LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX, AOTEAROA.
EFT Sex Therapy
Fair warning: this page is more direct than most therapy websites. If that's not your speed, that's alright, my other pages are gentler.
HOW I WORK
My Approach
"Your sex life is not a symptom of everything else going wrong. It is one of the clearest windows into it."
Sabrina Barbara
What This Actually Covers
Sex therapy gets talked about like it's one thing. It isn't. In this room, it usually falls into three different territories, and most couples are carrying more than one at once.
Three territories:
01
Your Bodies, And How They Respond
Desire that's gone quiet, arousal that's harder to access than it used to be, pain, or a body that isn't cooperating the way you'd like. If there's a physical piece to this, we work alongside your GP, not instead of them.
02
Who You Are, And Who You're Drawn To
Orientation, gender, non-monogamy, all of it. Never treated as a problem to solve, because it isn't one.
03
What Turns You On, And What You Do With It
Fantasy, kink, curiosity you've never said out loud together. Held with genuine interest, not a raised eyebrow.
Who You're Actually Talking To
People often assume the "proper" person for this kind of work is a psychiatrist or a psychologist, because the titles sound heavier. Here's the truth, without the mystique.
A psychiatrist is a medical doctor. They can prescribe medication, and that's really the main reason you'd need one. Most sex and intimacy work isn't a medication conversation.
A psychologist holds a psychology degree, and depending on their training, may or may not have done specific further study in this exact territory. The letters after someone's name tell you about their qualification, not necessarily their comfort or skill with this particular conversation.
A counsellor or psychotherapist, which is what I am, trains specifically in sitting with people through exactly this: attachment, intimacy, shame, desire, connection. My training is EFT-specific and ICEEFT-recognised, which means my entire clinical world is built around this exact work.
No title here is automatically better than another. What actually matters is whether the person in front of you has real experience in this specific space, and whether you feel safe enough to say the true thing. You're allowed to ask any practitioner, of any title, what their actual experience with this work looks like.
A Note On How I Work With Non-Monogamy And Kink
Consensual non-monogamy, polyamory, and kink are not disorders and I do not treat them as one. If this is your life or something you are curious about exploring, I bring the same EFT lens to it that I bring to everything else: what is the attachment story underneath this, and how do we build safety and honesty inside whatever shape your relationship actually takes.
Your Fantasies Belong In This Room
Somewhere along the way, most of us learned to keep our fantasies to ourselves. Too much, too strange, too risky to say out loud, even to the person we trust most. So they stay in a locked room in your head, and the door to your actual sex life stays firmly shut on the other side.
Here is what I have seen, again and again. A fantasy spoken out loud and genuinely held, not judged, not fixed, just heard, can become one of the most intimate things two people ever do together. Not because you act on all of it. Because you finally stopped being alone with it.
When a partner meets your fantasy with curiosity instead of a flinch, something shifts that no amount of date nights or communication exercises can touch. That is not a small thing. That is closeness most couples never get to.
This work asks something real of you both: trust, and the willingness to be a little vulnerable in a room where nothing is off limits and nothing is mocked. In exchange, some couples find their way into a version of intimacy they did not know was available to them. Not because I hand you a script. Because you finally had somewhere safe to say the whole truth.
You do not have to act on every fantasy for this to matter. Sometimes just being fully known is the thing that changes everything.
"Nobody ever died of talking about sex. Plenty of relationships have died of not."
Sabrina Barbara
THE PROCESS
What Working Together Looks Like
Who it's for
Couples with mismatched desire. Couples rebuilding after an affair. Couples who have gone quiet in the bedroom and do not know how to bring it back. Couples exploring ethical non-monogamy, polyamory, or kink together and want a therapist who will not blink. Couples who simply want better sex and are tired of pretending that is a shallow thing to want.
What to Expect
Sessions are 75 minutes. We start where you are, not where a textbook says you should be. This work moves at the pace of trust, but it moves.
Every so often I might suggest a little experiment to try between sessions, just curiosity with an invitation attached. No pressure, no grading, entirely optional.
Invoices and calendar entries are discreet. No session details appear on either.
If an affair is part of what brought you here, you may also want to read about how I work with trust and repair after Infidelity Counselling.