Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett | Love, Sex, and Sexual Trauma Treatment | Alafiora

Some students look for a therapist at 3am, lying awake replaying what happened at a party last semester, or last year, or when they were a minor and finally far enough from home to start feeling it. Others find this page because they cannot explain to their advisor why they are letting their grades slip because they cannot get the thought of someone out of their minds. Others seek this website because they woke up next to someone they did not plan to be with again, felt no relief but dread, and realized for the first time that something is controlling them in a way that they do not fully understand. Others find it because they stayed in again last night, talking to an AI companion until 4am, and the conversation felt more real than anything that has happened on campus all semester. If something in that list felt familiar, this profile was written for you.

Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett is a licensed psychologist and one of a small number of clinicians in the country who specialize specifically in the aftermath of sexual trauma and the compulsive relational and behavioral patterns that form as a direct result of that experience. She is the founder of Alafiora, a private practice offering depth-oriented, attachment-centered care for survivors of rape, incest, sex trafficking, intimate partner sexual violence, and childhood sexual abuse. Alafiora specializes in the love obsession, limerence, compulsive sexual behavior, and emotional dysregulation that develop when that history goes without adequate treatment.

Dr. Lapite-Garrett has worked clinically with college-aged populations throughout her training. Her university-based clinical work includes the health and wellness center at New Mexico State University, where she provided individual therapy, crisis intervention, and psychological assessment to students navigating sexual assault, identity development, and acute mental health presentations. She also trained at the Center for Applied Psychology and Services at Alliant University, where she provided long-term psychodynamic treatment to undergraduate and graduate students navigating some of the most complex presentations seen in university settings.

The students Dr. Lapite-Garrett works with are often those whose presentations exceed what most campus counseling structures and session limits are built to hold. This is not a reflection of the quality of care campus counselors provide. It is a reflection of the depth and chronicity of what these particular students are carrying, and the kind of sustained, specialized treatment their trauma histories require.

Some are young women who walk the long way around campus to avoid a building, a quad, or a face. Who said yes when their body meant no and still cannot explain why, even to themselves. Who are quietly trying to make sense of the fact that their body responded during what happened, and who have spent months or years believing that physical response meant they wanted it. It did not. A body can respond to physical stimulation without desire or consent ever being present, and that distinction, called arousal non-concordance, is something many survivors have never had explained to them. Without that understanding, the shame calcifies into self-blame that generalized therapy alone never seems to fully dislodge. Some of these women have begun to seek out sexual situations that mirror what happened to them, not because they want it to happen again, but because the dynamic feels familiar in a way that other kinds of intimacy do not, and because the escalation itself has become the only thing that breaks through the numbness. What was once risky no longer carries the same charge. The encounters they are now seeking are more dangerous, more anonymous, and further from anything they would have chosen before.

Some of these young women fall fast and give everything. They meet a professor, an advisor, a supervisor, or an older man in a position of authority, and something in that dynamic pulls with a force they cannot fully make sense of. They open up immediately. They offer their time, their trust, their emotional world, and sometimes their body, before they have had the chance to evaluate whether the person has earned any of it. The relationship feels singular and electric in a way that nothing else does. Being chosen by someone with power feels like confirmation of something they have been waiting to have confirmed. And when that person does not love them back at the same depth, when the power imbalance becomes undeniable, or when the dynamic ends and leaves them more alone than before, the devastation is total. What compounds the pain is that this is not the first time. It is a recurring cycle, with a different person in the authority role, and the pattern has been running long enough that some part of them already knew how it would end before it began.

These women have not told anyone what is happening, because they are not sure it counts, because they are not sure they would be believed, or because the reenactment and the authority attachment both carry so much shame that naming either one feels impossible.

Some are young men who are having more sex than they can account for and cannot stop. Some are in a relationship with someone who cares about them genuinely, and yet still find themselves pulled to engage sexually with another, not because they want to hurt anyone, but because the compulsion arrives and controls their behavior before they can decide against it. Some of these men wake up after another night they did not plan, with another person they did not mean to have sex with, and struggle with the feeling of dread. Some other men are not consumed by sex but by one specific person. This can be a person at school, a woman in their lecture, someone they see at every party, or someone whose Instagram they have checked before they have gotten out of bed every single morning for the past four months. They replay what she said three weeks ago. They read meaning into every delayed response. When she does not text back, they spend the next several days convinced something is fundamentally wrong with them, that they are too much, that they will never be chosen, and that if she knew everything, she would leave. The fear of that rejection has become its own kind of paralysis. There are other men who have stopped trying with real people altogether, turning instead to AI companions, digital relationships, or fantasy bonds that offer the consistency and predictability that human connection has come to feel too dangerous to risk. What these young men share is not weakness or immaturity. They share a pattern that formed for a reason, that has been escalating without adequate treatment, and that nothing tried so far has been enough to interrupt.

Clients who arrive at Alafiora with any of the aforementioned presentations often describe having tried to manage alone for longer than they want to admit.. They may have visited the campus counseling center and found the waitlist too long, the session limit too short, or the presenting concern too specific for what was offered there. They arrive at Alafiora having already done some version of reaching out, and looking for care that can go deeper and stay longer than a short-term model allows.

Treatment at Alafiora does not mirror a skills course or short sessions centered around providing worksheets. It is sustained, rigorous, highly specialized clinical care delivered by a psychologist whose entire training and clinical practice has been built around exactly these presentations. The presentations described in this profile include arousal non-concordance, sexual trauma reenactment, authority-based attachment, limerence, compulsive sexual behavior, love obsession, and rejection sensitivity rooted in attachment history. These presentations are not well understood by most generalist therapists. They require a clinician who has spent years developing fluency in this specific intersection of trauma, attachment, and sexuality. Dr. Lapite-Garrett is among that small number. The premium private-pay structure of this practice exists not as a barrier but as a reflection of the level of care, preparation, and clinical expertise that every session requires and every client deserves.

Students who engage fully with this work often describe it as the first time the depth of the treatment actually matched the depth of what they were carrying. They recognize it as one of the first times that they are finally in control and feel fully free.

Alafiora is a private-pay practice offering sessions virtually, in person, and on location across multiple states. Full information about fees and additional considerations is available at https://www.alafiora.com/. Campus counseling center staff are welcome to reach out directly through the website to discuss referral fit, coordinate care, or consult on a student presentation. Students who are ready to inquire confidentially can visit https://www.alafiora.com/ to begin.