Full Course Description

Sex Made Simple: Clinical Strategies for Sexual Issues in Therapy

Copyright : 13/07/2017

Sexual Comfort Zone: Expanding Your Client's Values & Beliefs with Tammy Nelson, Ph.D.

Copyright : 13/07/2017

Working with Couples When Pornography is an Issue

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Is conflict about pornography a way to avoid talking about deficits in the sexual relationship?
How much of the discomfort about a partner’s porn use is actually discomfort about masturbation?
Is the couple having a power struggle about what is “allowed” in the house, and what is “reasonable”?
Are one or both partners acting out body image issues – comparing themselves to porn actors/actresses, or assuming their partner does?

The popularity of today’s free pornography contributes to conflict between many porn users and their partners. Most therapists use a model that pathologizes porn use while legitimizing the grievances of the consumer’s partner. This has led to the explosion of “porn addiction” diagnoses; demands that spouses stop using porn; and increased secrecy — without a corresponding increase in partners’ sexual/relationship satisfaction.

Many clinicians depend on personal experience, their own values, and psychology’s gender stereotypes and sex-negativity when dealing with these cases. This can lead to interventions we wouldn’t consider in similar non-sexual situations — taking sides, pathologizing one partner while legitimizing the other, diagnosing “porn addiction” without sufficient information. This often results in treatment errors and premature termination.

Both consumers and clinicians need to develop “pornography literacy.” By promoting pornography literacy, clinicians can support both porn consumers and their partners.

We’ll also look at the most common clinical models of how porn use shapes sexual decision-making, and an alternative model that better the fits the reality of people’s lives. We’ll find out exactly what are the most common depictions in pornography today. You’ll learn clinical strategies for working with cases involving pain around porn use.

And we’ll discuss how to explore one of the fundamental issues in these cases: To what extent is a couple’s conflict about pornography a way to avoid talking about the deficits in their sexual relationship? When both parties want to avoid this conversation, should we encourage it? If so, how?

Objectives

Explore how body image issues can drive a couple’s conflict about porn
Assess common assumptions of therapists about porn and its use
Specify how to support both partners when a couple is in conflict about porn use
Instruct how to help couples discuss the deficits in their relationship that they’re avoiding via conflict about porn

Outline

Porn Use & the Conflict between Partners
- Addiction
- Secrecy
Pornography Stereotyping
- Personal Values
- Gender
Pornography Literacy
Porn Use Shaping Sexual Decision-Making
Deficits in Sexual Relationship

Copyright : 20/09/2012

Sexual Intelligence: 10 Things Every Therapist Needs to Know About Sex

DESCRIPTION:

How do you deal with sexual behaviors with which you don’t have personal experience?
How do you evaluate if sexual configurations are unhealthy, or simply consensual alternatives?
When it comes to sex, are you an “askable therapist”?

When people come in and the presenting problem is sex, do you know what you need to know about affairs, desire, pornography, fertility, S/M, “sex addiction,” arranged marriages, aging, cybersex, and orgasm? And when the presenting problem isn’t sex, do you know how to deal with the ways sexuality can interface with issues of power, anxiety, intimacy, guilt, shame, and isolation?

Therapists also need to understand how clients construct self-defeating narratives about sexuality — and understand how therapists can unwittingly collude with these narratives, undermining diagnosis and treatment. Most therapists don’t understand, for example, that helping clients feel sexually “normal” undermines treatment rather than supporting it.

In this seminar recording, participants will acquire new tools to interpret, influence, and treat patients’ sexual decision-making — without stripping sex of its richness, darkness, and adulthood.

OUTLINE:

Interpreting Sexual Behaviors

How to have conversations about sex with people you don’t have any personal experience with
Unhealthy arrangements and/or experiences
When sexuality can be an underlying issue to another non-sexual problem

Influencing and Treating Clients’ Sexual Decision-Making

Understanding self-defeating narratives about sexuality without undermining treatment

How to treat clients without stripping sex of its’s richness, darkness, and adulthood

OBJECTIVES:

Analyze one’s own assumptions about sexuality that unintentionally influence treatment
Articulate how to evaluate patients’ narratives about sexuality, and their influence on sexual experience and behavior
Develop a minimum level of knowledge about “alternative” sexual expression
Consider the impact of “normality anxiety” on patients, and to learn how to discuss this with patients

Copyright : 20/09/2012

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) Clients

DESCRIPTION:

Are you making the biggest mistake treating your LGBTQ clients? Are you asking them about their sexual practices? Or are you too worried you will offend your client?

Join this online workshop and equip yourself with the right tools and up-to-date information you need in this rapidly changing population to more effectively counsel your lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning clients, and couples about sexual issues.

You will learn specific strategies to better treat the unique challenges your client may be facing such as:

Low sexual desire for a lesbian
Understanding that gay men have a higher sexual desire
Talking about porn, kinks, fetishes and bathhouses
Non hetero-normative sexual behaviors and practices

Also, let him help you avoid the common mistake of believing, “a couple is a couple” and treating LGBTQ couples the same as their heterosexual counterparts.

Don’t be the straight therapist that is losing LGBTQ clients because of poor intake, assessment and treatment planning. Learn how to offer your clients a safe place for therapy.

OUTLINE:

Talk About Sex!

Don’t miss out on key info by ignoring the sex talk
Top or bottom? And other important questions to ask: flexible, changing sexual preferences and attractions
Varieties of sexuality
Protect the client from your own biases and assumptions

Working with LGB Couples

Dynamics of a same gendered couple including vulnerabilities and strengths
Coming out discrepancy causing turbulence for couples
Recognize and identify how internalized homophobia creates conflicts
Open relationships in gay male couples
Sexual issues and strategies on compatibility, incompatibility, frequency and satisfaction

Working with Mixed Orientation Couples and Relationships

Specific stages of coming out as a mixed orientation couple
Specialized treatment programs for the straight spouses
Helping LGBTQ spouse integrate their identity into their mixed orientation relationships
Learn how to identify which couples will succeed and which won’t

OBJECTIVES:

Establish different ways to talk about sex with your LGBTQ clients.
Explore the different aspects when working with each type of couple in the LGB community
Plan a way for an LGBTQ spouse to integrate their identity into their mixed orientation relationship.