Reconnect With Desire & Pleasure
Sex Therapy
in San Francisco, CA
Work with specialized sex therapists in San Francisco who treat desire, arousal, intimacy, and sexual pain as what they are — real, treatable, and nothing to be ashamed of. Our integrative approach combines CBT, schema therapy, and somatic work, in person at our San Francisco office or online across California.
Expert Sex Therapy in San Francisco, CA
Elevate Your Sex Life with Expert Sex Therapy
At Bay Area CBT Center, we invite you to explore a unique and holistic approach to sex therapy that combines traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with integrative, science-backed methods. Our dedicated team of sex therapists in San Francisco is here to enhance your sex life and emotional intimacy, offering tailored therapeutic techniques that deepen your connection with your desires and improve your sexual experiences.
We offer sex therapy for individuals and couples, and provide flexible online video sessions as well as hybrid options to ensure accessibility and convenience. Whether you are searching for a sex therapist in San Francisco near you or sex counseling anywhere in California, take the first step toward a healthier and more fulfilling life by scheduling your first session with us today.
Featured In
Beliefs That Shape Your Sex Life
Unlock the Secrets of Enhanced Sexual Pleasure
In our sex therapy sessions, we focus on how ingrained limiting beliefs, known as schemas, impact your sex life. We help you identify and reshape these beliefs to improve intimacy and create healthier, more fulfilling sexual experiences. By addressing these deep-seated issues, our therapy not only improves your sexual relationships but also boosts your overall confidence.
Our expert sex therapists in San Francisco assist you in overcoming these barriers, enhancing your ability to be present and explore your desires more freely. Curious where your own patterns come from? Many clients start with our relationship schema quiz or read about building intimacy with schema awareness. With our support, you'll discover a path to a more satisfying and liberated sexual life.
Somatic Sex Therapy
Discover Body Awareness with Somatic Sex Therapists
Unlock profound levels of pleasure through heightened body awareness with our sex therapy. Our somatic therapy techniques help you attune deeply to your body's signals, enhancing pleasure and connection during sexual activities.
These practices allow for a fuller understanding and appreciation of your physical responses, leading to a more gratifying sexual experience. Our expert sex therapists in San Francisco, CA will guide you in embracing a deeper, more satisfying sexual journey, fostering greater personal empowerment and enriched intimate connections.
A Holistic, Integrative Path to Better Sex
Our Unique Approach to Sex Therapy in San Francisco
Our sex therapy approach considers the intricate balance of mind, body, and emotions, ensuring a holistic approach to improving your sex life. By combining the latest scientific insights with a personalized touch, we address your unique psychological, physical, and emotional needs, striving to heighten your sexual pleasure and relationship dynamics.
Most sex counseling stops at communication tips. Ours goes deeper — mapping the schemas that shape what you believe you are allowed to want, then using ACT, CBT, and somatic techniques to change how those beliefs play out in the bedroom. It is the same integrative method behind our couples therapy in San Francisco, adapted specifically for sexuality and intimacy.
Specialized Expertise
At the Bay Area CBT Center, our therapists possess specialized expertise in sex therapy, underpinned by extensive research and experience with hundreds of couples. We are recognized experts in the field, having authored books specifically designed to enhance couples' relationships.
Experiential Techniques
Our expert sex therapists employ behavioral and experiential techniques that teach you practical skills and tools to revolutionize your sex life. Our approach allows you to learn by doing, engaging on a visceral level to effect meaningful changes in your relationship to pleasure.
Science-Backed Therapy
At the Bay Area CBT Center, we deeply respect the sensitive nature of sex therapy. That's why we only use scientifically proven methods. With our approach firmly grounded in research, we ensure effectiveness while addressing each individual's unique needs.
Innovative Therapies
Advanced Sex Therapy Techniques
Every sex therapist in San Francisco on our team is trained across modalities, so your therapy draws on whichever tools your body and your relationship actually need — in person in San Francisco or through online sex therapy across California.
Co-regulation in Sex Therapy
Sexual intimacy flourishes when emotional and physical responses are synchronized between partners. Our co-regulation techniques in sex therapy provide you with the essential skills to align and harmonize your emotional states with your partner. This approach not only boosts emotional intimacy but also enhances sexual satisfaction, deepening the connection in your relationship and making your intimate moments more fulfilling.
