AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist · Certified Gottman Method Couples Therapist · Practicing Therapy Since 1988
Individual Therapy for Sex and Porn Addiction in Bellevue, Washington
Online Sex Therapy for Washington Adults in Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, & the Eastside
Specialized Sex Therapy in Bellevue, Washington
You’re accustomed to making decisions and following through on them. At work and in your personal life, people rely on you to do what you say you’ll do. You’ve built a life around being capable, responsible, and dependable.
But when it comes to pornography or other sexual experiences, you’re having trouble trusting your own decisions.
You decide you won’t watch porn tonight, but later you find yourself opening the same websites you’d promised to avoid. Or you tell yourself you won’t pursue another sexual encounter, only to reconsider when an opportunity comes along.
You know exactly what you decided. You remember why you made the decision. But in the moment, the reasons for making an exception seem more convincing.
Sometimes you tell yourself you’ve earned the pleasure, that one evening won’t make much difference, or that there’s no reason to deny yourself something you enjoy.
And afterward, you’re disappointed in yourself again.
You’re not necessarily ashamed of your sexual interests. You enjoy pornography, sexual excitement, and experiences that give you pleasure. What bothers you is how difficult it’s become to follow through on decisions you genuinely want to make.
For a while, you thought things were getting better.
You’d been following the limits you set for yourself. You weren’t spending as much time watching porn or pursuing sexual experiences you’d decided to avoid. You’d even started to relax a little, without constantly wondering whether the next opportunity would be too tempting.
Then you did it again.
You’d passed up similar opportunities before, but this time you convinced yourself an exception wouldn’t hurt.
Afterward, you were more upset than you expected. You’d started believing you could put this struggle behind you. Now you’re wondering whether you’ll ever be able to stop thinking so much about your sexual behavior.
And there’s something else that troubles you.
Even when you successfully resist the urge to watch porn or pursue another sexual experience, you don’t necessarily feel good about it. You’re relieved that you followed through, but you also feel disappointed about missing something you would have enjoyed.
It’s exhausting to spend so much time negotiating with yourself about sexual decisions you wish you could make and move on from.
You’re scared of spending another year alternating between periods when you feel in control and moments when you’re questioning yourself all over again.
You want to enjoy your sexuality while being able to rely on the decisions you make about it. You want to stop treating every sexual opportunity as another test of your self-control and feel confident that you can follow through on what you’ve decided, even when the temptation is strong.
what we’ll do together
How I Help You Rebuild Trust in Your Decisions About Sexual Behavior
I’ve been a therapist since 1988, and I’m an AASECT-certified sex therapist. My specialized training helps me distinguish between sexual desire, behavior that’s genuinely difficult to control, and shame or expectations that may be influencing the limits you set for yourself. I’ll help you determine which decisions reflect what you want for your life and what makes them difficult to maintain.
We’ll examine what helps you follow through on your decisions and what happens when you make an exception. I’ll want to understand what you were anticipating, how you justified changing your mind, and whether something had changed in the circumstances that previously helped you maintain your limits.
If you followed your decisions for several weeks before returning to a behavior you wanted to avoid, I won’t assume that your progress has disappeared. We’ll look at what was helping during those weeks and what happened when those supports weren’t enough.
If you tend to reconsider your limits when you’re alone and an opportunity for sexual excitement appears, I’ll help you identify the decisions you can make earlier, before you’re caught up in anticipation. If the difficulty comes after you’ve already started watching porn and don’t want to stop, we’ll focus on what happens at that point instead. Those situations require different approaches, and I’ll help you work out which changes are effective for you.
I’ll also help you address the effort it takes to manage these decisions. If you’re constantly negotiating with yourself about whether to watch porn or pursue sex, we’ll look at how to make your choices less exhausting without relying on increasingly restrictive rules.
As you try changes between sessions, I’ll help you assess what happens and adjust our approach when something isn’t working. A setback gives us information about what still needs attention, including situations we haven’t adequately prepared for.
