1st Edition
Overcoming Anxiety in Sex and Relationships A Comprehensive Guide to Intimate and Emotional Freedom
Introduction: What Sex Asks from Us
Part 1: Anxiety and Sex
1 What is Anxiety?
2 Sex as Natural Function
3 Physiology and Sexual Functioning (Vaguely Defined)
4 Performance, Goal Orientation, Strive Mindset
5 Mind/Body Connection and Disconnection
6 Emotion, Prediction, and Association
7 Putting it All Together: A Word About Pleasure
Part 2: What is My Anxiety Trying to Teach Me?
8 Arrested Development
9 Family Matters
10 Your Relationships
11 Disconnection
12 Insecurity and Confidence (Your Relationship to You)
13 Sexual Prowess and Inexperience
14 Sex and Aging, Sex and Death, Grief in Sex
15 Sexual Trauma
16 Sex as Pathology (Fantasy, Porn, Kink)
17 Sex “Addiction”
Part 3: Divorcing Anxiety from Your Sex Life: Actionable Steps
18 Taking Responsibility
19 Identifying and Managing Distancing Strategies
20 Mindfulness and Sensate Focus
21 Basic Practice
22 Advanced Practice: Erectile Dysfunction and Vaginismus
Conclusion: Trust Fall
Biography
Paula Leech, LMFT, CST-S, is a certified sex therapist who has worked with individuals, relationships, and families in private practice for over ten years. She mentors sex therapists in training, and teaches at various institutes across the USA and Canada.
“Overcoming Anxiety in Sex and Relationships is a refreshing resource that teaches readers how to build a more compassionate, mindful, and empowered relationship to the very human experience of anxiety so they can make more space for play and pleasure in their lives - something we all need and deserve more of.”
- Anne Hodder-Shipp, CSE, award-winning sex and relationship educator, instructor, and author of Speaking from the Heart: 18 Languages for Modern Love
"Overcoming Anxiety in Sex and Relationships is a right-on-the-mark resource at a couldn't-be-more perfect time! In a post-quarantine, COVID world with volatile, global geo-political violence, a domestic epidemic of daily shootings, and an unprecedented erosion of reproductive rights and sexual freedoms, it seems anxiety, stress and worry have become the societal norm, impacting individuals and couples in profound ways. This easy-reading book is invaluable -- not just a great resource for sex therapists and counselors, but for anyone looking to understand how emotion, physiology and socialization combine to create obstacles to the kind of sex we want -- and most importantly, it helps us find our way through them. Paula has taken her years of training in sex therapy and deftly condensed and simplified complex therapeutic topics, making her advice to readers approachable, relatable and actionable."
- Dr. Richard Siegel, PhD, sex therapist & supervisor, educator & trainer, author & researcher, and Co-Director of Modern Sex Therapy Institutes
