Sex Addiction

Sex addiction counselling in Colchester

Most people who come to the Colchester practice about compulsive sexual behaviour have already tried to stop. Often they have succeeded for a while — a few weeks, sometimes months — before the pattern returned. That history is the useful part. It shows the behaviour can be interrupted, and the circumstances of each return say a good deal about what the behaviour is actually for.

What brings people in is usually not the behaviour itself but the double life it requires: the accounting, the deleting, the explaining, and the distance that opens up at home because so much attention is going into concealment. That is treatable, and it does not require anyone to have settled first on whether “addiction” is the right word.

Understanding sexual compulsivity

The behaviour is almost always doing a job. It delivers relief from a particular internal state — agitation, emptiness, the tension that has nowhere else to go at the end of a long week — faster and more dependably than anything else to hand. Then the shame arrives, and the shame reproduces exactly the state that triggered it. That is the loop, and it powers itself, which is why resolve alone rarely breaks it.

So the work is less about the behaviour than about what it is standing in for: which feelings it reaches for, which ones it keeps at a distance, and what it would take to sit with those without needing an exit. The approach at the Colchester practice draws on integrative and Jungian psychotherapy, and where trauma sits underneath the pattern — which is often — EMDR may be incorporated.

Compulsive pornography use

This is the most common reason people make contact, and the one they are least likely to name on the phone. The clinical question is not how much someone uses but whether use has started to escalate, to intrude on sleep, work or sexual functioning with a partner, and to resist every attempt to interrupt it. If that is where things are, it is worth taking seriously regardless of which label the research field eventually settles on.

If you are not certain whether this describes you, there is a short private sex and porn addiction test that works through the pattern rather than the diagnosis. Nothing is recorded or sent anywhere.

No referral is needed to begin, and sessions can be weekly or fortnightly.

Further reading: What is sex addiction? · sex addiction therapy in London.

Discretion in a town this size

Sex addiction carries more shame than almost any other presentation, and in a town where faces are familiar, the fear of being seen seeking help keeps many people from it. The Colchester practice is arranged for exactly this concern: a private setting in a quiet residential street, appointments timed so clients do not cross paths, and strict confidentiality. For those who prefer it, sessions can also be held online before meeting in person.

Related services in Colchester

• Bereavement Counselling in Colchester
• Addiction Counselling in Colchester
• Stress Counselling in Colchester
• Clinical Supervision in Colchester
• Trauma Counselling in Colchester

See all therapy services in Colchester.

Dr Philippe Jacquet is a UKCP registered psychotherapist, a Jungian analyst and an HCPC registered art psychotherapist, with twenty-five years of clinical practice. His Professional Doctorate in Analytical Psychology at the University of Essex examined male eating disorders from the perspective of analytical psychology. Registration can be checked on either public register.

How the work is delivered from here

All international sessions are by secure video, in English or French. Online therapy is not a reduced version of consulting room work: it is the format that lets weekly work survive living abroad, travelling, or relocating. Sessions run in United Kingdom hours, which suits most regions, and if your time zone makes none of it workable, say so when you enquire rather than assuming it rules you out.

For clinicians and treatment services

Dr Jacquet supervises clinical teams in private residential addiction treatment and in a private psychiatric hospital. For treatment centres, psychiatric units and group practices looking for external clinical supervision, including in places where no supervisor of this seniority is available locally, team supervision is also delivered by video. For individual practitioners, see clinical supervision.

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