Learn more about my approach to sex therapy for out-of-control sexual behavior →
What I Can Help You Address in Sex Therapy
1. You can begin trusting yourself to follow through on decisions about sex and pornography.
In sex therapy, we’ll look at why previous attempts to change your sexual behavior haven’t lasted and identify opportunities to make different choices before changing course becomes especially difficult.
Together, we’ll develop a plan for those moments and examine what happens when you put it into practice, including what needs to change when something doesn’t go as expected.
You can begin building confidence in your ability to keep the commitments you make to yourself. Being home alone, having an unexpected free evening, or experiencing a strong sexual urge doesn’t have to mean repeating a behavior you’ve decided to stop. You can begin collecting evidence from your own experience that you’re capable of making different choices.
2. You can get your time and attention back instead of organizing your life around sexual behavior.
In sex therapy, we’ll examine how much time and attention sexual behavior has been taking from other parts of your life. That includes time spent anticipating the next opportunity, arranging your schedule, concealing what happened, or worrying about being discovered.
I’ll help you understand why certain situations make sexual thoughts particularly difficult to set aside. We’ll work on recognizing when you’re beginning to organize your time around the behavior and identifying what would help you make a different decision.
You can spend an evening alone doing what you intended, concentrate on work without repeatedly checking a site or app, and enjoy time with people you care about without thinking about when you’ll next have an opportunity for sexual activity. You can regain time and mental energy for the parts of your life you’ve been neglecting.
3. You can understand what you’re seeking from sexual behavior and find other ways to meet those needs.
In therapy, we’ll explore what you’re getting from sexual behavior that you haven’t been able to find elsewhere. It might be relief from stress, excitement, feeling wanted, or something you haven’t recognized yet.
I’ll help you understand what you’re feeling and wanting in those situations, including needs you’ve struggled to express or satisfy in other parts of your life. We’ll explore how you can meet those needs more directly, without repeatedly engaging in sexual behavior that conflicts with your intentions or creates unwanted consequences.
You can begin responding to loneliness, stress, rejection, boredom, or a desire for excitement in ways that genuinely address what you’re missing. You can have more choices about how to spend your time and meet your needs, rather than repeatedly turning to sexual activity and regretting it afterward.
4. You can begin earning back your partner’s trust.
If your sexual behavior has involved dishonesty or broken agreements in your relationship, I’ll help you understand what taking responsibility requires. We’ll examine what makes honesty difficult, including fear of your partner’s reaction, shame about your choices, or the temptation to minimize what happened.
I’ll help you prepare for difficult conversations and learn how to answer questions truthfully, acknowledge the harm you’ve caused, and avoid making promises you aren’t prepared to keep. We’ll also discuss what consistent behavior and accountability can look like over time, recognizing that your partner may need considerable time before they feel comfortable trusting you again.
You can stop deleting conversations, concealing charges, inventing explanations, or worrying about what might happen if your partner picks up your phone. Instead, you can begin living more honestly and giving your partner reasons to believe what you say. You can feel better about how you’re treating the people who matter to you, even while rebuilding trust remains difficult.
5. You can enjoy your sexuality without feeling ashamed of your desires or afraid of losing control.
As an AASECT-certified sex therapist, I’ll help you examine your sexual desires and preferences without assuming that frequent sex, pornography, masturbation, or consensual sexual interests are inherently unhealthy.
We’ll distinguish between sexual desires you enjoy, behaviors you’ve decided you want to change, and feelings of shame or discomfort that may come from judgments you’ve learned about sexuality. We’ll also explore how to pursue sexual pleasure in ways that respect your values, your boundaries, and any agreements you’ve made with a partner.
If you’re partnered, we can address difficulties discussing sex, differences in desire, and concerns about intimacy. When appropriate and with your agreement, your partner may participate in some sessions.
You can feel more comfortable with your sexuality while becoming more confident in your ability to make deliberate choices. You can enjoy sexual pleasure without treating every desire as a problem, and make decisions about your behavior without repeatedly violating your own boundaries or relationship agreements.
