Searching for Change
For people who already know what’s wrong and still can’t change it.
However you got here
People come to this work from very different places. Some have been in therapy for years, understand their patterns well, and still feel stuck, often because the work has stayed where it’s safer to reach. Some are here because someone else insisted: a partner, a licensing board, a crisis that couldn’t be contained. And some are partners whose lives were turned upside down by a discovery they didn’t choose. Each of those starting points needs something different. I start where you are.
About Rachel Rubenstein
I’ve been a psychotherapist since 1996, and my practice centers on the places where addiction, trauma, and relationships meet. I’m a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist Supervisor (CSAT-S) and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner candidate. Many of my clients are accomplished people whose success has made it harder to say what isn’t working.
Sex Addiction
I work with the addict, the partner, and the couple, at every stage.
For the addict
Compulsive sexual behavior is rarely about sex. More often it regulates something that feels unbearable: shame, loneliness, a nervous system that learned early that closeness wasn’t safe. Stopping the behavior matters, but it isn’t the whole work, and it isn’t the hardest work you’ll face. That work is building the capacity for intimacy the behavior has been standing in for.
For partners
Discovery is a trauma. It can be as destabilizing as surviving a major car crash, and it forces you to question every part of the relationship you thought was true. I start with stabilization: what you need to know, what you need to feel safe, and how to stop living in the aftermath.
For couples
Whether you’re on the roller coaster of recent discovery and need triage in couples therapy, or you’ve been doing the work, have sobriety, and still feel stuck in your coupleship, I work with couples at any point in the journey. Sobriety stops the acting out. It doesn’t by itself rebuild trust or intimacy.
Disclosure to children
I facilitate sex addiction disclosures to children, from middle school through adulthood, in Chicago or out of state. Done badly, a disclosure becomes its own trauma. Done well, it gives children the truth in a form they can take in.
Assessments
I conduct formal sex addiction assessments, including for licensing boards and professional health programs. The evaluation is thorough and independent, and the findings are written for the people who have to act on them.
Trauma
Many people with complex trauma are highly functional. They’ve built careers, families and reputations, and their bodies still react to threats that ended years ago. Talking about what happened is part of the work, but insight alone rarely resolves it. Alongside talk therapy, I use Somatic Experiencing (I’m a practitioner candidate) and experiential approaches, working with both the story and the nervous system still carrying it.
Religious & Spiritual Trauma
When faith shaped your family, your community and your sense of what’s acceptable, sexuality and shame can become impossible to separate. I work with clients from the Jewish community, including the Chareidi community, and from conservative and evangelical Christian backgrounds. The goal isn’t to take anyone’s faith away. It’s to untangle what was done to you in its name.
Couples
Some couples fight constantly. Others have gone quiet. Either way, the same arguments keep coming back, and often each person is reacting to something older than the relationship. When trauma is part of either history, conflict turns into threat fast. I help couples slow that down enough to hear each other and change the pattern, not just the topic.
If sex addiction is part of the picture, see For couples under Sex Addiction above.
Intensives
I offer intensives for PTSD and complex PTSD, and intensives for sex addiction, for individuals and couples. They draw on a variety of modalities, including Somatic Experiencing and experiential work. Concentrated work over several days can move what weekly sessions haven’t.
Groups
I also run a men’s group focused on intimacy and relationships. It’s currently closed to new members; contact me if you’d like to be considered for a future opening.
Licensed in Illinois and New York. In person in Chicago; telehealth in both states.
Get in touch
Chicago
Address
40 E Huron Street, Suite 6C
Chicago, Illinois 60611