Dr. Barbara Steffens
A Trauma Informed Response For Healing After Sexual Betrayal
Healing from sexual betrayal is an incredibly important journey. In order to best help partners heal from the trauma experienced through sexual betrayal, we must understand what the partner needs.
The founding president of The Association Of Partners Of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists (APSATS), Dr. Barbara Steffens, helps you understand what a partner-sensitive approach looks like and how this approach differs from other historical approaches, how your church or organization can better serve betrayed partners, and why healing from betrayal trauma is so important.
SPEAKER TRAINER AUTHOR
Help Is Available
"The partner of a sex addict has responses that serve as reactions to a stressor that is traumatic in nature, in predictable emotional, behavioral, and physiological ways. She seeks what she cannot find: safety in an unsafe situation."
Learn how your organization can help them heal, with training from the foremost expert in the field.
Dr. Barbara Steffens, PhD, BCC, CCPS, CPC
Now Available for a limited number of training and speaking engagements.
(Please note I am not accepting new clients. If you are looking for individual therapy, use the link below for a list of providers.}
List of therapists and coaches
About Dr. Steffens
Dr. Barbara Steffens has specialized in the area of sexual addiction and providing help for the partners of sexual addicts since 1999. She is now accepting speaking engagements for churches and professional organizations.
Her book,
Your Sexually Addicted Spouse: How Partners Can Cope and Heal (Steffens & Means, 2009; 2021), co-authored with Marsha Means, MA, is dramatically affecting change in the lives of those who are victims and the professionals who are trained to serve them. Published by Armin Lear, it’s now in its third printing.
In 2011, along with a small group of like-minded mental health professionals she founded the non-profit APSATS, the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists, dedicated to the professional training and certification, public education, research, and advocacy for treatment of relational and betrayal trauma.
Speaking at international and national conferences on sexual addiction, and educating her peers on the traumatic effects disclosure of this addiction has on the partner, she is a recognized expert in this field.
Her unpublished dissertation, The Effects of Disclosure of Sexual Addiction, and subsequent co-authorship of The Traumatic Nature of Disclosure for Wives of Sex Addicts have made a significant impact on the dialogue about and treatment of spouses of sexual addicts.
BOOK
Since its publication, her book, Your Sexually Addicted Spouse: How Partners Can Cope and Heal (Steffens & Means, 2009; 2021), co-authored with Marsha Means, MA, is dramatically affecting change in the lives of those who are victims and the professionals who are trained to serve them. Published by Armin Lear, it’s now in its third printing.
The book is widely read by mental health professionals who use it in their practices and recommend it to patients. Partners in the United States and around the world who have read Your Sexually Addicted Spouse express feeling “heard” for the very first time by someone in the sex addiction field.
“My co-author, Marsha Means, and I say that we did not choose our life’s work, it chose us. That being said, it is our personal experience and my research, which is forging how partners of addicts are served through treatment and support.
Throughout the book, we provide firsthand accounts and stories from partners that reveal the impact of this addiction on their lives.
Each chapter ends with a section called “On a Personal Note” that asks a question and proposes new paths that lead from trauma to empowerment, health, and hope. Useful appendices list health and mental health care providers and clergy.
