This book offers a detailed road map for overcoming sexual and relationship impasses originating from painful childhood experiences.
People with troubled childhoods often struggle in adult intimate relationships later in life. By repeating patterns of interaction learned and absorbed as children, they unwittingly create overwhelming obstacles in their attempts to love and be loved. Forging a new and healthful life in the present requires understanding and healing in the psychological, physiological, and relational dimensions.
Large numbers of adults with histories of childhood trauma and neglect suffer persistent relationship and sexual difficulties. Unfortunately, most have failed to receive adequate help with emerging from these deep and complex problems.
Coming Home to Passion: Restoring Loving Sexuality in Couples with Histories of Childhood Trauma and Neglect explores the enduring impacts—physiological, psychological, and behavioral—of childhood trauma and neglect. Author Ruth Cohn, drawing on 25 years of experience working with trauma survivors and their partners and families, lays out a practical and actionable course for recovery in clear, accessible language. This book provides direction and hope to those with trauma backgrounds while also serving as a unique resource for professional readers. Integrating in-depth information on attachment and relationship, trauma and neglect, and sexuality, Cohn details a practical, hands-on treatment approach for revitalizing love, health, and passion.
Features
• Provides a manual of ten sequential, structured activities that can guide readers in their concrete work on relationships and sexuality
• Illustrates dynamics painfully familiar to readers with numerous stories of real-life case examples
• A bibliography recommends additional reading as well as references and other resources
Highlights
• Synthesizes a wide range of complex, technical information about trauma, relationship, and sexuality into a self-help format that is easy to read and use
• Spans and integrates the three fields in a single volume, filling a gap in the literature for both general readers and professional users such as graduate students and clinicians
• Provides valuable information in varied forms including research, theory, case material, and practical activities
• Presents dense, difficult material in an approachable manner, written to provide hope and even bring gentle humor to a sensitive topic
• Debunks myths and misconceptions about sex with frank and candid information
Ruth Cohn, MA, is a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified sex therapist. Her published works include numerous articles on the topics of trauma, relationship, and sexuality. Cohn has specialized in working with trauma survivors, their intimate partners, and their families since 1987, and has made couples' work her emphasis for 15 years.
Endorsements
"This book will give you what other books don’t—the understanding of why, despite going to therapists or reading other books, you haven’t been able to get out of the ‘same old loop’ with your partner. I use it in my own work with couples and it is required reading in my sex therapy graduate courses."—Sallie Foley, sex therapist and author of Sex Matters for Women and Sex and Love for Grown-ups
"A powerful must-read based on years of research, clinical experience, and riches of the heart, this is a comprehensive work you’ll refer to again and again. Coming Home to Passion gives you compassion and competence to manage the most difficult of life’s challenges."—Pat Love, EdD, Author of The Truth About Love
"I highly recommend this as an insightful and incisive book that describes trauma and its consequences in new and original ways."—Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Medical Director, Trauma Center at JRI, Brookline, MA
