Overcoming Anxiety in Sex and Relationships

This book gives readers an accessible and comprehensive understanding ofhow anxiety, stress, and pressure can have a profound impact on pleasure,connection, and sexual functioning, offering practical tips and techniquesfor resolving common sexual struggles.Anxiety can influence a multitude of aspects that make us who we are,changing how we move through, make meaning of, and interact with theworld around us. Paula Leech begins by defining anxiety and how it affectsour physiology before guiding readers to identify some of the primarysources of anxiety in their lives, such as family, gender, culture, religion,relationship dynamics, and sexual trauma. Encouraging clients to takeresponsibility, she offers alternative ways of conceptualizing and definingsex, sexuality, sexual values, and a client's ongoing sexual development asa way of addressing some of the emotional, social, and psychological barriersto intimacy. Practical and engaging, this book includes mindfulnessand embodiment exercises to help clients release stored tension, workthrough specific sexual struggles and 'dysfunctions,' and deepen theirconnections with their body.This guide is essential reading for established and training sex therapistsas well as for those who experience anxiety-basedsexual challenges withtheir partner.