In Dialogues Featuring Liz Lacy with Wendy Behary
In Dialogue
Featuring Liz Lacy with Wendy Behary
Addicted to Love, Starved for Connection: Using Schema Therapy to Heal Hypersexuality
Friday, June 19, 2026 · 12:00–1:00 PM ET · Live inside the JYSTA community on Mighty
Hosted by Travis Atkinson, VP of Media & Communications, JYSTA
Organized by Rita Younan, VP of Events, JYSTA
Produced by Brendan Keegans, Production Director, BK Event Productions
Some conversations change the way you work forever. This is one of them.
It affects an estimated three to six percent of adults. It appears in no DSM. Most clients carry it in silence for the better part of two decades before they ever name it aloud, and the treatment models therapists reach for first were never built to reach it. On Friday, June 19, Liz Lacy steps into the In Dialogue chair to take on the topic many therapists quietly dread and few feel ready to treat: healing hypersexuality through schema therapy.
In Dialogue is where the polished presentation ends and the real conversation begins. Two clinicians, no script, pulling back the curtain on how this work actually unfolds in the room. It is the rare chance to watch master clinicians think out loud, weigh the hard calls, and trade the kind of practical wisdom that almost never makes it into a formal lecture.
Liz moves past the worn-out addiction model and asks a braver question. What if the behavior is not the problem, but a desperate solution to an unmet core need? Through a developmental lens, she shows how to reach the wound underneath. The emotional deprivation, the shame, the longing for connection that no amount of behavioral management ever touches. Then she shows how to strengthen the Healthy Adult who can finally meet it.
And she is not doing it alone. Joining Liz is Wendy Behary, President of JYSTA and a clinician who knows this terrain from the inside. Liz leads the conversation on her topic. Wendy brings the depth of an expert who has worked alongside her on this very material before. In true In Dialogue fashion, the two move beyond the polished talk into the questions only colleagues who trust each other can ask: the clinical instincts that rarely get taught, and the moments that happen only when two clinicians with shared history sit down to talk.
About Liz’s Symposium Presentation
Liz’s session, Addicted to Love, Starved for Connection: Using Schema Therapy to Heal Hypersexuality, reframes hypersexual behavior as an attempt to meet unmet core emotional needs rather than a compulsion to be managed. Drawing on schema therapy and a developmental lens, she maps the path from the behavior to the schemas and modes that drive it: Emotional Deprivation, Abandonment, Defectiveness, Social Isolation, and Insufficient Self-Control. From there she builds toward the Healthy Adult that lasting change depends on.
Through the case of Jon, she walks through a comprehensive conceptualization that typifies how the hypersexual mode cycle develops and repeats. The Vulnerable Child’s pain. The Punitive Critic’s attack. The Detached Self-Soother that promises relief and delivers only deeper shame. You will leave able to:
- Conceptualize hypersexuality through a schema therapy lens
- Recognize the underlying core needs revealed through a careful sexual history
- Apply schema therapy interventions specific to this population
- Identify and work through the predictable blocks to recovery
About the In Dialogue Series
In Dialogue brings a senior schema therapy presenter into extended conversation with a colleague who knows their work intimately. Where a recorded session establishes the framework, the live exchange goes deeper: into the questions a trusted colleague can ask, the clinical instincts that rarely get taught, and the moments that only happen when two clinicians with shared history sit down to talk.
How to Take Part
In Dialogue is a JYSTA member experience, and it unfolds in three steps:
- Watch. Liz’s full symposium presentation is available now inside the JYSTA community on Mighty, exclusively for members.
- Ask. After watching, send your questions directly to us through Mighty chat. Liz and Wendy will take up the strongest ones live.
- Join the conversation. Be in the room on June 19 as two master clinicians think it through together. Can’t make it live? The session is recorded and shared with members afterward, so no one misses out.
A Note on the Production
Our members deserve the best, and we don’t pinch pennies on it. This event is produced by Brendan Keegans, Production Director at BK Event Productions, who has been behind schema therapy events since 2019. After that many years in this world, he knows a thing or two about schemas and modes himself. Rumor has it he can spot a Detached Protector in a green room from twenty feet, and he has never once let a Demanding Critic run a run-of-show. Your experience is in expert hands, on every side of the camera.
Not a member yet?
This is exactly the kind of experience JYSTA membership is built for. The behaviors clients hide longest are often the ones our training prepared us for least, and this is where schema therapy reaches deepest. Join the community to unlock In Dialogue, the full symposium library, member-only gatherings, and the conversations that move schema therapy forward.
Become a member to take part →