Blog
What Is Micro-Consent?
Micro-consent is the practice of checking in with yourself and your partner every step of the way. In this post, we explore how it helps rebuild trust, create safety, and support healing—especially after trauma, shame, or sexual pain.
Healing Intimacy After Trauma: How Sex Therapy Can Help You Reconnect
Trauma can make intimacy feel out of reach—but it doesn’t have to stay that way. In this post, we explore how trauma affects connection and how therapy can help couples heal and rediscover closeness.
Why You Can’t White-Knuckle Your Way Through Recovery
White-knuckling through sex addiction recovery might seem strong, but it rarely leads to lasting change. This post explores why willpower alone isn’t enough—and what real healing requires instead.
The Shame Cycle and How to Interrupt It
The shame cycle can quietly pull you back into old patterns of secrecy and self-sabotage. This post explains how shame operates—and how to interrupt it with truth, grounding, and support.
What Does Sexual Integrity Actually Look Like?
Sexual integrity isn’t about perfection—it’s about alignment. This post explores what it looks like to live honestly, repair when needed, and walk in recovery with intention and care.
When Disclosure Is the Next Right Step
When secrets have damaged trust, full therapeutic disclosure can help couples begin to heal. Learn what the process involves and how it supports lasting repair.
Modes in Schema Therapy: Understanding the Inner Cast of Characters
Modes are emotional parts of you that show up in everyday life. Learn how schema therapy helps you recognize, understand, and care for these inner roles with compassion.
When One Partner Grows and the Other Doesn’t: The Shifts Recovery Brings
When one partner is actively growing in recovery, it can create strain if the other isn’t ready to change. This post explores how differentiation helps couples stay emotionally connected during these shifts in sex addiction recovery.
What Are Schemas? How Life’s Early and Ongoing Messages Shape Adult Relationships
Schemas form through early life experiences and repeated patterns over time. This post explores how they influence adult relationships—and how schema therapy can help you heal.
When Secrets Surface: Healing the Wound of Hidden Porn Use in Marriage
The discovery of secret porn use in a marriage can leave partners reeling. In this post, we explore why secrecy hurts, what emotional repair requires, and how couples therapy creates a path forward. If you're feeling lost after a breach of trust, you're not alone—and healing is possible.
What If I Never Trust Again?
Trust doesn’t just break after betrayal—it unravels your sense of reality. In this post, we explore what it means to rebuild trust from the inside out, starting not with the betrayer, but with yourself.
Differentiation 101: Why Closeness Doesn’t Have to Mean Losing Yourself
Many couples struggle with closeness because they don’t know how to stay themselves in the relationship. This post explores the concept of differentiation and how it helps couples grow stronger without collapsing into conflict or disconnection.
Hypervigilance and Avoidance: How the Brain Reacts to Pain in the Bedroom
Avoidance during sex isn’t rejection—it’s protection. Learn how the brain responds to pain and how emotional safety can help couples heal from sexual fear and disconnection.
Introduction to Schema Therapy: A Relational Approach to Deep Change
Schema Therapy goes beyond surface-level change by addressing the deep-rooted patterns that keep us stuck. Discover how this relational approach helps you heal from the inside out.
When Old Survival Strategies Stop Working
Some coping strategies helped you survive—but now they may be keeping you stuck. Learn how Schema Therapy helps uncover old patterns, build a Healthy Adult self, and create more fulfilling relationships.
Mirror Neurons and Shame: Why Watching Others Affects How You See Yourself
Recovery can bring a flood of shame and emotional overwhelm. This blog explores how mirror neurons impact empathy and self-perception in sex addiction—and how healing rewires both.
When Anger Becomes the Foundation: The Betrayal Pyramid
After betrayal, couples often feel emotionally distant and confused. This post introduces the Betrayal Pyramid—a tool we use at Insights Counseling Center to explain what happens beneath the surface, and how to begin healing together.
EFT for the Burnt-Out Parent Couple: Reconnecting in the Chaos
Parenting can leave even the closest couples feeling more like teammates than lovers. When exhaustion and logistics take over, emotional connection often fades—but it doesn’t have to stay that way. This post explores how EFT helps couples rebuild closeness, express needs with vulnerability, and find each other again—even in the chaos. Learn how to shift from surviving to reconnecting.
Book Review: Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts
This review explores Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts, a must-read for anyone struggling with obsessive or disturbing thoughts. Learn how to respond differently—and more compassionately—to the mind’s noise.
He Made Me Yell, She Made Me Shut Down": Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Conflict
When both partners escalate a conflict, it leads to a destructive cycle known as a "flare-flare." This post explains why it happens, how to recognize your role, and strategies for responding in a healthier, more constructive way.