On-Demand: Is Porn a Problem?: Helping Patients With Compulsive Porn Use and Developing Healthy Sexuality - 3 hours
To access the discount form for registering for multiple workshops or participants, please click here.
- CE Hours Included: 3 (please see below for details)
- Format: On-Demand Webinar (“Asynchronous”) ~ At your leisure to be viewed at your own pace. You may pause, rewind, and fast forward at any point during the videos. You are in complete control of how you view this workshop. It also comes with a PowerPoint and references. There is a quiz at the end to ensure viewing and required by all CE approval organizations.
- NOTE: Your certificate will be dated when you complete the course - Click here for more detailed information on the best way to do this: https://www.theknowledgetree.org/p/help
- Investment: $87 (provides lifetime access!)
- Presented by: Trevor Ahrendt, Psy.D. (see bio below)
- Instruction Level: Intermediate
- Target Audience: Psychologists, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists
- This workshop is not yet available; by pre-registering, you will receive immediate access when it becomes available in April.
Educational Objectives:
After completing this workshop in its entirety, you will be able to:
- Discuss ways that the addiction paradigm can be useful to treatment and ways it may not be.
- Apply Motivational Interviewing to treatment for problematic pornography use.
- Develop case-specific formulations using Control-Mastery Theory to treat problematic pornography use.
Workshop Description:
Few topics make clinicians more uncomfortable than pornography—yet many of our patients struggle with it, or their partners do. When patients bring concerns about "too much porn" or wonder if their use is problematic, how do we respond without imposing our values or defaulting to oversimplified frameworks?
This course cuts through the moral panic and reductive addiction models to give you practical, evidence-based approaches for this complex clinical territory. We'll briefly contextualize pornography and erotic material throughout history and in our current moment of unprecedented access. Then we'll cover how to assess the actual impact of pornography on your patients' lives, examine whether the addiction paradigm is useful (spoiler: it's complicated), and develop individualized treatment approaches drawing from Motivational Interviewing, behavioral techniques, neuroscience, and Control-Mastery Theory.
The emphasis throughout is on adaptation—helping you tailor your interventions to each unique patient rather than applying cookie-cutter solutions. We'll also create space for honest self-reflection about our own discomfort, biases, and challenges when working with pornography and erotic content.
Whether you're a seasoned clinician who's been avoiding this conversation or someone who wants more sophisticated tools, this course will help you show up more confidently and effectively for patients navigating this often-shame-filled territory.
This training will cover topics including sexuality, eroticism, kink, and masturbation. We’ll discuss these frankly for two reasons: first, to ensure clarity about the material itself, and second, because successful treatment requires comfort with these subjects and the flexibility to shift tone based on client needs—sometimes serious and professional, sometimes joyful and relaxed. Accordingly, this training will alternate between lighthearted playfulness and serious reverence as the material demands.
Presented by: Trevor Ahrendt, Psy.D.
Trevor M. Ahrendt, Psy.D., is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist working in private practice in San Francisco, where he sees adults and couples, runs group therapy, and provides Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy. He received his doctorate from The Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA. He serves on the board of the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group and previously served on the board of the Northern California Group Psychotherapy Association.
Workshop Agenda:
- Context Overview (20 min, 20/180 total)
- Porn as a normal phenomenon throughout history
- Porn as NOT normal now
- Is Porn an addiction? Is it harmful? (25 min, 45/180 total)
- Yes!
- Compulsive porn use and consequences
- Analogues to gambling addiction
- Exposure to porn early and intensity of porn
- No!
- Healthy aspects of porn
- Research on porn not being harmful to people, analogue to responsible drinking
- Neurobiology of porn & compulsive porn use
- Overview of understanding
- Blurbs for patients that therapists should memorize
- Our take – individualized formulation > Ideological Rigidity
- Yes!
- Control-Mastery Overview (20 min, 65/180 total)
- Research on Therapy Effectiveness overall
- Argument for Case Specificity
- Framework of CMT
- Bader’s work on sexuality
- Motivation Interviewing and Addiction Treatment Generally (25 min, 90/180 total)
- MI
- Motivation
- Research
- DARNCAT
- Skills
- Addiction Treatment
- Systems > Willpower
- Try, try again
- Structure matters
- Reasons matter
- Psychoed blurbs on Addiction
- Porn Specific Suggestions
- Website blockers
- Accountability Structures
- Porn addicts anonymous
- MI
- Break
- Know Thyself (25 min, 115/180 total)
- Have to examine one's own feelings about sex and porn to work well
- How do you see porn?
- How do you see types of porn/sexuality?
- Comfort level discussing sex and sexuality
- “Default style” discussing sex and developing flexibility
- Attitudes about male sexuality
- Women and porn
- Romance novels!
- Philosophical/Epistemic Assumptions/Ideas
- Male porn vs. female “smut” - what is the effect of erotic content and escalation?
- Is fantasy dangerous? Body image
- Physique inflation
- Individualizing treatment (20 min, 135/180 total)
- Pathogenic belief served by porn
- Pathogenic beliefs and structure of treatment
- Developing new treatments for each person
- Case Example (20 min, 155/180 total)
- Discussion/Overflow (25min, 180/180)
3 "Asynchronous" Core CE Hours Included - Details by License Type Below:
- PSYCHOLOGISTS: The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company maintains responsibility for this program and its content. For more detailed information on the current CE ruling in Georgia, or if you are licensed in another state or country, please click here.
- COUNSELORS: The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company has been approved by the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) as an Approved Continuing Education Provider (ACEP), ACEP No. 7153. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. Please click here for more detailed information.
- SOCIAL WORKERS: TKT has applied for approval for this workshop through the Georgia Society for Clinical Social Work (GSCSW). If you are licensed in another state or country, please click here for more detailed information.
- MARRIAGE & FAMILY THERAPISTS: TKT has applied for approval for this workshop through the Georgia Association for Marriage & Family Therapy (GAMFT). If you are licensed in another state or country, please click here for more detailed information.
Registration: To register for individual workshops, you may use our online payment option, or to pay by check you may print and complete the Registration Form and mail or fax it to our office. The registration form is available on our website: www.theknowledgetree.org. Registration is permitted until the time the workshop begins, unless otherwise specified.
Multiple Workshop Special: There is a 10% Discount with registration for two workshops. There is a 15% Discount with registrations for three or four workshops. There is a 20% Discount with registration for five or more workshops.
Refund/Cancellation Policy: If you can no longer attend a workshop you have registered for, you can either receive a credit for another workshop or receive a refund if you are within the refund policy period. Refunds will be given for cancellations received at least five days prior to the workshop. More information about refund/cancellation can be found here.
Attendance Policy: 100% attendance and completion of a course evaluation is required at any CE program in order to receive credit for that CE program. No partial credit is given. Certificates of completion will be available in each attendee’s account once the broadcast has ended and the course evaluation completed.
ADA Requests: We will make every effort to accommodate any reasonable ADA request. Please call or email us at least two weeks prior to the event. Payment and registration are required to fulfill an ADA request.
No Conflict Policy: Neither The Knowledge Tree nor its speakers have received any commercial support for this program or its contents and will not receive any commercial support prior to or during this program.
System Requirements: Live Interactive Webinars are facilitated via Zoom. System requirements for the Zoom platform are linked at our FAQ page.
We are an approved vendor for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for easy reimbursement of educational expenses for VA employees.
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