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Excerpt
from
Consensual Sadomasochism
How to Find an SM -Positive (or
Neutral)Therapist
Sybil Holiday, Co-Author
How to Find an SM -Positive (or Neutral)Therapist
From Consensual Sadomasochism by William A. Henkin Ph.D. and
Sybil Holiday
You can find this book on www.amazon.com
Who, What, When, Why
At the beginning of the 21st century many Americans visit a
psychotherapist or other "mental health" counselor from time
to time. Doing so no longer carries either the stigma or the romance it
carried long ago: it does not mean you are deranged, nor does it place
you at the cutting edge of radical, innovative artistic or intellectual
thought. Instead, it is a fairly common way to get assistance when you
want to look into your heart and mind, behind your head, and other
places your own eyes cannot always see so well.
While people do sometimes consult therapists for help with very serious
psychological matters, therapy has evolved in the past century and now
also offers a wide array of options for healing major and minor
emotional wounds, resolving personal crises or dilemmas, mediating
difficulties in relationships, re-evaluating thought and behavioral
priorities, gaining conscious insight into your own creative processes,
and simply expanding awareness and self-knowledge in ways that enhance
people's capacities for happiness, satisfaction, love, and fulfillment.
If and/or when you decide to seek this sort of counseling, you can be
more successful if you know what you want to accomplish and how to shop
for someone who can help.
Many BDSM players who have visited psychotherapists concerning anxiety,
depression, relationship questions, and other issues more or less common
to all humans, have encountered resistance from ignorant therapists who
insisted that their sex life was their "real" problem. This
kind of "BDSM-phobia" is not something you have to put up
with, but you will be better equipped to avoid it and still get
appropriate assistance when you want it if you know how to find a
therapist who is willing and able to listen to you.
Under most circumstances a BDSM player does not necessarily need a
psychotherapist who is personally experienced with BDSM. It is more
important that the therapist you work with be familiar with the problems
that beset you, whether those concern anxiety, depression, communication
skills in the context of a relationship, questions of identity,
substance abuse, sexual matters, parenting, coming out, how family
structures work, coping with major illness or disability, or the way
conflicts are likely to manifest on the job. Just as a gay or lesbian
therapist can usually work quite well with a heterosexual client, and
vice-versa, so a vanilla therapist can generally work with you.
On the other hand, psychotherapy can be a very intimate encounter all by
itself, and the relationship you develop with your therapist, based as
it is in trust, can be unusually important. Since a person's erotic
mind-map may inform many other areas of her life, your work is liable to
proceed more smoothly if you feel comfortable disclosing your sexual
preference or lifestyle to this person, and if the person knows enough
about human sexuality so s/he doesn't respond to your revelations with
fear, or as if you were dangerous, immoral, insane, or some quaint
curiosity for study. Certainly there are times you want your therapist
to see value in an activity you value, whether that is BDSM, meditating,
butterfly collecting, or salsa dancing. Certainly also there are times
you really do want your therapist to be familiar with BDSM language,
processes, and protocols. And most certainly you never want to spend
your time and dollars educating someone about what it is you do in the
dungeon or the bedroom if you can find someone else equally right for
you who is already kink-friendly, or who is at least willing get a few
sessions of consultation himself from a BDSM-knowledgeable colleague.
But what matters most is that your therapist recognize and respect your
values, rather than seek to impose his own on you. Under most
circumstances, then, what you do need is someone who does not have a
prejudice against BDSM, or at very least is able to set that prejudice
aside and work with what is true for you.
For a longer look at this same question from a therapist who believes
you really do need a kink-aware therapist, see "Psychotherapy &
D/s" by Alan R. Meltzer, C.S.W., A.C.S.W., L.C.S.W, at www.subspace.cc/psychotherapy.htm.
How to Find Your First Therapist
Finding a therapist for the first time can be a little daunting, because
without some prior experience of working with a counselor you may not
quite know how to identify one who's right for you. Asking your friends
for referrals can be a good place to start, if you are willing to tell
them what you want, and if any of them has been in therapy and found the
process beneficial.
While she might be happy to provide you with leads, however, your friend
might or might not want you to see her therapist for any number of
reasons. Some of those reasons make fairly obvious sense: if your friend
is also your lover, for instance, she might feel her privacy could be
jeopardized by sharing her therapist with you; and in any case the
therapist would probably regard seeing you both in individual therapy as
a conflict of interest. Some reasons are less apparent but no less
potent: for example, people sometimes feel proprietary about their
shrinks, especially while they're still in therapy, either because they
don't want to bump into someone they know on the way in or out, or
because they want to protect for themselves the intimacy that can grow
up in a therapy relationship. But even if your friend is reluctant to
share, she might still ask her therapist for the names of a few
colleagues he respects, so you can have some small place to start.
In addition to friends' recommendations and what you glean from the
grapevine, some therapists advertise in alternative newspapers and
magazines, where costs are substantially lower than in the Yellow Pages
or major media, and these days many therapists can be located through
the internet, whether or not they have their own web sites. They may be
listed on the sites of their professional guilds, for example, or
through sites that feature their special areas of expertise.
A site that is nearly always of interest to people in the BDSM world is
Kink Aware Professionals www.bannon.com/kap/
. As we say in the Resources section of this book, KAP was established
by the founder and original publisher of Daedalus Publishing Company as
a kind of clearing house for therapists, doctors, lawyers, alternative
healers, and others who offer professional services to our communities.
It has expanded tremendously over the years, but the people listed on
the site are not vetted in any way, so while you have some reason to
expect that a professional who goes out of her way to be KAP-listed will
be understanding when you talk about your lifestyle, that is not
guaranteed. Read the entries critically and, as always, caveat emptor.
