Compulsive porn use · Virtual · Six provinces
Therapy for Compulsive Porn Use
You have almost certainly already tried to stop on your own. That it did not hold is information about the problem, not a verdict on you.
Online sessions with Mohamad Shabib across British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador. English and Arabic. No pledge to sign, no lecture. Free 15–20 minute consultation, evenings and weekends.
At a glance
Therapy for compulsive porn use treats the behaviour as a pattern with a function — usually one that regulates shame, anxiety, loneliness or unprocessed trauma — rather than as a moral problem to be argued out of someone. At TEO Counselling it is provided online by Mohamad Shabib (MACP, CCC, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO in Ontario), who draws on Internal Family Systems and EMDR training and sees clients in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador, in English or Arabic. Individual sessions are $150 per 60-minute session, couples sessions are $175, and the first step is a free 15–20 minute consultation with no referral needed.
Is porn addiction real?
Here is the accurate answer, which is more useful than either of the loud ones. “Porn addiction” is not a formal diagnosis. The DSM-5-TR, the diagnostic manual used across North America, does not include pornography addiction or sex addiction. The ICD-11, published by the World Health Organization and used for clinical coding in Canada, does include Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder — a persistent pattern of failing to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses that results in marked distress or significant impairment in work, relationships or other areas of life. It is classified there as an impulse control disorder, not as a substance-style addiction.
That distinction is not a technicality and it is not a dismissal. It matters because the two ways this gets talked about publicly are both unhelpful. One says you are an addict in the grip of a chemical hijacking, which tends to hand the behaviour more power than it has. The other says it is nothing, just a modern habit, which does not match the experience of someone who has genuinely tried to stop and could not.
What is clinically real, and what people actually arrive with, is a behaviour that has become compulsive: it happens against your own stated intention, it is difficult to interrupt once it starts, and it continues despite costs you can name out loud. You do not need a label to bring that to therapy, and nothing on this page is a diagnosis — only an assessment with a qualified professional can address that question.
What are the signs that porn use has become compulsive?
Frequency on its own says very little. What clinicians look at is loss of control, escalation, function and cost — whether the behaviour has stopped being a choice and started being a regulator.
Patterns that tend to bring people here:
- the amount of time has crept up, or the material has drifted somewhere you would not have chosen at the start
- you have decided to stop, meant it, and found yourself doing it again within days
- it happens on the back of a feeling — boredom, stress, loneliness, rejection, a difficult day — more reliably than it happens on the back of desire
- it is costing you something concrete: sleep, work, money, a partner’s trust, time you meant to spend elsewhere
- you have started arranging your day around the opportunity, or hiding it more carefully than you used to
- it has stopped being enjoyable and become something closer to a habit you resent
What is not on that list:
How often. There is no threshold number, and any source offering you one is inventing it. Two people with identical habits can be in completely different situations — one is fine, one is in trouble — and the difference is whether it is being used to manage something.
Whether anyone disapproves. Distress that comes entirely from someone else’s disapproval, or from a belief system you are no longer sure you hold, is a real and worthwhile thing to bring to therapy. It is a different piece of work from compulsion, and conflating the two is one of the more common ways people end up in the wrong kind of help.
Why don’t willpower and blocking software resolve it?
Because they act on access and intention, and the behaviour is usually not being driven by either. It is doing a job.
What blockers and willpower do
Remove the opportunity
- Filters, app limits, a phone left in another room, a partner holding the password
- Resolutions, streak counters, a promise made after a bad night
- Genuinely useful as friction, and worth keeping if they help
- Nothing about them touches the feeling that arrives at 11pm
- When they fail, the failure gets read as proof of a character defect — which produces more shame, which is the thing the behaviour was regulating in the first place
What therapy does
Change what the behaviour is for
- Works out what the pattern is actually managing — usually a feeling, not an appetite
- Builds a way to be with that feeling that does not require the behaviour
- Treats a relapse as information about a trigger rather than as evidence about you
- Addresses the shame directly, because shame is the accelerator and not the brake
This is the loop most people are stuck in by the time they book. Resolve, hold for a while, slip, feel worse about yourself than before, and reach for the fastest available way to stop feeling that — which happens to be the same behaviour. Contempt aimed at yourself is not a strategy that has ever worked on this, and the harder it is applied the tighter the loop tends to get.
What does therapy for compulsive porn use address?