Vagus Nerve Stimulation in Sex Therapy
Understanding the role of the vagus nerve in regulating stress and relaxation is crucial for improving sexual pleasure. Our sex therapy sessions include targeted vagus nerve stimulation techniques that help promote a state of relaxation, reduce anxiety, and create an optimal environment for enjoyable and satisfying sexual experiences. By integrating these techniques into your therapy, we facilitate a deeper relaxation that can transform your sexual life.
Behavioral Interventions in Sex Therapy
Our behavioral interventions encourage safe, consensual exploration of your sexual desires. This supportive environment fosters an open dialogue and exploration, allowing you to express and experiment with your sexuality. By helping you communicate more effectively, these interventions empower you to confidently engage with and fulfill your partner's desires, enhancing the overall satisfaction and creativity within your sexual relationship.
Schema Therapy for Sexual Shame
The beliefs you absorbed early about bodies, desire, and worthiness rarely announce themselves — they just show up as shutdown, self-consciousness, or the sense that wanting something makes you too much. Schema work names those patterns directly so they stop running your sex life from the background.
Mindfulness & Present-Moment Focus
Much of what people call low desire is actually distraction — monitoring yourself, bracing for a reaction, or being somewhere else entirely. Mindfulness training in sex therapy builds the capacity to stay in your own body and in the moment, which is where arousal actually lives.
Communication & Consent Skills
Talking about sex is a skill, not a personality trait. We teach concrete language for asking, declining, and negotiating — drawing on nonviolent communication — so conversations about sex stop ending in hurt feelings.
Enhance Intimacy
Sensate Focus Sex Therapy
Sensate focus is a foundational element of our sex therapy offerings at Bay Area CBT Center. This technique is expertly designed to address and resolve sexual issues while significantly enhancing sensory experiences between partners. Through a carefully structured series of guided exercises that prioritize touch and physical sensations, sensate-focused sex therapy encourages a slow, deliberate exploration of each other's bodies.
This method effectively reduces performance anxiety and heightens intimate connections, allowing partners to discover new dimensions of pleasure in a pressure-free environment. By focusing on mutual touch and sensation, sensate focus fosters a deeper trust and intimacy, making it a powerful tool in enriching the sensual dynamics of any relationship.
Inclusive, Comprehensive Care
Sex Therapy Can Help You With
We welcome individuals and partners of every orientation, gender, culture, and relationship structure. Whatever brings you in, there is a sex therapist in San Francisco, California on our team with the right specialty.
- Enhancing sexual desire and arousal
- Dealing with differences in desire as a couple
- Trouble reaching orgasm
- Addressing erectile dysfunction
- Managing performance anxiety
- Coping with premature ejaculation
- Loss of interest in sex
- Dealing with pain during sex
- Handling cybersexuality
- Coping with infertility affecting sex life
- Dealing with sexual issues around childbirth
- Navigating sexuality during life changes like menopause
- Alternative lifestyles like polyamory, kink, BDSM
- Addressing LGBTQ issues
- Sexuality and chronic pain or illness
- Addressing past sexual trauma
- Understanding asexuality
- Coaching on empowered dating
Safety First
Empower Yourself with Trauma-Informed Sex Therapy
At Bay Area CBT Center, we offer trauma-informed sex therapy designed with your safety and healing in mind. This approach creates a nurturing environment that focuses on overcoming the effects of trauma to restore your sexual well-being.
Through a blend of cognitive-behavioral techniques, mindfulness, and somatic experiencing, we guide you in processing traumatic experiences, rebuilding trust, and reclaiming your autonomy over your body and sexual experiences. Our therapy empowers you to redefine what intimacy and pleasure mean to you, facilitating a deep and enduring healing journey. When deeper trauma work is needed, we coordinate with our trauma therapy team in San Francisco.
- You set the pace — nothing moves faster than your consent
- Somatic tools for staying present instead of dissociating
- Coordinated care with trauma and attachment specialists
How to Start
How to Start Sex Therapy With Us
Getting started is simpler than most people expect. Four steps, no pressure, and a free consult before you commit to anything.
