The Problem Is Never Just the Problem
Most people reach out because of one crisis: an affair comes to light, sexual betrayal is discovered, or intimacy in a marriage has gone quiet. In Amanda’s experience, that crisis is often the final trigger in a much longer story, and past hurts that were boxed up before it tend to demand attention afterward.
Healing Affairs works with the crisis and with what lies beneath it. Amanda sees individuals and couples, in person in the Tampa Bay area and by video, and she came into this work after her own experience of healing from complex trauma.
Find Support for What You’re Facing
Choose the issue closest to your situation. They often overlap, so more than one may apply.
- Affair Recovery & Infidelity For hurt partners, unfaithful partners and couples working through the aftermath of an affair.
- Betrayal Trauma When discovering infidelity or sexual betrayal leaves you unable to feel safe or to trust.
- Childhood Sexual Abuse & Complex Trauma When earlier wounds are shaping your relationships today.
- Sexual Anorexia & Intimacy Avoidance When emotional or sexual closeness feels like something to avoid.
- Sexual Addiction & Compulsive Sexual Behavior When sexual acting out keeps repeating despite the harm it causes.
- Relationship Patterns & Intimacy When the same painful ways of relating keep coming back.
Ready to talk? Send a request, or email Amanda at amanda@healingaffairscounseling.com.
Affair Recovery & Infidelity
Affair recovery is the work of healing after infidelity: for the partner who was hurt, for the partner who was unfaithful and, when both want to try, for the relationship itself. Amanda has worked in affair recovery since 2012, and she looks beyond the affair to the underlying issues that so often contribute to it.
What happens in affair recovery counseling?
It starts with the facts. Affair recovery begins once the known facts of what happened have been gathered and talked through. Amanda then asks about anything that came before and may be relevant, such as past trauma, family history and mental health, because an affair is rarely the whole story. Early sessions involve plenty of questions in both directions and explanation of how trauma and infidelity recovery work, and treatment plans stay flexible as new information comes to light.
Can a marriage survive an affair?
Many can, though not every relationship does, and the details matter. In Amanda’s writing, the outlook is better when the unfaithful partner takes responsibility without blaming, is highly motivated and can tolerate the hurt partner’s pain. It is harder when there is ambivalence about the marriage, serial infidelity, defensiveness or a high degree of narcissism, and for some couples healing ends in the relationship dissolving.
Do both partners need to be in counseling?
No. Amanda works with individuals as well as couples. When both partners are working to repair the marriage, she takes what she calls a three-leg stool approach: three treatment plans that work together, one for the hurt partner’s betrayal trauma, one for the unfaithful partner and one for the marriage itself.
How is trust rebuilt after infidelity?
Largely through what the unfaithful partner is willing to do over time. In Amanda’s articles, trust and security are most often restored when the unfaithful partner takes responsibility, develops empathy and stays steady through the hurt partner’s intense and unpredictable reactions instead of becoming defensive or ambivalent. Facing what happened, rather than avoiding it, is part of that work. If a hurt partner is still stuck in fear long after the affair, betrayal trauma and older wounds may be involved.
Betrayal Trauma
Betrayal trauma is the deep hurt a partner can experience after discovering infidelity or other sexual betrayal. It can unbox past unresolved hurts and fears and compound distrust that was already there, which is one reason the pain can reach far beyond the discovery itself.
Why do I still feel on guard long after discovering an affair?
For many hurt partners, staying watchful feels like the only way to be safe. One betrayed spouse described it to Amanda as carrying a backpack full of rocks: without it, he felt out of control. How long this lasts depends on things like personality, family of origin trauma, attachment style and the unfaithful partner’s track record since the affair. Amanda doesn’t find it unusual at six or even twelve months; if there is still little relief by 18 to 24 months, she often looks for complex trauma underneath.
How long does it take to feel better after discovering infidelity?
Longer than most people hope, because grief can’t really be rushed. In Amanda’s words, months one to six are “horrific,” even with the best affair recovery support, and months six to twelve can bring some relief for some betrayed partners. Much depends on how hard the unfaithful partner is working, how attuned they are to the hurt partner’s pain and whether they are ambivalent. Early professional help and support in safe places matter, because isolation works against healing.
Why does betrayal bring up old wounds?
Because a major crisis like infidelity tends to open what was boxed up before it. Amanda describes sexual betrayal as opening Pandora’s box: past wounds, negative core beliefs and old ways of coping surface and need to be addressed before the relationship can function in a healthy way. For some, that includes childhood or developmental trauma.
Childhood Sexual Abuse & Complex Trauma
Complex trauma is the term Amanda uses for deep psychological wounds that often reach back to developmental trauma in childhood, such as sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect. It can undermine the basic human need for a secure and loving attachment, which is why it so often makes intimate relationships a challenge in adult life.
How can childhood trauma affect adult relationships?
Unaddressed childhood experiences can leave dysfunctional core beliefs and patterns of relating that make healthy intimacy harder. In Amanda’s experience, when someone comes in with problematic sexual behavior, infidelity, sexual avoidance or intimacy anorexia, developmental trauma is often part of what lies beneath it. None of this is inevitable: survivors who seek treatment and do the work can go on to have fulfilling intimate lives.
