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Surviving a serious injury or illness, or living with a chronic condition, brings a host of physical changes, emotional responses, and relationship challenges. Often you are left feeling like less of a man or woman, defective, undeserving of love, fearing rejection, and avoiding sex. However, injury or illness doesn’t have to end your sex life.
Through sharing my own story of sexual self-discovery after breaking my neck at age 20, and the stories of research participants and coaching clients, I reveal the secrets that will guide you back to feeling whole and fully alive again.
On the way I bust the top myths that are holding you or your loved one back, including:

• I have no feeling therefore my sex life is over!
• I’m not experiencing pleasure or orgasm anymore, so sex is pointless! Why bother?
• My partner left me, cheated on me, avoided having sex with me, that means I’m not lovable and I’m not a capable partner.
• No one will want a person with a disability as a lover.
• Just give it time. Everything will fall into place.
• If you have high self-esteem, everything else will follow.
• I shouldn’t be thinking about sex right now, I should be focused on (fill in the blank).  

Click here to buy the book now!

Regain That Feeling: Sexual Healing After Serious Injury or Illness Devi Ward speaks with Dr. Mitchell Tepper on the secrets to pleasure and orgasm discovered from laboratory studies with people who have spinal cord injuries and how to access great sex regardless of illness, disability, advancing age, or sexual dysfunction. Click the bar below to listen to this enlightening discussion!

With the success of The Sessions starring Helen Hunt and John Hawkes, there has been increased attention on sex surrogates for people with disabilities.  While I am a strong advocate for the use of surrogate partner therapy, I recognize that there are very few trained sexual surrogates in United States and they're concentrated mainly in California and a few other states. Furthermore many people with disabilities are living on a fixed income that does not allow for the luxury of assistance that is not covered under medical benefits. Facilitated sex, as discussed in this interview with Dr. Mitchell Tepper,  is a more accessible and affordable pathway to sexual expression.

Doctors, psychologists and educators nationwide detail how sex - or lack of it - affects our mental and physical health. Includes a focus on potential threats to sexual health, be they mental, physical, cultural or religious.

In this unprecedented four-volume set, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, educators, and clergy join forces to present information vital for sexual health. Topics candidly discussed include the meaning of sexual health, the effects of ignorance or neglect, and the role of love, touch, and communication. Doctors explain the roles of physical systems, while psychologists and members of the clergy detail the roles of religion, culture, and parental or family beliefs in spurring or squashing sexual health. State-of-the-art treatments and research are also featured. Each volume includes a chapter on how to talk with a doctor, therapist, or patient about sexual health.
Americans feel free to tell medical doctors of health ills from headaches to hemorrhoids, and to tell psychologists about mental problems from depression to delusions. Yet, there is one area that affects both physical and mental health most people don't discuss with either doctor or psychologist: sexual health. According to a survey published by the American Medical Association, 43 percent of women and 31 percent of men in the United States experience some form of sexual dysfunction, problems are largely hidden, and so exacerbated. Doctors don't initiate the topic with patients; neither do most psychologists aside from trained sex therapists. The problems might not even be rooted in disorders commonly understood as illness. As officials at the World Health Organization have defined it, sexual health is more than the absence of disease. It is a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being related to sexuality.