What to Expect in Sex Therapy for Porn and Sex Addiction
Understand Your Sexual Behavior So You Can Change It
In our first sessions, I’ll ask about your sexual history, the behaviors you’re concerned about, and how they’ve affected your life. We’ll discuss what you’ve already tried to change, what happened when you tried, and what you want to be different.
I’ll also want to understand what makes the behavior so compelling for you. Maybe you’ve noticed that certain feelings or situations make it harder to resist a certain behavior. Or perhaps you keep making the same decisions even when you know exactly what the consequences could be.
I’ll help you examine what happens before, during, and after those experiences, including the choices you make long before you engage in the behavior. We’ll also explore your sexual desires, relationships, and experiences with sex to understand what may be contributing to the difficulty you’ve had changing.
My experience as an AASECT-certified sex therapist helps me recognize when sexual habits, emotional difficulties, relationship concerns, or conflicts about sexuality need different kinds of attention. That means our work can focus on what’s relevant to your situation rather than relying on the same advice you’ve already tried.
Make Changes That Work for You
Once we understand more about what’s happening, I’ll help you address the difficulties that have made changing your behavior so challenging.
That might involve working through shame that makes you reluctant to be honest, learning how to handle strong feelings without immediately turning to sexual activity, or addressing sexual dissatisfaction and relationship difficulties you’ve been avoiding.
We’ll also identify opportunities to make different decisions before you reach the point where you typically return to the behavior. I’ll work with you on how to respond in those situations, and we’ll discuss what happens when you try those changes outside our sessions.
When something doesn’t go as planned, we’ll examine why. Rather than simply asking you to try harder, I’ll help you understand what happened and what needs to change in our approach.
Sex Therapy for LGBTQIA+ Adults and People in Open Relationships
I have extensive experience working with LGBTQIA+ clients and people in open, polyamorous, and other consensually non-monogamous relationships.
I don’t assume that having multiple sexual partners, enjoying casual sex, using hookup apps, or having unconventional sexual interests means your sexual behavior is unhealthy.
What I want to understand is whether you’re able to make decisions about your sexual activity that are consistent with your intentions, your values, and the agreements you’ve made with partners.
If you’ve broken relationship agreements, we can address that honestly without treating your relationship structure or sexual identity as the problem.
Sex Therapy for Neurodivergent Adults
I’m an autistic therapist who also trains other mental health professionals in working with neurodivergent clients. My teaching includes autism and sexuality, ADHD and executive functioning, sexual and gender diversity, and adapting therapy to neurodivergent people’s needs.
If you’re autistic or have ADHD, I’ll consider how your attention, impulsivity, need for stimulation, routines, sensory experiences, and communication style may affect the sexual behavior you’re trying to change.
I’ll use my experience to develop approaches that fit how you think, communicate, and make decisions. These differences can be important when we’re figuring out why previous attempts haven’t worked and what approaches are likely to be useful for you.
Who is A good fit for Sex and Porn Addiction Therapy?
I work with adults whose pornography use or consensual sexual behavior has become difficult to control and is causing problems in their lives. This can include people who are facing legal consequences related to their sexual behavior, such as an arrest for buying sex.
You may be a good fit for therapy with me if:
You’ve tried to stop watching porn, using hookup apps, paying for sex, or engaging in other sexual behaviors, but you keep returning to them.
You’re spending more time or money on sexual activity than you intended, and it’s beginning to interfere with your work, relationships, or other responsibilities.
Your partner has discovered sexual behavior you’ve been hiding, and you’re scared your relationship may not survive another broken promise.
You haven’t been caught, but you’re increasingly worried about what could happen if you continue.
You’re doing things you once told yourself you’d never do, and you’re concerned about where your behavior could lead.
Situations Outside My Clinical Practice
→ I don’t provide specialized treatment for sexual offenses, including sexual assault, rape, voyeurism, child sexual abuse, or offenses involving child sexual abuse material (CSAM). This includes situations where someone hasn’t been arrested or charged.
→ I also don’t provide forensic psychosexual evaluations or prepare reports for legal proceedings.
AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist for Problematic Sexual Behavior
I’m Kate McNulty, LCSW, LICSW
I’ve been a licensed therapist since 1988, and I’ve worked with individuals and couples dealing with out-of-control sexual behavior for decades.
Over the years, I’ve worked with people whose sexual behavior has put their relationships, careers, finances, or personal lives at risk. Many have tried repeatedly to stop on their own, sometimes keeping their behavior secret for years before deciding to get help.
As an AASECT-certified sex therapist, I bring specialized training in human sexuality to understanding why changing sexual behavior can be so difficult. I’m interested in what makes certain experiences compelling, what keeps someone returning to them, and what needs to change for them to make different decisions.
I help clients understand why they keep returning to sexual behavior they want to change, address what has made previous attempts unsuccessful, and make decisions they can follow through on.
If the description on this page sounded like your situation, I’d like to help.
Logistics
Pricing, scheduling, and online therapy sessions
All sessions are conducted by secure, HIPAA-compliant video. I work with adult clients in Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, and all of the Eastside.
Sessions are private pay, billed at $500 per hour and $750 for 90-minute sessions. I am not in-network with insurance and cannot bill them directly. For more information about pricing, please see the pricing page.
How to get started in sex and porn addiction therapy
To schedule your first appointment, please choose a day and time on my secure, HIPAA-compliant calendar by clicking the button directly below.
After I approve your request, typically within one business day, you’ll receive new client forms via email, which you’ll review and digitally sign before we meet.
Areas Served in Bellevue, Washington
I’m licensed in Washington as a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW #SWI.LW.60698797). I provide individual sex and porn addiction therapy through secure, HIPAA-compliant video to adults throughout Bellevue and the Eastside.
I work with adults in every Bellevue neighborhood, including:
Downtown and West Bellevue: Downtown Bellevue, Old Bellevue, Meydenbauer, West Bellevue, Enatai, and Surrey Downs.
North and Central Bellevue: Bridle Trails, Northwest Bellevue, Northeast Bellevue, BelRed, Wilburton, Crossroads, and Lake Hills.
South and East Bellevue: Eastgate, Factoria, Newport Hills, Somerset, Woodridge, West Lake Sammamish, and Cougar Mountain/Lakemont.
I also work with adults throughout the Eastside, including:
Nearby communities: Mercer Island, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah, Sammamish, Newcastle, and Medina.
North and East King County: Woodinville, Bothell, Kenmore, Clyde Hill, Yarrow Point, Hunts Point, Carnation, Duvall, and North Bend.
All sessions take place online, so you can attend from home or another private location while physically located in Washington.
Common Questions about therapy for out-of-control sexual behavior in Bellevue —
-
Knowing the consequences doesn’t always mean those consequences will carry the same weight when you’re anticipating a sexual experience you really want.
You might decide against an encounter in the morning, then spend the afternoon thinking about it until you begin convincing yourself that making an exception wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
I’ll help you examine what happens between those two decisions. We’ll look at what makes the experience compelling, how you begin reconsidering your limits, and what could help you respond differently before you’ve committed to doing something you intended to avoid.
-
Yes. We can work on rebuilding that confidence through changes you can put into practice, rather than expecting you to feel differently simply because you’ve decided to stop.
I’ll help you identify situations where you’ve had difficulty following through, prepare for those situations, and develop ways to respond when you’re strongly tempted to change your mind.
We’ll review what happens when you try those approaches, including occasions when you struggle. As you become more consistent in your decisions, you’ll have experiences you can look back on that give you reasons to trust yourself again.
-
Not necessarily. I don’t assume that watching pornography, masturbating, having a high sex drive, or enjoying consensual sexual experiences is inherently unhealthy.
We’ll distinguish between sexual activities you enjoy and want to continue and behaviors that are creating consequences you don’t want.
If you’ve repeatedly broken your own boundaries or relationship agreements, we’ll address those decisions directly. I’ll help you determine what you want to change and develop ways to follow through without treating sexual pleasure itself as the problem.
Still Have Questions about therapy for sex and porn addiction?
Use the button below to send me a message. I will respond within 2 business days.