Welcome!
I'm Chris Mercurio, Associate Marriage and Family Therapist
Sex Addiction & Betrayal Trauma Specialist
Author of Therapy for Engineers and Everyone Else
At a Glance
• Sex addiction and betrayal trauma treatment
• Integrated team based recovery model
• Nervous system and systems based framework
• Long term recovery perspective
• Emphasis on sustainable change over behavioral control
Sex addiction and betrayal often leave people asking the same question:
Why does this keep happening even when I understand the consequences?
Most of the people I work with are thoughtful, capable, and highly motivated to change.
Many have already tried books, rules, promises, or behavioral strategies and still feel stuck in patterns they cannot control the way they expected to.
My work focuses on helping clients understand what is driving the behavior while supporting recovery through a coordinated, integrated treatment model.
Recovery is most effective when both individual healing and relationship repair are addressed together, not separately.
Recovery is possible when the right structure, support, and pacing are in place.
How I Understand Sex Addiction and Betrayal
Compulsive sexual behavior is often a nervous system regulation strategy that develops in response to stress, attachment injury, trauma, or emotional isolation.
It is not simply about morality, character, or lack of discipline.
Betrayal trauma is a real relational injury. When trust breaks, both partners often shift into survival responses.
One partner may manage secrecy, shame, or loss of control. The other may experience shock, hypervigilance, anger, or profound grief.
Because both partners experience real and different forms of trauma, recovery typically requires coordinated care.
When each partner has their own therapeutic support while couples work addresses relational repair, treatment becomes safer, more honest, and more sustainable.
Integrated Team Based Recovery
Sex addiction and betrayal trauma affect individuals, partners, and relationships at the same time.
Treating only one part of the system often leads to stalled progress or repeated setbacks.
At New Path, treatment follows an integrated model where therapists collaborate to support the full recovery process.
Clients often work with:
• An individual therapist supporting recovery from compulsive sexual behavior
• An individual therapist supporting betrayal trauma healing
• A couples therapist guiding disclosure, safety, and relational repair
This structure protects both partners. Each person has confidential support while recovery remains coordinated and aligned.
It reduces pressure on the relationship to carry all healing work and allows accountability, trauma healing, and repair to develop in a structured and sustainable way.
My role within this model often includes helping clients understand the underlying drivers of behavior, preparing clients for disclosure and accountability work, supporting emotional regulation during high intensity phases of recovery, and coordinating with the treatment team so progress in one area supports progress across the entire recovery process.
Who I Work With
I support:
• Individuals struggling with compulsive sexual behavior or pornography use
• Betrayed partners working through trauma and loss of trust
• Couples deciding whether and how repair is possible
• High functioning professionals who feel especially confused about why they feel out of control
Many of my clients are successful in other areas of life. That success can make addiction and betrayal feel even more confusing and isolating.
My Approach to Recovery
I use an integrative, neuroscience informed approach focused on long term change rather than short term behavioral control.
Our work typically includes:
Understanding the Function of the Behavior
We identify how the behavior regulates emotional overwhelm, stress, or attachment wounds.
Nervous System Regulation
Compulsive patterns live in the body’s stress response system. Expanding emotional capacity is usually more effective than trying to suppress urges.
Parts Work and Internal Conflict
Many people experience internal conflict between the part that wants connection and the part that seeks escape. We work to understand and integrate those parts rather than shame them.
Accountability Without Shame
Recovery requires honesty, transparency, and responsibility. Accountability is stronger when people understand what drives their behavior instead of collapsing into shame cycles.
Relational Repair When Appropriate
When couples pursue repair, therapy focuses on emotional safety, structured disclosure, and paced rebuilding of trust.
Clients often describe reaching a point where they feel less controlled by urges, more able to tolerate difficult emotions without acting out, and more capable of honest connection with their partner and themselves.
My Background
Before becoming a therapist, I spent nearly twenty years working in the tech industry.
That experience shaped how I understand complex systems, accumulated stress, and why logical solutions often fail when the nervous system is overwhelmed.
I am also in long term recovery. That experience shaped how I understand secrecy, shame, and the difference between surface level compliance and real change.
My recovery came through therapy, structured recovery work, and learning to build emotional capacity instead of suppress behavior.
What Sessions With Me Are Like
My style is direct, structured, and collaborative. Clients often describe sessions as:
• Clear and practical
• Honest without being shaming
• Emotionally deep but appropriately paced
• Focused on real behavioral and relational change
Resistance is treated as information about fear, overwhelm, or capacity, not as defiance.
If You Are Here
You may feel ashamed, angry, overwhelmed, or unsure whether your relationship can survive.
You may feel trapped in patterns that do not match your values or intentions.
These patterns are more understandable and more changeable than they usually feel.
With the right structure and support, people are often able to rebuild stability, regain honesty with themselves, and make clearer decisions about their relationships and their future.
If you are considering starting this work, you do not have to figure it out alone.
License, Training, & More
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Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, #156566
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Trained in ACT, CBT, DBT, EFT, IFS, and Process Therapy
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Couples work integrates Gottman, Couples Institute, and EFT for Couples
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Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology, Santa Clara University
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Author of Therapy for Engineers and Everyone Else
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Supervised by Dr. Harry Motro, LMFT #53452
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Employed by New Path Family of Therapy Centers