Even if you find answers to all your preliminary questions on the web
there is no substitute for a person-to-person conversation, so whether
the therapist requires it or not, try to arrange for a brief telephone
interview before setting up your first appointment. Few experienced
therapists will devote a lot of time to such a screening call, but the
one you call should be willing to spend the few minutes it will take to
answer the sorts of initial questions you might have, and to give you a
general feel for the person and how s/he responds to you.
In your telephone interview you will not necessarily learn if this is
the one and only therapist for you, but you should come away feeling
satisfied that the person can be a likely candidate. You may want to
find out if s/he has experience dealing with the issues you want to
address, or how long s/he has been in practice. Some people want to know
where a therapist was educated, whether s/he has ever been a client in
therapy, how many people s/he has seen with a problem similar to the
caller's, or why s/he chose this line of work. Some want to know a
therapist's location, fees, or insurance policies. If your therapist's
sexual orientation is genuinely important to you, including whether or
not s/he is a player, ask, and explain to the therapist why you want to
know. Therapists usually find personal questions inappropriate and may
decline to answer them, but when your reasons are important to you they
may be meaningful or even persuasive to the therapist, and just
discussing them could enhance your dialogue.
In the long run these kinds of specifics are usually less important than
whether you feel comfortable with a particular therapist. In any case,
consider the questions you really need to have answered before you make
your phone call, so you can get your answers without spending more time
than necessary deciding whether you want to schedule a first meeting.
And ask the questions that matter to you even if you think them silly.
It's far better to feel silly about your questions before you start to
work than it is to feel silly about your choice of therapist later.
For further assistance in talking to a vanilla therapist, take a look at
the advice Charles Moser offers to people seeking any sort of health
care assistance in his book Health Care Without Shame For a couple of
related perspectives on bringing your more-or-less queer self to a
therapeutic situation, see Marny Hall's book on gay therapy, The
Lavender Couch, or Michael Bettinger's book on queer therapy, It's Your
Hour, which includes a brief section on choosing an SM-positive
therapist.
Some varieties of psychotherapists
Terms of art like "counseling" and "therapy" are
jealously protected by the guilds that "own" them by law,
partly to protect their turf and partly because there is a great deal of
legitimate training that goes into becoming eligible for one of the
guild licenses. While there is no national standard in the districting
of American psychotherapy, different States approve different licenses
for clinical practice in different ways based on a therapist's
specialized training, and the different guilds that oversee the
practitioners of psychology in the consulting room or clinic require
that people have different kinds of training to secure those licenses.
In California, for example, a clinical or counseling psychologist
ordinarily holds an earned doctorate (Ph.D. or Psy.D.) in some relevant
branch of psychology, such as counseling or development; has served an
internship of 3000 hours supervised by a more experienced, licensed
psychologist or psychiatrist; and has passed both written and oral
examinations overseen by a State board of examiners. A marriage and
family therapist may also hold an earned doctorate in psychology or a
related field of social or behavioral science, but must hold at least an
earned master's degree (M.A. or M.S.) in a relevant branch of
psychology, often with special emphasis on interpersonal relationships;
has served a similarly supervised internship of 3000 hours with a more
experienced, licensed psychotherapist; and has passed both written and
oral examinations overseen by a State board of examiners. A clinical
social worker, like a marriage and family therapist, may hold an earned
doctorate but must hold at least an earned M.A., M.S., or M.S.W., often
with special emphasis on social service; has also served a 3000-hour
supervised internship with a more experienced, licensed psychotherapist;
and has passed both written and oral examinations overseen by a State
board of examiners. A psychiatrist always holds an earned degree as a
doctor of medicine (M.D.), and has served a hospital residency in
psychiatry.
Designations within licenses often have nothing to do with the States
and everything to do with specific guilds. For example, a psychoanalyst
is traditionally a psychiatrist first, adheres at least nominally to
Freud's theories, and has undergone her own "training
analysis" with a more experienced psychoanalyst. An analytic
psychologist is a psychotherapist who adheres particularly to Jung's
theories and has undergone his own analysis with a more experienced
analytic psychologist. Although there is no licensing requirement for
other therapists to spend time as clients in therapy, most graduate
schools that grant degrees leading to licensure do require about a year
in counseling or therapy as part of a grad student's education.
Claiming to be psychotherapist without holding one of the relevant
licenses is both illegal and a violation of psychotherapeutic ethics.
Nonetheless, there are certification trainings in a wide variety of
helping professions whose practitioners can provide highly valuable
assistance when you are working with various questions, conditions, and
difficulties. Often grouped together as "alternative" or
"complementary" healing, these practices include nursing,
clinical hypnosis, sex education, surrogate sexual partnering, pastoral
or spiritual counseling, chiropractic and other forms of bodywork, Reiki
and other forms of energy work, and coaching. If you prefer to work with
an alternative healer rather than or in addition to a therapist when
dealing with emotional, sexual, and/or psychological issues, approach
the interview process in much the same way: learn what is important to
you about the individual's training and experience, and make sure you
feel comfortable with what s/he offers and how s/he delivers it.
~~~
Copyright 2004
This excerpt is reprinted here with the explicit
permission of the publisher. If you would like to share it with others,
please link directly to this page or contact the author for permission.
It is a violation of copyright law to distribute or reprint this piece
without that permission, however you may include a short quote from it,
not more than 20% of the total text. Please respect the integrity of
this work.
Read Sadie's Article Thoughts on Seeing a Kink-Friendly
Shrink
Read the SCENEprofiles Interview with Sybil
Holiday
Book photograph by Robert Pruzan, reprinted with
permission
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