Do I have to talk about my childhood if that isn’t why I came?
Childhood is often not what brings someone to counseling. Questions about past trauma and family history are still a standard part of working with Amanda, because earlier experiences so often shape the present problem, and a trauma history is central to planning treatment well.
What does treatment for complex trauma involve?
Usually more than one approach. Healing from complex trauma, whether it is betrayal trauma, attachment trauma or childhood sexual abuse, often requires integrating specific trauma therapies such as EMDR, ETT (Emotional Transformation Therapy), psychodrama, intensives and group counseling. Amanda has Level 1 and Level 2 training in ETT, and where it helps she works alongside other therapists and coaches who specialize in related areas, so the process stays safe and consistent.
Sexual Anorexia & Intimacy Avoidance
Sexual anorexia is a term for a fear of emotional and/or sexual intimacy that leads someone to avoid closeness with a partner. Amanda also refers to it as emotional anorexia or intimacy anorexia, and it is one of the common marital issues she sees, alongside infidelity, emotional avoidance and addiction.
Is sexual anorexia the same as low sexual desire?
No. Amanda distinguishes sexual anorexia from low desire, asexuality and ordinary differences in libido. It is an active, ongoing avoidance of sexual expression and emotional closeness that works as a form of protection.
What causes intimacy avoidance?
In Amanda’s work it is often rooted in unresolved developmental trauma. For some adults with an untreated history of childhood sexual abuse, avoidance develops as a protective structure that keeps painful material out of reach. Amanda examines this pattern in a clinical case study written for practitioners.
How does sexual anorexia affect a relationship?
It rarely stays a single issue. Whether the presenting problem is sexual anorexia, sexual betrayal or problematic sexual behavior, Amanda often sees one final triggering event bring a person or couple in, and that event tends to be tied to earlier unresolved issues. Specialized intensive work can help: since 2017 Amanda has worked closely with Cara Weed, LCSW, CSAT, whose workshops based on Pia Mellody’s experiential model address intimacy avoidance and family of origin trauma.
Read more from Amanda
- When Untreated Childhood Sexual Abuse Becomes the Architecture of a Marriage (a clinical case study written for practitioners)
Sexual Addiction & Compulsive Sexual Behavior
Sexual addiction, which Amanda also calls compulsive sexual behavior, may be present when someone develops an obsessive-compulsive relationship with pornography, cybersex, infidelity, prostitution or another sexual behavior. In Amanda’s work it is understood as a maladaptive way of coping with deeper wounds, often from childhood, which is why treatment looks beneath the behavior.
What is the difference between an affair and sexual addiction?
Mainly the pattern. A single affair or one-time encounter is different from sexual acting out that keeps happening across a long span of time, often with different partners. In Amanda’s interview with MJ Denis, LPC, LMFT, the criteria discussed include out-of-control behavior, serious consequences, repeated unsuccessful attempts to stop and sexual fantasy used as a main way of coping, and MJ explains why repeated affairs will often meet them.
Is sexual addiction connected to trauma?
Very often. Amanda’s article on PTSD and sexual addiction notes that sexual addiction is seldom seen without a history of trauma, and that compulsive sexual behavior can become a way to numb or escape the pain of unresolved trauma. That is why the underlying trauma and shame are treated, not only the behavior.
Can a marriage recover from sexual addiction?
It can. Amanda writes that sexual addiction doesn’t mean a marriage isn’t safe to pursue: healing can still be reached with dedication to a treatment plan, which usually includes individual psychotherapy, couples counseling and group therapy. A team of professionals specialized in sexual addiction is key, and the partner’s own betrayal trauma needs care too.
Relationship Patterns & Intimacy
Many relationship struggles, such as emotional avoidance, broken trust, defensiveness and difficulty being close, grow out of patterns of relating formed much earlier in life. Amanda’s work is to identify and treat those root issues, so that a deep and abiding emotionally and sexually intimate relationship becomes possible.
Why do we keep reacting to each other in the same painful ways?
Often because the reactions are older than the relationship. Amanda finds that many of the defensive reactions partners have toward each other are trauma responses from childhood that have little to do with the present discussion. In couple sessions she can interrupt those reactions and model what healthy empathy, warmth and emotional connection look like. She explains her view, including why she sees narcissistic wounding as a spectrum that can heal, in her article on narcissism and affair recovery.
What does healing look like in a relationship?
In Amanda’s description, healthy people function well across many areas of life. They can build and keep deep relationships, be authentic and emotionally integrated, hold proper boundaries, communicate maturely, accept accountability and cope with stress, loss and disappointment without self-destructive behavior. Those are the goals her work with individuals and couples points toward.
Where to Go from Here
Read more about Amanda’s approach and services, or choose how you would like to meet.
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In-Person Sessions
Individual and couples sessions in the Tampa Bay area.
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Video Sessions
By video in Florida, across the United States and internationally, via FaceTime, Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams or WhatsApp. For clients who live in Florida, Amanda provides psychotherapy; for clients outside Florida, she works as a mental health coach.
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Workshops & Groups
Women’s and men’s growth groups, formed as needed, which can also be joined by video.
Ready to talk? Send a request, or email Amanda at amanda@healingaffairscounseling.com.