Matching Appointment
Book a free consult with our specialist to assess your needs.
Therapist Match
We'll match you with a sex therapist in San Francisco who fits your requirements.
Schedule Your Session
Pick a time that works — in our San Francisco office or online anywhere in California.
Start Therapy
If the initial therapist match isn't ideal, we'll switch you for free.
Ready when you are — no pressure, no commitment
The first conversation is free and takes about twenty minutes. You can ask anything, including the questions that feel too awkward to type into a search bar. If sex therapy in San Francisco turns out not to be the right fit, we'll tell you that too.
Therapy That Meets You Where You Are
Online Sex Therapy in San Francisco & Across California
Busy schedules, long commutes, or simply wanting the privacy of your own home shouldn't keep you from getting help. Our secure online therapy brings the same active, evidence-based sex therapy sessions to your living room — with the same San Francisco sex therapists you'd see in our office.
For a lot of people, talking about sex is easier from a familiar space. Research shows online sex counseling is just as effective as in-person care, and it means you can keep momentum going even when life gets hectic.
Available Statewide
Telehealth · All of California
We Wrote the Book on It
Books by Our San Francisco Therapists
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in the Bay Area. You could say we wrote the books on it. These titles, co-authored by our founder Dr. Avigail Lev with Dr. Matthew McKay, form the foundation of the schema-informed method our sex therapists in San Francisco use every day.
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy for Couples
Our co-authored clinical guide to using ACT and schema awareness to transform couple dynamics — including desire and intimacy.
Buy on Amazon →
The Interpersonal Problems Workbook
Practical ACT exercises to build lasting, meaningful connection in your closest relationships.
Buy on Amazon →
ACT for Interpersonal Problems
The clinician's manual for treating the relational schemas at the root of recurring conflict and disconnection.
Buy on Amazon →What You'll Learn
Skills You Take Out of the Room
Name What You Actually Want
Get language for your own desire — including the parts you have never said out loud.
Lower Performance Pressure
Interrupt the monitoring and bracing that turn sex into a test you can fail.
Stay in Your Body
Somatic tools to notice arousal, discomfort, and the difference between them.
Talk About Sex Without a Fight
Ask, decline, and negotiate in ways your partner can actually hear.
Repair After a Miss
Rejection and mismatch happen. Learn to recover instead of withdrawing for weeks.
Loosen Shame's Grip
Separate what you were taught about sex from what is actually true for you.
Common Questions
Sex Therapy in San Francisco — FAQs
The questions people ask us most before booking sex therapy in San Francisco, CA. If yours isn't here, ask it on a free consult — nothing you bring up will be the first time we've heard it.
What is sex therapy, and what actually happens in a session?
Do you offer sex therapy for individuals, or only for couples?
How do I know if I need a sex therapist or a couples therapist?
Is what I talk about in sex therapy confidential?
Do you take insurance for sex therapy in San Francisco?
Can I do online sex therapy in California instead of coming into the office?
How long does sex therapy usually take?
What if we do not click with our sex therapist?
Are you affirming of LGBTQ+, kink, and non-monogamous clients?
How do I get started with sex therapy near me in San Francisco?
From Our Blog
Read More on Intimacy & Desire
Relationship Therapist San Francisco: Evidence-Based Couples & Sex Therapy
Read Article →IntimacyBuilding Intimacy and Improving Communication with Schema Awareness
Read Article →DatingMindful Dating in the Digital Age
Read Article →CommunicationUsing Nonviolent Communication to Improve Relationships
Read Article →Where to Find Us
Sex Therapy Services Across California
Visit our sex therapists in San Francisco in person at 45 Franklin Street, Suite #210, or meet with us at any of our California offices — plus secure online sex therapy statewide.
Your pleasure is worth it
Start Enhancing Your Sex Life Today
At Bay Area CBT Center, we prioritize your sexual pleasure and intimacy. Our experienced sex therapists in San Francisco provide a supportive, non-judgmental setting, empowering you to achieve the joyful and satisfying sex life you deserve. Contact us today to schedule a consultation and begin your transformative journey.
