Though the sex addiction field is over 40 years old, sex addiction and PSA betrayal trauma therapists have had no direct studies to back up their clinical observations that PSAs frequently experience domestic violence at the hands of their SA partner. In this presentation Lisa will present the first data to be collected on this topic. Drawing on the results of the quantitative study she conducted for her Masters in Counselling, Lisa will share how over 500 PSAs around the world compared to general populations in their countries when it came to DV, what factors mitigated the violence and what patterns of help-seeking they demonstrated. The training material will also touch on the history of the SA and PSA counselling fields, how this study lines up with previously conducted porn-use/violence studies, and what we as counsellors can take away from these results.

Lisa Taylor is a counsellor specialising in sex addiction, partner trauma and group facilitation. She has studied with such partner trauma/sex addiction-field leaders as Barbara Steffens (APSATS), Paula Hall (ISAT), Donna Meredith Dixon (ADOH) and Christian Sex Addiction Specialists (C-SASI). Drawing on her own experience as the wife of a sex addict, Lisa has also authored several books on partner trauma and sex addiction including the award-winning Beyond Betrayal. In addition to her work in private practice, Lisa runs groups and sees clients through Naked Truth Recovery (UK), speaks to church and school groups, and runs an online blog for partners at beyondbetrayal.community.

The majority of partnered sex addicts prior to discovery want to retain their intimate relationship with their partner while also preserving their relationship with their addiction.  And in order to keep their addiction undetected, they use strategies of power, control, deception, and manipulation in their relationships.  These strategies take the form of emotional and psychological abuse.

In this workshop, we will explore different types of emotional and psychological abuse. We will then examine how sex addicts use these abuse strategies to perpetuate their sexual addiction within their intimate relationships.

Dan Drake is a licensed clinician, a CSAT Supervisor, and a Certified Clinical Partner Specialist Supervisor.  He has co-authored several books, including Full Disclosure: How to Share the Truth after Sexual Betrayal and Letters from a Sex Addict: My Life Exposed.  Dan is also EMDR trained, and he is the Founder and Clinical Director of Banyan Therapy Group in Los Angeles, California. 

In his passion to help sex addicts, their partners, and families restore relational, mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wholeness to their lives, Dan strives to provide a safe environment where his clients can grow and heal.

Coercive control is often considered an individual aspect of family violence, Debbs believes that coercive control is an overarching tactic that is present through patterns of behaviour, in every form of family violence perpetration and harm. This workshop will explore coercive control dynamics, indicators and impacts through the newly developed Practitioner Victim Insight Concept (PVIC), which consists of the concepts of Coercive control - The Umbrella Tactic, Rewards Based Phenomenon, Layers of Consequence, Invisible Walls and Whole of Person Entrapment. At the completion of the training Participants will have a clear understanding of how and why abuses continue to occur in a family violence context, and the answer to that age old question of "Why doesn't she just leave"? Judgement will be reduced and empathy and compassion increased.

Debbs Murray is a family violence survivor who has worked in the family violence sector for approx. 20 years in a variety of roles from advocate, family violence death review panel, systems development and manager.  Debbs has worked for Oranga Tamariki, NZ Police and Specialist family violence service providers, and has now founded and is the Director of ECLIPSE: Family Violence Services.

Debbs has a passion for identifying and addressing systemic deficiencies and structural inequity to equalise the healing platform for whānau experiencing violence, while increasing the workforce capability of our family violence frontline in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Debbs holds a Bachelor of Applied Science with a Psychology Major and Diplomas in Psychology, Child Psychology and Health and Human Behaviour.