
difficulty. Some cases are fraud, to obtain money from malpractice
insurance or to punish a practitioner. (Professional associations often
settle sexual cases out of court and provide internal discipline for their
members.)
The appropriate time between providing professional counseling
and an intimate relationship can vary from a few days to never.
The codes of conduct used by health professionals often specify
a minimum cooling off period, during which intimacy with
an ex-client is forbidden. This period is often between six
months and one year ... but this is difficult to enforce and many helping
professionals have told us that they basically treat it as a suggested guideline.
We offer help to people who have suffered from affairs, and people
who were abused by helping professionals.
We also coach health professionals to prevent, control or reduce
their risk of intimacy with clients. We help people resolve many underlying relationship problems and
emotional disturbances, and we offer steps to emotional maturity.
Specific Sexual Problems - Page 2
Online
Coaching & Mentorship
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright Martyn Carruthers
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