What you'll learn

Understand how early attachment injuries can shape shame, identity, and later sexual difficulties.

Explain the main components of Shame Containment Theory™ and how shame moves between contained, uncontained, and re-contained states.

Recognise how shame can show up in clinical presentations such as compulsive sexual behaviour, sexual avoidance, anxiety, and relationship conflict.

Apply a shame-informed, culturally sensitive approach to assessment and therapy, including pacing, permission, psychoeducation, and repair work.

Meet the speaker

Lisa Etherson

Psychosexual therapist - PhD researcher

I am a psychosexual therapist, trainer, and academic researcher specialising in compulsive sexual behavior (CSB), shame, attachment injuries, and the development of Shame Containment Theory™ (SCT). My work integrates clinical practice, theory development, and emerging PhD research to offer a new framework for understanding CSB that moves beyond pathologising models and toward a more nuanced, relational, and shame-informed perspective. As a PhD candidate in social psychology/clinical research at Teesside University, I am developing SCT through my doctoral research, exploring how shame is held, managed, defended against, and enacted in the context of CSB and attachment disruption. My clinical and academic interests focus on the intersection of trauma, shame, attachment, identity, and sexual behaviour, with a particular emphasis on how these processes shape client experiences and therapeutic work. I am a contributor to the Routledge International Handbook on compulsive sexual behavior, where my chapters reflect both my clinical expertise and my developing theoretical framework. My writing and teaching aim to bridge the gap between research and practice, offering clinicians accessible, rigorous, and clinically relevant insights into CSB and the complexities that surround it. I speak internationally on CSB, shame, and related clinical topics, presenting to counsellors, psychotherapists, and other helping professionals who want to deepen their understanding of sexual compulsivity in ethically grounded and psychologically sophisticated ways. My training style is thoughtful, engaging, and practice-focused, with an emphasis on reflective learning, clinical curiosity, and translating theory into meaningful therapeutic work.

Navigating sex and relationship through the lens of SCT

This full-day webinar introduces Shame Containment Theory™ (SCT), a relational and attachment-informed framework for understanding how shame can influence sexual identity, sexual behaviour, relationships, and clinical presentations. Participants will explore how early attachment injuries may contribute to contained shame, shame scripts, shame anxiety, and protective strategies such as sexual avoidance, compulsive sexual behaviour, pornography use, performance anxiety, and relationship conflict. The webinar will also consider how cultural, social, gender and sexuality-related messages can shape a person’s experience and expression of shame. citefile:1 Through theory, research findings, clinical examples and case studies, learners will develop practical ways of recognising and working with shame in therapy. The course emphasises curiosity, permission, pacing, nervous-system regulation, psychoeducation, therapeutic repair and helping clients develop a safer relationship with their shame rather than viewing shame as something that must simply be eliminated. The webinar is suitable for psychotherapists, counsellors, psychologists, sex therapists, social workers and other professionals working with sexual difficulties, compulsive sexual behaviour, attachment injuries, trauma or relationship distress. Participants will learn to: Understand the relationship between attachment injuries, shame and sexual identity. Apply the six components of Shame Containment Theory™ to clinical presentations. Recognise shame-related processes in compulsive sexual behaviour, sexual difficulties and couple dynamics. Develop shame-informed interventions that support safety, permission, connection, repair and lasting therapeutic change.