Oncosexology – Sexuality After Illness & Cancer
At The Fitzroy Practice, we offer specialist oncosexology support for individuals and couples navigating the emotional and intimate impact of cancer, chronic illness, or medical treatment. This is a space where the quieter losses — the shifts in desire, confidence, identity, or comfort in your body — can finally be spoken and understood.
Illness doesn’t just change the body. It can reshape how you see yourself, how you feel in your skin, and how safe it feels to be close to someone. Many people find themselves grieving a version of intimacy that once felt natural, or unsure how to begin again.
In our work together, we move gently and at your pace. There is no pressure to return to how things were before. Instead, we explore what intimacy means now — and how to rebuild connection, desire, and trust in a way that feels honest and possible.
Our approach supports you to
Reconnect with your body after surgery, treatment, or trauma
Understand changes in sexual function, desire, or arousal
Rebuild closeness and erotic connection with your partner
Process grief, fear, and shifts in identity
Reclaim a sense of pleasure, presence, and emotional intimacy
Oncosexology Support for Men
For many men, cancer and medical treatment touch something deeply bound up with identity, confidence, and worth — often in ways that are difficult to name. Changes in erection, desire, sensation, fertility, or ejaculation can feel like a loss of masculinity, a loss of control, or a loss of self.
Yet underneath the sexual symptom there is often grief, fear, shame, and a quiet sense of isolation.
We offer space to gently explore:
Erectile changes after prostate cancer or treatment
Shifts in desire, orgasm, or arousal
Body image and confidence after surgery or medical intervention
Emotional withdrawal from intimacy
Fear of disappointing your partner
The impact of illness on masculine identity
Relearning pleasure without pressure or performance
This work is not about forcing your body to “function.”
It is about restoring connection — to yourself, to your body, and to the person who loves you.
Oncosexology Support for Women.
For many women, illness and treatment affect not only sexual function, but their relationship to their body, femininity, fertility, and sense of aliveness. After breast cancer, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, or menopause brought on by treatment, women often describe feeling unfamiliar to themselves — changed in ways they never expected.
We offer support for:
Sexual changes after breast or gynaecological cancer
Loss of lubrication, arousal, or sensation
Pain during sex after treatment
Body image and identity shifts
Fertility loss and reproductive grief
Menopause-related sexual changes
Fear, shutdown, or loss of confidence around intimacy
This is a space to bring the whole experience — physical, emotional, and relational — without minimising what has been lost or rushing what is still becoming.
Illness can alter more than just the body; it can shake your sense of identity, shift how you relate to touch, and create distance in even the most loving relationships.
Whether you're experiencing changes in arousal, desire, sensation, or body image, we offer a compassionate space to explore what intimacy means now, without shame, pressure, or expectation.
This is tender work, and you don’t have to do it alone.