Therapy for the things that are hard to say.
London and online across the UK.
Therapy for the things that feel hard to say
Therapy after an online sexual experience
For adults carrying something that happened online — recently, or years ago.
Maybe it's happening right now: someone has sexual images or footage of you and is demanding money or more images. Maybe it already happened: images were shared, an account was hacked, a person you trusted turned out to be recording. Or maybe nothing was done to you at all — it's something you did, or took part in, that your mind has been punishing you for ever since.
Whatever brought you to this page, one thing is almost certainly true: the shame has been doing more damage than the event. I know this because it's what I see clinically, and because it's what I found in my doctoral research at King's College London, which examined exactly this — self-criticism and shame after online sexual experiences, and why they make asking for help feel impossible.
You've just done the thing that felt impossible. The rest is easier than this part.
If you're looking for advice for sextortion, the IWF (internet watch foundation) have this useful guide.
If intimate images of you have been shared or threatened: the Revenge Porn Helpline supports adults in the UK, and StopNCII.org can help prevent images spreading further. (If you're under 18, use CEOP's Report Remove instead — and please tell an adult you trust.)
Then there's the part that outlasts the incident — and that's where therapy comes in.
What I help with:
- The self-criticism afterwards: how could I have been so stupid, if anyone knew, I've ruined everything
- Hypervigilance — checking, dreading, waiting to be exposed
- The effect on intimacy, trust, and how safe your own body feels
- Shame and after effects from experiences years or decades old
- Social anxiety, difficulty trusting people
If it happened when you were young
Many people seek help for something that happened when they were a teenager — or younger. Being pressured or tricked into sending images. Being groomed by someone who felt, at the time, like the only person who understood you. Sextortion at fifteen, handled completely alone. Images that may still exist somewhere, which means part of you has never fully stopped bracing.
If this is you, there are things you may never have heard said plainly, so let me say them: what happened to you was harm done to a child — whatever you clicked, sent, or agreed to, and whatever the person on the other end made you believe about your part in it. The shame you've been carrying belongs to them, not you. And the fact that you were "old enough to know better" by your own teenage assessment does not change what the adult you are now can see clearly in any other young person: they're a child.
This shame is particularly good at hiding. It surfaces as difficulties with intimacy, flinching from your own sexuality, panic when a partner picks up your phone, or just a permanent low-grade feeling of being a fraud in your own life. You may never have connected these to what happened. Therapy is where we make those connections safely, at your pace — and where the self-criticism that took root in a frightened teenager finally gets answered by an adult voice that's on your side.
We use approaches with a strong evidence base for shame — particularly compassion-focused therapy, which I researched at doctoral level with people in exactly this situation. In my study, self-criticism, self-blame and internalised stigma all reduced, and people became more able to seek support. This is treatable. The shame feels permanent; it isn't.