When Trust Is the Wound: A Trauma-Informed Framework for Clinicians Working with Partners of Sex and Porn Addicts

Title of Event: When Trust Is the Wound: A Trauma-Informed Framework for Clinicians Working with Partners of Sex and Porn Addicts

Description of Event:

Discovery or disclosure of a partner's sexual addiction or compulsive pornography use is not simply a relational rupture — it is a traumatic event, one that produces symptoms indistinguishable from post-traumatic stress disorder and often layered with complex grief, identity disruption, and physiological dysregulation. Yet partners of sex and porn addicts have historically been mischaracterized within clinical frameworks as codependent or complicit — a lens that compounds harm rather than facilitating healing.

This three-hour training offers clinicians a trauma-informed, somatically-grounded foundation for working ethically and effectively with this population. Drawing on the current research on betrayal trauma, and somatic approaches to nervous system stabilization, participants will develop a working framework for understanding the unique clinical presentation of partners in betrayal trauma, distinguishing it clearly from prior codependency and co-addiction models. The training addresses the three-phase trauma treatment model  — stabilization, remembrance and mourning, and reconnection — and applies it specifically to the clinical realities of this population, including disclosure dynamics, anger, shame, identity fragmentation, and somatic sequelae. Special attention will be given to the role of deception as a form of relational abuse and its implications for treatment. Participants will leave with practical clinical tools and an expanded conceptual framework for holding this work with skill and integrity.

Date of Event: November 4th, 2026

Time of Event: 10:00 AM EST -1:00 PM EST

Location: Online Synchronous

Sex Therapy (ST) Training: 

ST1. Theory and methods of sex-related psychotherapy, including several different models.,

ST2. Techniques of sex-related assessment and diagnosis of the Psychosexual Disorders described in the current edition of the DSM.,

ST3. Theory and methods of approach to intervention in relationship systems experiencing sex and intimacy problems.

Presenter/Speaker: Esti Schonbrun, LCSW-C

Contact Name: Raiza Queen Calda Enriquez

Contact Email: office@rivkasidorsky.com

Event Website: https://rivkasidorsky.org/workshops/WhenTrust/view

AASECT Approved CEs: 3