This past weekend was a busy one. I teamed up with Jasmine St. John of JSJ Therapy to do 2 presentations. The first was for the Counseling Masters program at UW-Whitewater. It was a half day workshop to provide an introduction to working with alt-sex clients. We used a variety of case studies to demonstrate the types of issues that arise. It helped to underscore that 90% of the work we do surrounds the same issues that brings anyone to therapy. Things like anxiety, depression, relationship issues, etc. Only a small portion of the work is directly about the alternative sexuality practices.
The other presentation was at the Wisconsin Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (WAMT) Annual Conference. We did a presentation entitled “The Myths of 50 Shades of Grey: Talking to Your Clients About BDSM.” We identified ideas from the book that perpetuate negative or incorrect stereotypes about D/s relationships and BDSM. We also pulled out sections that send the message “this is the correct way to do this” and showed how these activities can be approached in many different ways. There is no “right way” and people can pick and chooses pieces of what do do and how to do them to incorporate them in their relationship in a way that works for them.
We got good feedback from both sessions. They were a lot of fun to do and I always enjoy helping to open the perspectives of other therapists!
Awen Therapy Blog 