For those of you thinking about it (!)
Hi guys,
Before we begin...my book on Mindful Masturbation practice is done!
 |
| "Good news for wankers everywhere..!" - Dr. Deborah Anapol, author, The Seven Natural Laws of Love |
Thanks for sticking it out and waiting for me! Go here to check it out.
Now, in this post I'm going to share an article from one of my teachers, Mike Lousada, founder of Psychosexual Somatics.
It's quite long (I've copied it in full with his permission), but as it advocates safe practice, I'm all for it.
It goes like this:
"It is my strong belief that one thing which makes for a good practitioner in this field is awareness of our motivations. Here is a piece I wrote exploring that topic.
Why Work With Sexuality?
Motivations – A Personal Perspective
“I couldn’t feel, so I learned to touch”
Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah
Sex is a dangerous topic. It is still taboo and causes all kinds of nervous reactions when the topic is raised. Working with sexuality in a somatic healing or therapeutic way is even more contentious. We are likely to illicit a variety of shocked reactions or judgements from those with whom we share our chosen professional path. The risk becomes even greater when working with clients. We must always be present to the risk that the client may become attached to us or that they may level accusations against us of inappropriate conduct or worse. So why would any of us want to work in the field of sexuality? I believe that in order to work effectively and safely in somatic sexology we must look at what motivates us to work in this particular area. I believe we need to explore three, ever deeper, levels.
First Level - Outcome
When I ask practitioners or students the question “why do you work with sexuality?” I typically get a response around wanting to help others, to change lives or support people’s growth. Some want to help people have better sex, or become more orgasmic, others want to help clients have better relationships, others want to help clients have more profound transpersonal or spiritual connections through accessing their sexual energy. Each of these is wonderful and valid. However, it tells me more about the effect the practitioner wants to evoke in their clients, rather than what motivates us in the first place to work with sexuality. After all, there are many ways we might help others – we might work with the homeless, with drug addiction, with young offenders or regular therapy clients, and yet we chose to work in the field of sexuality.
The type of response above is a first level response and helps us define the nature of our practice and potential client base. It speaks about the specific objectives that the practitioner wants to work with for the client. It is important to understand this so that we know what type of practitioner we want to be and how to describe our practice so potential clients can see if our work is right for them. After all, its little use for a client who wants improved relationships to go to someone who specialises in orgasmic issues.
Second Level - Gold
However, this doesn’t address the why of our desire to work in the field of sexuality. For this we need to get more personal. I believe that each of us chooses to work with sexuality because we have a personal history around it that makes it meaningful to us. Our own story will inform our work.
Let me share from my own experience. I grew up in a repressed middle class British family system where sex was “bad”. The only type of sexuality which was permissible was “plain vanilla” sex within marriage – and even that was not something you were supposed to enjoy. My family system also taught me a lot of unhealthy lessons about the dynamics between masculine and feminine. I learnt about the pain that being sexual can cause, about the dangers of sex, about fear of pregnancy and emotional pain of infidelity. To add an extra spice, I also learnt a lot of body shame. All in all, sex was bad and relationships caused pain. No wonder my early attempts at relationship were marred by poor communication, lack of respect and mutual pain.
Having grown up in this dysfunctional environment and having done sufficient work on myself to begin to heal those wounds, I decided that others should not have to endure any longer similar pain and trauma to that which I went through. I saw first hand the damage that men and women not respecting one another and themselves could do and resolved to help others avoid those things.
For others, they may have grown up without physical touch and have realised how this inhibited them from intimacy with others. They may therefore seek to support others to overcome similar issues to themselves. Perhaps the practitioner has experienced sexual abuse and worked through that part of their history and now seeks to help others overcome such traumatic life experiences.
Naturally this creates a strong incentive to work with sex and intimacy. This is easily understood and I call this type of motivation a “Golden Motivation”. The gold of what we have to offer lies in our history and even events such as trauma may be reframed to create “Golden Motivations” for working with sexuality.
Such motivations are easily explained and reasonably comfortable to explore within ourselves and to understand. However, they represent only the second level of self-enquiry and it is at the third, deeper level that things begin to get interesting.
Third Level – Shadow
If we go to a deeper level we may also reveal less wholesome feeling motivations. It is these deeper motivations which I call “Shadow Motivations”. These are the motivations that I experience are least often owned or explored. This is ironic as it is these motivations which are most important to understand if we want to create a safe practice – safe for both ourselves and our clients.
“Shadow” may be defined in two ways. We may say it is that which is dark or “negative”. We can also describe it as that which is in the unconscious. When something remains in our unconscious its potential to trip us up is far greater. It is only by bringing light to the shadow that we can begin to illumine the hidden aspects of ourselves. In somatic sexology our shadows are both our greatest gifts and potentially our worst nightmares.
Again, I would like to share from my own experience. My mother was 19 when she became pregnant with me. She thought often, she later told me, about having me aborted or adopted. Finally, she decided to keep me. Although she did not have me adopted we also lived with her parents, my grand-parents and I was effectively brought up by my grand-mother, a type of in-family emotional adoption. My experience was that I did not get my mother’s attention in the way I needed it as a child. I yearned for her attention and to get her to tell me how much she loved me. I tried many strategies to get these affirmations but was sadly unsuccessful at doing so, at least in terms of meeting my little boy’s needs.
A Gift and a Danger
Let me show you how this may play out if I remained unconscious about the impact of this on my practice. Now as an adult, the child part of me might still be yearning for female attention. Every client who comes to me may potentially be “my mother”. I may try to get their approval by being a “good boy/therapist” and pleasing them. I may seek to offer session times when I have told myself I would have time off, I may offer types of sessions which are inappropriate because they want that or I may find myself acting unprofessionally or inappropriately in session to gain their approval.
Such Shadow Motivations are both a good and bad. My desire to please my clients encourages me, if managed appropriately, to work hard on my client’s behalf, to offer them the best I can in each session. It is part of what makes me a good and effective therapist.
However, if this motivation remains in our unconscious, I may act out in ways which are not only negative for me but also for my client. Let’s imagine a scenario where my client believes I’m not doing a good job – I suddenly become a “bad boy/therapist”. Now, “mother” is cross with me. How do I react? If this motivation remains hidden to me, I may be seduced into trying to “fix” the client instead of empowering them to heal themselves. I may take inappropriate responsibility for actions which were not mine. I may even feel guilt or shame.
I believe that another common Shadow Motivation for working somatically with sex is an early childhood wounding around physical intimacy. If we are not hugged and cuddled as a child, we make seek to get that need met in adult life. Unconsciously this may lead us to getting our fix of physical affection through contact with clients. This may make the session more about our own needs than the clients’.
I do not believe that having Shadow Motivations is a bad thing. What is important is that we bring these motivations from our past into our awareness and ruthlessly but compassionately explore within ourselves what motivates us to work in this field. When our Shadows remain in the dark is when they are most likely to trip us up. When we know our Shadows we become better practitioners. When we can own our Shadows we no longer need to project them onto others and in doing so become safer practitioners – safer for ourselves as well as our clients."
- Mike Lousada: www.psychosexualsomatics.com
Stay safe,
(And if you want to check out my book - and probably change your life - the link is here).
DL.
Diamond Lotus is a sex-positive erotic explorer, educator, and author of "W@nker!": a practical guide for men to enhanced erotic practice and superior pleasure. Currently training as a teacher of Pelvic-Heart Integration, Diamond is passionate about promoting healthy models of intimate relating for young, straight men. To enjoy more of Diamond's insights and guidance, like, comment and share intimacytipsforyoungstraightmen.
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