Check out G&STC’s Director Jesse Kahn’s interview with Clifton Schmidt at Queer Psych about what it’s like to be an LGBTQ+ sex therapist.
“1. Can you tell us about your background and what led you to become a sex therapist with a particular focus on the LGBTQ+ community?
I have always been curious and interested in people’s inner worlds, how they relate to their emotions, thoughts, genders, sexualities, relationships, and sex. So, once I learned that I could make an entire career around working with others, encouraging curiosity and engaging with people’s inner worlds, I jumped right in!
2. What unique challenges do individuals often face in their sexual and intimate lives, and how do you address these challenges in your therapy practice?
There are a range of unique challenges that bring people to sex therapy such as past traumas, communication difficulties, differences within relationships, performance anxiety, body image concerns, and cultural beliefs tied to purity culture. As a therapist, I address these challenges by exploring how clients’ thoughts, emotions, and histories impact their experiences, thoughts, behaviors, responses, desires, and fears. Within our thoughts and feelings, we often have different parts that hold their own beliefs, fears, thoughts, and roles in our lives, and are often in conflict with others. The goal is to get to know and befriend these parts with the ultimate goal to understand, heal, support, and create inner harmony and authentic connections to ourselves and others.
3. Could you share some insights into the various aspects of sexual identity and orientation that you commonly explore with your clients?
It completely depends on the person. I try to balance finding overall themes with respecting people’s individuality as well as holding nuance. A few overarching themes include:
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Working with individuals to understand, accept and embrace their sexual orientation, relationship orientation, and desires, and the impact this may have on their lives
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Working with individuals to understand the dynamics between and conflicts with their sexuality, gender, and societal norms, familial narratives, religious narratives, political narratives, and purity culture, and what that means for how they’ve lived vs how they want to live
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Concerns about coming out in different spaces, including self, family, friends, workplaces, etc. Lastly, a lot of times people come to therapy at the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center to have a therapist who will not overly focus on gender and sexuality unnecessarily, and who can still understand experiences and see life, culture, sex, and relationships through a queer lens.”
Read the rest of the interview here.