Psychosexual Therapy
AKA Sex & Intimacy Therapy
Sex therapy offers a safe, non-judgemental space to explore what’s impacting your sexual wellbeing—whether it’s desire, pleasure, function, identity, or something harder to name. Sex therapy at CUCUMBER supports you to move toward a more pleasurable, confident, and connected sex life. This is determined by you, not any societal “shoulds”.
For many, it’s the first time they’ve spoken openly about their sexuality, fantasies, or frustrations. We meet you where you are and offer a mix of practical tools, emotional insight, and a deeper understanding of your body and desires using a range of evidence-based psychosexual therapy approaches.
Sex therapy often works in conjunction with other healthcare professionals to deliver gold-standard treatment for sexual disorders and dysfunctions.
Sex therapy seems niche on the surface. But for successful psychosexual therapy, a practitioner needs a depth of knowledge, training, and skill to support people successfully.
Symptom reduction is an important clinical approach, largely outsourced to talented allied health practitioners such as urological nurse practitioners, pelvic floor physiotherapists and GPs, and sex coaches. But it’s not all there is to it.
In psychosexual therapy, the root cause is what’s identified and treated.
Bodies do not exist seperate to our minds. So treating the body alone ignores vital aspects of self, including the psychological, emotional, and the relational.
It is one thing to “succeed” in having sex. It is another to be able to be in flow with your body, and with a partners. To enter into that erotic realm where everything feels intense and connective and instinctual.
Sex therapy does not have surface-level measurable outcomes - it is about supporting people to have a healthy relationship to their sexual selves, their bodies, their partner, and feel confident in it.
Unfortunately, there can be a lot of barriers in the way. It can be hard to get unstuck from the mind’s chatter, from pressure, from shutdown, from fear all by yourself.
Once sex is associated with negativity, it requires to support to recode it.
Sex therapy is becoming an increasingly sought after service as sex, intimacy, and bodies become less taboo. There’s a conversation to be had about the rising rates of sexual distress, and yet there are a lot of positive cultural shifts too.
Women’s sexual pain and desire is increasingly cared about, more guys are talking about their own challenges with desire and arousal. Not to mention the impacts of body dysmorphia and trauma for trans* and non-binary folks starting to be recognised by professionals in the field.
During lockdown in Melbourne, sex therapists were reporting up to 6 month waitlists for couples seeking support due to sexual distress that radiated into other realms of life, impacting their relationship and mental wellbeing. 6 months!
Add in the societal pressures and expectations, especially for young couples in their 20s and 30s to be having lots of sex… ouch.
Then couples in their 40s and 50s navigating the pressures of career, family, and slowly changing bodies. Sex changes. Sometimes expectations don’t keep up.
There’s the other side of this too - endometriosis, PCOS, sexual pain (vaginismus) after sexual trauma or domestic violence.
Increasing disconnection and loneliness, porn addiction rates dramatically rising, shame and self-soothing cycles, erectile dysfunction or erectile difficulties.
For some people, sex isn’t an important part of their life. That’s fine! For others, it’s very important, so when something goes wrong it’s deeply distressing.
Sexual distress makes people feel alone when they’re not. This is so common. Sex therapy can help.