Very little of it is about pornography. Most of it is about what sits underneath the reach for it.
- shame, which is usually the fuel rather than the brake — self-disgust reliably makes the pattern harder to interrupt, not easier
- trauma, where the behaviour sits downstream of something older that was never processed
- attachment difficulty — using a screen for closeness because closeness with a person has felt unsafe or unavailable
- emotion regulation: what happens in the twenty minutes before, and what feeling is being turned down
- anxiety, low mood and emotional avoidance, which is often the actual engine underneath
- the relationship, where trust has been damaged and both people need somewhere to put it
Sessions get concrete quickly. What was happening in the hour before. What the feeling was, if it had a name. What the behaviour delivered in the moment, honestly — because it delivers something, and pretending otherwise makes the work impossible. Then, gradually, what else could occupy that job, and what it would take to tolerate the feeling without needing it turned off immediately.
Goals are yours to set. Some people want to stop entirely. Some want the behaviour out of the specific role it has taken on — no longer the thing that handles every hard evening. Some arrive mainly because a relationship is in trouble. All of those are legitimate starting points, and no approach can be promised to work for any particular person.
Which therapy approaches does TEO use for compulsive porn use?
Which one carries the weight depends on what is underneath. Usually it is a combination.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Often the strongest fit for this presentation, because it takes the shame out of the room without pretending the cost away. IFS treats the part of you that reaches for the screen as a protector doing a job — usually ending a feeling fast — and the harsh internal critic as another part, also trying to help, also making things worse. Getting curious about what the behaviour is protecting tends to loosen it in a way that attacking it does not. Mohamad has completed IFS Level 1 and Level 2 training.
More on IFS therapy →EMDR, where there is underlying trauma
For a substantial number of people this pattern started as a way to manage something that happened, and the memory is still live. EMDR is a structured approach to processing that material so it stops driving the present, and it does not require a detailed retelling. Mohamad is EMDRIA-trained in Advanced EMDR. This is offered where trauma is genuinely part of the picture, not by default.
More on EMDR therapy →CBT-informed work on the loop
The practical layer: mapping triggers, the gap between urge and action, what happens in that gap, and what can be built into it. Useful for the day-to-day mechanics alongside the deeper work. Mohamad holds CBT for Trauma Levels 1 and 2; Alison Shaji holds CBT and DBT training.
Gottman Method for the relationship
Where a partner has found out and trust has been damaged, the couple often needs its own work rather than a report on the individual sessions. Mohamad has Gottman Method Levels 1 and 2 training. Couples sessions are $175 per 60 minutes.
More on couples counselling →Will I be judged, and is this confidential?
On judgement: no. This is a routine reason to come to therapy and it is treated as a clinical pattern with a function, not as a character verdict. Whatever framework you were raised inside — religious, cultural, family — you are not required to adopt it here, and you are not required to abandon it either. What you think about your own behaviour is part of the material, not something to be corrected.
On confidentiality: sessions are confidential, and that has real limits, set by law and by professional regulation rather than by preference. Information can be released under a court order or subpoena. It can be released where there is a serious and imminent risk of harm to you or to another person. And there are child protection reporting duties that apply to every regulated clinician in Canada, including a duty to report where a child is at risk. Those limits are explained at the outset rather than discovered later, and if any part of what you are carrying touches one of them, the free consultation is the safest place to find out where you stand before you say more.
Practically: sessions are online by video, so there is no reception desk and no one else in a corridor. Records are kept in Jane, the secure health-records platform the practice runs on, under the same standards as any other clinical file.
Working with couples after trust has broken
A large share of the people who search this are not searching for themselves. They found a history, or a bill, or were told, and the ground has moved.
Two things have to be true at once in that room, and holding both is the work. The behaviour has a function that can be understood. And understanding it does not cancel what it cost the other person — the secrecy, the being lied to, the reasonable question of what else was hidden. Therapy that only does the first becomes a defence lawyer. Therapy that only does the second becomes a tribunal, and nothing changes.
In practice the sequencing varies. Sometimes individual work comes first so the person is not managing disclosure and a partner’s distress in the same hour. Sometimes couples work is the urgent piece because the relationship will not survive the wait. That is a decision to make together in the consultation rather than by guessing.
If the discovery has left you doubting your own perception of the last few years, that is worth naming as its own injury rather than folding it into his problem.
