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If this has become something you do rather than something you choose, and the shame is keeping you from telling anyone, there is a confidential and non-judgemental place to start.
When sexual behaviour or pornography use becomes compulsive, it follows the same shape as other behavioural patterns we work with: a reward loop, an emotional job it is quietly doing, and habits that have been repeated so often they no longer feel like decisions. Shame and secrecy then make the whole thing harder to break, because the one thing that would help — telling someone — is the thing that feels impossible.
Worth saying plainly: there is a difference between a behaviour that is genuinely compulsive and one that simply conflicts with what you were raised to believe. The World Health Organization recognises compulsive sexual behaviour disorder, and is explicit that distress arising purely from moral or religious judgements about one’s own sexual impulses is not the same thing. Both are real experiences and both deserve support, but they are different problems with different work attached. Part of a first conversation is working out honestly which one you are dealing with.
We are not here to tell you what your sex life should look like. Here is how hypnotherapy works if it is new to you.
This is a non-clinical service. We don’t diagnose or treat sexual disorders, and where what you describe calls for a psychologist, a psychiatrist or an accredited sex therapist, we will tell you so and help you work out where to go. Hypnotherapy often works best alongside that care rather than in place of it.
We work with adults, on behaviour involving consenting adults or your own use of legal material. If your thoughts or behaviour involve children, we are not the right service and we will not work with you on it — but please do not sit with it alone. Stop It Now! Australia is an anonymous helpline for exactly this, on 1800 01 1800. Reaching out to them is how people stop before anyone is harmed.
If sexual behaviour by someone else has been done to you, that deserves specialist support: 1800RESPECT is free and open 24 hours on 1800 737 732. In a crisis, Lifeline is 13 11 14, or call 000.
Free 20-minute consults can be booked by phone, text or message — confidential, and no obligation
What brings people in is rarely the behaviour itself. It is what it has started to cost.
Secrecy puts a wall between you and your partner long before anything is discovered. Many clients come because they can feel that distance and want it gone.
Self-loathing after the fact is reliably one of the strongest triggers for doing it again. Breaking that loop usually matters more than willpower does.
Time disappears, often at night or during the working day, and the fear of being noticed adds its own pressure. Getting those hours back is a concrete, early win.
Needing more, or something different, to get the same relief is a common and unsettling experience. It is also a pattern, which means it can be worked with.
This is one of the hardest things to say out loud, so most people never have. Saying it once, to someone who does not flinch, changes more than people expect.
Very often this is doing a job — numbing stress, loneliness, boredom or something older. Build another way to handle that and the pull eases considerably.
Call or text Stella on 0421 206 918, or send a message and we’ll come back to you.
Everything you bring to a session stays between you and your therapist. You will not be lectured, moralised at, or asked to feel worse than you already do — shame is usually part of what keeps this running, so adding more of it would be working against the goal.
Spiro Apostolopoulos and Stella Jones are Clinical Hypnotherapists, Strategic Psychotherapists and NLP Master Practitioners, and have worked with Canberrans on compulsive behaviour since 2012. Sessions use hypnosis and NLP to reach the subconscious patterns driving the behaviour, while also working on the emotional needs and the shame underneath it. Meet Spiro and Stella →
Your first session starts with a private conversation about your history, your triggers and what you want to be different. You set the level of detail — nobody needs a blow-by-blow account to do this work. From there your therapist guides you into a deeply relaxed but alert state, where the subconscious is far more open to change, and we work on the patterns, the triggers and the shame cycle together.
Each session builds on the last. You leave with practical tools and a recorded audio for use in between, and secure online sessions are available anywhere in Australia. See what to expect from your first visit →
Call or text Stella on 0421 206 918, or send a message and we’ll come back to you.
Yes. What you share stays between you and your therapist, and we don’t disclose anything to anyone — partner, employer, doctor — without your consent. The only exceptions are the narrow ones the law requires of everyone, principally where there is a risk of serious harm to a child or another person. We would rather state that plainly than imply a confidentiality nobody can offer.
It is genuinely contested. “Sex addiction” is not a diagnosis in the DSM-5. The World Health Organization does recognise compulsive sexual behaviour disorder in the ICD-11, while noting that distress arising only from moral or religious disapproval of one’s own sexual impulses doesn’t meet the threshold.
None of which changes the practical question. If this feels compulsive, if it is costing you time, relationships or self-respect, and if stopping hasn’t worked, that is worth addressing whatever anyone calls it. Diagnosis isn’t our role — this is a non-clinical service, and we work with the pattern rather than the label.
No. You decide what you say and how much. We need to understand the shape of the pattern — the triggers, the timing, what it does for you — not a catalogue. A great deal of this work happens without explicit discussion at all.
No. This is a non-clinical service and there are situations that call for a psychologist, a psychiatrist or an accredited sex therapist — particularly where there is trauma, a mental health condition, or a sexual difficulty with a medical component. We will say so honestly and point you in the right direction, and we are glad to work alongside them.
Not necessarily, and it is worth untangling. Feeling guilty about something that conflicts with your values is a different experience from genuinely not being able to stop, even though they can feel identical from the inside. One of the more useful things we do early on is work out honestly which one you are dealing with, because the answers are different — and we won’t push you towards a problem you don’t have.
Some clients notice meaningful change within three to five sessions; others want a longer process, particularly where this connects to something older. You will get an honest view at your free consult rather than a package quoted before we have met.
Our work here is individual. Rebuilding a relationship after this is its own task and is often better served by a couples therapist alongside what we do, and we are happy to talk through what would help in your situation.
Yes. Secure online sessions are available anywhere in Australia, and for this subject in particular many clients find the privacy of their own home makes the first conversation possible at all.
Call Stella for a free 20-minute consult — confidential, no obligation, and nothing you say will shock us.
Monday – Friday, 10:00am – 6:00pm · 42 Geils Court, Deakin ACT 2600 · online Australia-wide
We're confident you'll benefit from hypnotherapy, so we'd like to offer you a free 20-minute discovery call to see if it feels right for you.
Prefer to speak with someone? Call 0421 206 918
