The group
Why a group? And why is it the hardest thing to say yes to?
Most men are worried about aspects of the group before they start. It is consistently the thing they say helped most when it is over. Here is why, and what the evidence shows.
Many men feel unsure about joining a group. In this video, Dr Michael Yates explains why the programme uses a group approach and what that means for you.
Dr Michael Yates, Clinical Psychologist and Psychosexual Specialist
The initial fear
The most common reaction.
When men first hear this is a group programme, the most common response is: not that.
Sitting with other men and talking about this can feel like exactly the wrong thing: the behaviour, what it has cost, and the things you have never said out loud to anyone. Too exposed. Too risky. Too much.
That fear makes complete sense. However, that fear almost never lasts. The men who were most afraid of the group say, consistently, that it was the part that changed things most.
This is not a coincidence.
The mechanism
Why secrecy is part of the problem.
Whatever brings you to this work, one thing is almost always true: you have been carrying it alone.
Not just the behaviour itself, but the silence around it. The experience of being surrounded by people, perhaps a partner, friends, colleagues, and still having no one who knows what is actually happening. That kind of loneliness is its own weight.
Shame increases in isolation. The behaviour that temporarily relieves shame becomes more necessary as shame grows. The secrecy feeds the cycle rather than containing it.
The antidote to that is not information, and it is not one person in a consulting room who is professionally required to be non-judgmental. It is being in a room with other people who have actually been there. Who recognise what you are describing not because they have been trained to, but because they have lived it.
That is a different kind of being understood. And it does something that individual work, however good, cannot fully replicate.
What the group does
Three things that change what feels possible.
You discover you are not the only one
Almost every man says some version of this after the first session. I thought it was just me. The relief of discovering that other men have been in exactly the same place, carrying the same silence, is itself one of the most significant moments in the whole programme. It begins to dismantle the internal story that has been feeding the behaviour: the story that you are uniquely broken, uniquely beyond help.
Shame cannot survive being witnessed
When you speak honestly about something that has felt unspeakable, and you are not rejected, something begins to shift. Not all at once, and not easily. But the experience of being heard and not judged, by other men who understand the territory from the inside, is one of the most effective things we know for working with shame. Much more effective than understanding it intellectually.
Something becomes possible that wasn't before
For most men on the programme, the group is the first place they have been fully honest with other people about this part of their lives. That experience, of honesty being survivable, of connection being possible even here, does not stay inside the group. It travels. It begins to change what feels possible in the rest of life.
Composition
Groups composed by orientation.
The programme is for gay, bisexual and straight men. Groups are organised by sexual orientation, so you will be in a room with men whose experiences are most similar to yours.
This matters because compulsive sexual behaviour can look very different for each group: the culture, the relationships, the patterns the behaviour takes and the kind of shame men feel. When men share that context, conversation can go deeper faster. You can speak openly about sexuality, desire, identity, and what sex has meant to you, without having to translate yourself first.
This is a deliberate clinical choice, and the evidence supports it. Research on this model found that being in the group was itself one of the biggest reasons men changed, on top of what was taught in the sessions.
The distinction
This is not a support group.
A support group is peer-led, open-ended, and valuable. This is something different.
This is a structured programme led by clinicians, with a clear therapeutic model and a planned beginning, middle and end. Each session has a specific purpose. The phases build on each other. What happens between the men in the room is not left to develop on its own: it is attended to, named, and worked with as part of the therapy.
Dr Michael Yates and the team are in the space as clinicians, not as moderators. The group dynamic is a therapeutic tool, used deliberately. That structure is what makes the difference between a space that is supportive, which this also is, and one that produces genuine and lasting change.
The format
What the group looks like.
Up to ten men
Small enough for genuine depth. Large enough for the diversity of experience that makes group work powerful.
Two hours per week
A structured two-hour group therapy session each week.
In person or online
In person in London, with Brighton, Essex, Suffolk and Manchester subject to demand. Online for men anywhere in the UK.
Up to 100 free places
The CIC is fully funded for these places, so men offered one pay nothing.
Explore the programme through video.
Three films from Dr Michael Yates, each on its own page.
Ready to take the first step?
The first step is a conversation.
A confidential conversation with Dr Michael Yates or our clinical team. No commitment to anything beyond that conversation.