AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist · Certified Gottman Method Couples Therapist · Practicing Therapy Since 1988
Individual Therapy for Sex and Porn Addiction in Brooklyn, NY
Online Sex Therapy for New York Adults in Brooklyn, NY
Specialized Sex Therapy in Brooklyn, New York
You’re spending more time watching porn or exploring sexual interests online than you want to, and you’re having trouble changing that.
You sit down intending to watch porn for twenty minutes, but two hours later, you’re still searching for something that catches your attention. You move from one video to another, curious about what else you might find, even though you’ve already spent far longer than you intended.
Part of you genuinely enjoys exploring your sexuality. You’ve discovered things that turn you on, and some of your interests are different from what you once expected to enjoy.
But afterward, you question what you’ve been watching or fantasizing about.
You wonder whether other people enjoy the same things, or what a partner would think if they knew. You may have searched online to find out whether your preferences are normal, only to come away feeling even more confused or ashamed.
Now you’re dealing with two questions you can’t seem to separate: Is there something wrong with what you enjoy sexually, or is the problem that you can’t control how much time you spend pursuing it?
You don’t necessarily want to give up these interests. You want to stop losing entire evenings to porn, staying awake long after you meant to go to bed, or neglecting other things you care about.
You’ve tried setting limits and avoiding certain websites, but you keep returning to them. Sometimes you’re still searching long after you’ve stopped enjoying yourself, and you can’t explain why you don’t just close the browser.
Then one evening, you find yourself doing it again.
You’d planned to spend some time watching porn before doing something else. Instead, hours have passed, and you’re still searching. When you finally close the browser and look at the time, you’re angry that you’ve lost another evening.
And almost immediately, you start questioning what you were watching.
Why do those particular things turn you on? Why can’t you seem to enjoy them without taking it so far? What does it say about you that you keep coming back?
You’ve asked yourself these questions countless times. You’ve searched for answers, made rules, and promised yourself you’d do better.
But tonight, what bothers you most is realizing how long you’ve been living with the same questions.
You’re tired of spending hours pursuing sexual pleasure and then spending even more time feeling bad about yourself afterward. You don’t want another year of wondering whether there’s something wrong with your sexuality or why you can’t seem to control your behavior.
You’ve thought about getting help, but the idea of describing your sexual interests to a therapist makes you uncomfortable.
You can picture yourself leaving out certain details, choosing less embarrassing words, or avoiding the subject entirely. But you also know that if you’re not able to talk honestly about what you’re doing, it will be harder to get help.
If you’re in a relationship, you’re also worried about what your partner would think if they knew how much time you spend on porn or what you enjoy watching. If you’ve been hiding your behavior or breaking agreements, there’s the additional fear of losing their trust.
And the shame doesn’t necessarily stop you from going back.
You can feel embarrassed about what you watched the night before and still look forward to watching it again. That contradiction is exhausting. You genuinely enjoy some of these experiences, but you’re tired of questioning yourself afterward and making promises about your behavior that you struggle to keep.
You want to feel comfortable with your sexual interests and have more control over how you pursue them. You want to enjoy pornography and other consensual adult sexual experiences without repeatedly losing hours, neglecting responsibilities, or feeling ashamed of what turns you on.
what we’ll do together
How I Help You Change Sexual Behavior Without Shame About Your Sexuality
I’ve been a therapist since 1988, and I’m an AASECT-certified sex therapist. My specialized training helps me distinguish between consensual sexual interests you feel embarrassed about, shame you’ve learned to associate with sexuality, and behavior you’re genuinely having difficulty controlling. If we mistake shame about your desires for a problem with your behavior, or overlook behavior that’s causing harm because we’re focused on reducing shame, we could end up addressing the wrong problem.
I’ll help you examine where your beliefs about sex came from, including what you were taught about pornography, masturbation, pleasure, and sexual interests outside conventional expectations. We’ll distinguish between preferences you genuinely feel comfortable with, desires you’ve learned to judge harshly, and behaviors you want to change because of their consequences. This helps us establish treatment goals based on the sexual life you want rather than someone else’s assumptions about what your sexuality should look like.
If you keep watching porn long after you intended to stop, I’ll help you understand what keeps you searching. For example, if you’re continually looking for something more exciting, we need to address the anticipation that keeps you moving from one video to the next. If you’re continuing out of habit even when you’re no longer enjoying yourself, we may need a different approach.
We’ll use those distinctions to develop ways to change your behavior. I’ll help you recognize when you’re beginning to extend a session beyond what you intended, respond to the temptation to keep searching, and manage the disappointment or restlessness that can come with stopping.
When you try making changes between sessions, we’ll examine what happened. If you still spent hours watching porn or struggled to follow through on your decisions, I’ll help you identify what made the approach ineffective and adjust it rather than asking you to repeat the same strategies.
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 stop organizing your life around secrets and begin earning back your partner’s trust.
If your sexual behavior has involved dishonesty or broken agreements, 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 purchasing 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 Brooklyn and across New York.
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 Brooklyn, New York
I’m independently licensed in New York State as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW #086198), and I work with Brooklyn clients via secure, HIPAA-compliant video across the state.
I work with adults in every Brooklyn neighborhood, including:
North Brooklyn: Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Brooklyn Heights and Downtown: Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Downtown Brooklyn, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill.
Park Slope and Central Brooklyn: Park Slope, South Slope, Prospect Heights, Gowanus, Windsor Terrace, Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, and Kensington.
South and Southwest Brooklyn: Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Red Hook, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, Borough Park, Midwood, Flatbush, Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach, and Coney Island.
All sessions take place online, so you can attend from home, your office, or another private location while physically located in New York.
I also work with adults throughout the other boroughs in New York City and throughout the state.
Common Questions about therapy for out-of-control sexual behavior in Brooklyn, NY —
-
There can be several reasons, and understanding yours will help us determine what needs to change.
For example, you might keep searching because you’re expecting to find something more exciting, even though you’ve already spent an hour looking. Or you might continue watching because it’s become a familiar habit that’s difficult to stop once you’ve started.
I’ll help you examine what happens when you decide to keep watching, what makes it difficult to close the browser, and why your previous attempts to set limits haven’t worked. We’ll use that information to develop approaches that address what’s keeping you engaged rather than simply asking you to spend less time online.
-
That’s something we can assess together. Feeling ashamed of pornography use doesn’t automatically mean your behavior is out of control.
I’ll want to know whether you’ve repeatedly tried to change your pornography use, what happens when you try, and how it’s affecting your life. We’ll also discuss where your beliefs about pornography and sexual pleasure came from.
For example, someone who watches porn occasionally but feels guilty because of what they were taught about masturbation may need different help from someone who spends hours watching porn despite repeated attempts to stop.
I’ll help you understand which concerns apply to you so we can focus treatment appropriately.
-
No. You don’t need to adopt an addiction label or agree that your sexual desires are unhealthy.
People seek my help because their pornography use or other consensual sexual behavior has become difficult to manage, is creating consequences they don’t want, or is causing distress they haven’t been able to resolve.
We’ll assess what’s happening before deciding what needs to change. My approach is informed by sex therapy rather than assuming that everyone who struggles with sexual behavior has an addiction.
You can begin therapy without having a diagnosis or a complete explanation for why you’ve been struggling.
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.