What happens in the progression of the therapy?
After an in-depth interview with you and your therapist, and when we all agree this is the right next step for you, I’ll design a structure of sessions that will best meet your expressed needs.
Typically, sessions will begin with relaxation, breathing and establishing a real, human connection. These skills are involved in all satisfying relationships, and are especially important for those who have been struggling with the complexities of authentic male/male intimacy in today’s internet saturated culture.
In succeeding sessions, we’ll focus on increasing skill development in the areas of sensual and sexual touching, and in simultaneously handling anxiety as it comes up. I’ll help you to stay present in moment-to-moment body experience, while attending to any evolving emotional and fantasy life. Along the way, I’ll teach and model body awareness and sexual self-confidence.
As needed, sessions can include activities to clarify sexual and body information, roll plays, review and affirmation of belief structures, practice in communication and gay male dating behaviors, and graduated, conscious, consensual sexual practice. All of this is targeted to your overall goals.
Trust, comfort, relaxation, and communication are the best foundation for healthy intimacy. We start there. And from those skills, we build a real, caring and respectful relationship that can support all the experiential learning you are wanting to do, including sexual experience.
It’s in this relationship that you’ll learn to sustain sensory awareness while receiving pleasure from touching and being touched. Some sessions may involve time spent clarifying sexuality information, practicing social skills in an intimate setting, learning to cope with conflict or anxiety while building erotic charge, or whatever else you need to experience in the context of relationship. And all of this happens in the field of growing self-awareness and sexual self-confidence.
From the first meeting, through all the ups and downs of this delicate and time-limited relationship, including saying good-bye in a mature and respectful way, my presence in your therapy process is intended to foster your long-term goals. My job is to help you do the personal work you need and want to do, the work that can’t be done outside a real relationship, a relationship that includes physical touch, emotional interplay, and the potential for intimate body experience.
Through this relationship, I can help you live into a new sense of self. You may uncover a new well of hope and courage you did not know you had. During our time together, you’ll find out what progress toward your goals feels like, and be able to bring new questions and richer discussions to your on-going therapy. I’ll be involved personally in the relationship, and at the same time I’ll sustain a strong container of awareness and skilled communication for any confused feelings that come up. As we explore the full range of feelings and behaviors found in healthy intimacy, our relationship will serve as a reference for all your future relationships.
And by the end of our work together, you and I will have developed a real and intimate relationship based on our authentic emotional and physical responses. You will have experienced how it is done and how it feels. Eventually you will reach a point where you feel ready to begin new relationships with partners of your own choosing, with this relationship as a model. You will graduate into your better life.