Session details
Clinician registrations differ — Mohamad with the CRPO in Ontario, Alison Shaji as an RCC in British Columbia, Rola Shbib as an RSW registered with the Ontario College — so where you are affects which clinician you can see. Receipts are provided for extended health plans; insurers are not billed directly. TEO is an approved provider with BC’s Crime Victim Assistance Program.
Book a Free ConsultationMohamad Shabib
Founder of TEO Counselling Services Inc. He holds an MACP, is a Canadian Certified Counsellor, and is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO in Ontario. His training includes Advanced EMDR (EMDRIA), IFS Levels 1 and 2, CBT for Trauma Levels 1 and 2, and Gottman Method Levels 1 and 2. He served as a Trauma Counsellor at Edgewood in Nanaimo working with concurrent trauma and addictions, including first responders, and began counselling in 2020. Sessions are available in English and Arabic, in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador.
Read Mohamad’s full bio →The other clinicians at TEO are Alison Shaji (MA Clinical Psychology, RCC in British Columbia, with CBT and DBT training) and Rola Shbib (BSW Hons, Registered Social Worker with the Ontario College, crisis intervention and ASIST). Enquiries reach Mohamad first and he arranges the right fit.
How do I start?
Book the free 15–20 minute consultation, or send a note through the form below if saying it out loud to a stranger is the part that is stopping you. Writing one sentence is a legitimate way in. You do not have to have a plan, a diagnosis, or a tidy version of the story ready — the consultation exists to work out whether this is the right place, including the possibility that it is not.
If things are unsafe right now
Therapy sessions are scheduled appointments, not a crisis service, and no page can assess your situation.
- If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911
- In Canada, the Suicide Crisis Helpline can be reached by calling or texting 9-8-8, at any hour
Shame about this can get heavy enough to be dangerous, particularly after a discovery or a relapse. If you are having thoughts of ending your life, 9-8-8 is available at any hour and does not require you to explain the whole story to use it. And if your concern is about material involving children, or about your own urges toward a child, that needs specialist help rather than a general therapy waitlist — it is still a legitimate reason to seek help, and the confidentiality limits above are the honest starting point for that conversation.
Common questions about therapy for compulsive porn use
Is porn addiction a real diagnosis?
Not in the DSM-5-TR, which does not list pornography addiction or sex addiction as a diagnosis. The World Health Organization’s ICD-11 does include Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder, defined as a persistent pattern of failing to control intense sexual impulses that results in marked distress or impairment. Therapy does not depend on settling that debate — the pattern is workable either way, and nothing on this page is a diagnosis.
Do I have to quit before I start therapy?
No. There is no pledge to sign and abstinence is not a condition of being seen. What you want to change, and at what pace, is something you decide and revisit as the work goes on rather than something fixed in the first session.
Will my therapist think I am disgusting?
No. This is one of the more common reasons people search for months before booking anything. Compulsive sexual behaviour is a recognised clinical presentation, it is a routine reason to come to therapy, and it is treated here as a pattern with a function rather than as a moral failure.
Is what I say confidential?
Sessions are confidential, with limits set by law and professional regulation rather than by preference: a court order or subpoena, a serious risk of harm to you or someone else, and child protection reporting duties. Those limits are explained at the start rather than discovered later. If any part of what you are carrying touches one of them, raising it in the free consultation is the safest place to find out where you stand.
Can my partner be part of this?
Sometimes, and it is worth deciding deliberately rather than by default. Some people do individual work first and bring their partner in later; some couples start together because the rupture in trust is the more urgent problem. Couples sessions are $175 for 60 minutes and can be discussed in the consultation.
Does this work over video?
It adapts well, and for this particular difficulty the format often helps. People say more, sooner, from their own room than they would in a waiting room where someone might recognise them. All sessions at TEO are online.
Which clinician would I see?
Enquiries reach Mohamad Shabib first and he arranges the right clinician for you. He works with this presentation directly across British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador, in English or Arabic. Where the fit points elsewhere, he will say so.
Start with a conversation
Book a free 15–20 minute consultation. It is a conversation about what you are dealing with and whether this approach fits — no commitment, and no obligation to book afterward.
Book a Free ConsultationOr call (519) 760-5211
Not ready to book? Send a message instead.
If you would rather write one sentence than say it out loud first, send a short note and we will reply by email. Please keep it general — a public web form is not a secure channel.