Mastering the Dynamics of Kink-Aware Counseling #280

2:58PM Aug 23, 2024

Speakers:

Megan Speciale, PhD

Keywords:

kink

counselor

client

community

bdsm

relationship

counseling

kinky

experience

consensual

people

folks

partners

submissive

supervision

power

working

wanting

talk

thinking

Music.

Hello and welcome to the thoughtful counselor, a podcast dedicated to bringing you innovative and evidence based counseling and mental health content designed to enhance your life, whether you're a clinician, supervisor, educator, or a person wanting to learn more about the counseling process. We are here to demystify mental health through conversations with a wide range of counseling professional powerhouses. In each episode, you'll learn about current issues in the field, new science and real life lessons learned from the therapy room. Thank you for joining us on our journey through the wide world of counseling. There's a lot to explore here, so sit back, take a deep breath, and let's get started.

Hello everyone. Welcome to the thoughtful counselor. I'm your host for today, Mickey White and I have the pleasure of being here with Dr arian muzack, an associate clinical professor of counseling at Oregon State University. Welcome Ariane. I'm glad to have you with us here

today. I'm glad to be here. Thank you. So

now that you're here, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came into the world of counseling.

Well, I identify as a white, cisgender female, bisexual, non practicing kingster At the moment, abled lower middle class and born and raised in the US, and part of what brought me to wanting to become a counselor was actually my initial experiences in counseling as a client, which were not super affirming. And so when I was a lot younger, I was volunteering, actually as a peer counselor for an organization in New York City called Identity house, which was a peer counseling completely volunteer led organization. There were some licensed, primarily social workers, clinical social workers, New York is very social work, heavy who did some kind of light supervision, but primarily it was a peer counseling drop in center. And so the folks who would come in, you know, had all varieties of income level. There wasn't necessarily one norm. There was a very minimal intake process. It was not a formal professional counseling setup, but one of the memories that stuck with me, and I guess I'm I'm sort of dovetailing with with the niche that I that I wanted to fill at some point is, is that one of my colleagues who was there who identified as a gay man, one day, we had somebody come in who identified as an A B, and my colleague kind of looks at me And he's, you know, got this blank, kind of startled look on his face, and he's like this person is talking about, and I will just translate for folks A, B stands for adult baby. And so this was someone from the Fetish community who, you know, had found a an opening and a place to talk about their sexuality and their identity in a queer counseling setting, because he he identified a cisgender male, because he trusted that this would be an affirming environment. And it was that very, very early initial experience that made me kind of think, hmm, maybe there are parts of my own personal experience, my exposure to King Confederate communities, that could be useful as a counselor to other people, to clients who want to be understood and want to feel welcome and affirmed. And, you know, at that stage again, I had zero formal training, but that's what got me started work, you know, volunteering there as a peer counselor is what got me started thinking about going to grad school. And initially it was, you know, clinical or counseling psych, because I didn't know any better. I didn't know counseling was a thing. And so

that's very, very relatable, I think, for for myself and also plenty of other listeners of this podcast.

Yeah, it was, it was, depending geographically. On where you are licensed professional counseling at the master's level, or licensed mental health counseling at the master's level, may or may not be something that has a great deal of visibility. Um, so what brought me from so then it, you know, when did the did the whole application process? Um, of course, I could only apply to the best programs. Got waitlisted at a few of them, got my last rejection on the deadline for APA, you know, American Psychological Association rejections, which was April 15. And then I had a decision to make. My decision was, Do I wait a year because I had been doing all the other things. I was volunteering at my undergrad as a research assistant. I was volunteering for the New York City anti violence project as a hotline, you know, call center person, which was also really valuable experience, but, but my decision was, Do I Do I wait a year with pretty much the same experience and try again for the psych programs, or do I get myself into a master's program right now? And so I did my Master's at the City College of the City University in New York, primarily because it was a public institution, whoo for public institutions, and it was cheap and it was local, and I could work at the same time. And I I, I'm not going to track super well the chronology of which happened first. But either, I think it was a little bit before starting grad school that I also had my first experience in counseling as a client, and again, went to see a licensed clinical social worker. I'm in my late 20s, early 30s. Yeah, so this had to be, this was a couple years before grad school, because I was a lot older than and, you know, was going to talk about kind of a career quandary. I was having a late quarter life crisis. Wasn't sure what I wanted to be when I grew up. And so I go in and, you know, we had been talking for a couple weeks, and I'm talking about career stuff, and you know, it's all very kind of surface level when you're feeling out a new counselor. And I, you know, from my class background, working class and lower middle class, we didn't do counseling. We didn't talk to people about our problems. We kept it within the family or not at all, right, just don't, don't talk about it. Just suck it up, cupcake. And so, so for me, it was very weird to be talking to a counselor at all, absolutely. And so we're maybe a couple months in, and I had gone to a play party over the weekend, and, you know, I was very actively involved in the king community at the time and and I guess, I guess I had sort of that sense of, like wanting to maybe protect myself from judgment, like I had a little bit of an idea that stigma might exist, and so sort of apologetically, it was summer and it was hot. It's real hot in New York in the summer, and so I disclosed to this woman. I said, you know, if you see bruises, it's okay. It's not a it's not a problem. I just went to a play party over the weekend, and no recognition on her face, like she has no idea what I'm talking and I'm like, you know, at a, at a dungeon, it's at a it's at a, you know, at a BDSM club. And then her entire expression changed, and in that little flash of a moment, I immediately knew that telling her anything about that part of myself was not safe and that she couldn't handle it. She didn't know anything about it, and so wanting to be the good little client, I just kept that to myself. Yeah, and again, that being my first counseling experience, I also didn't know how to dump her,

right? So I continued

for about six more months until I got up the nerve to say, you know, I don't think you're the counselor for me. But that that is really what stuck in my mind as as a big part of my sort of raison d'etre, of like, why am I a counselor? Because I want to be the counselor that I wish I had right, which might sound a little selfish, and yet I. Um, I think that's, you know, when I listen to students now, that's a lot of their motivation is, you know, I couldn't find someone who was affirming of this part of my identity or that part of my identity, or who didn't have this aspect of my lived experience. And I want to find somebody who can hold that.

Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing that and sharing that experience with me and with listeners. And I hear this parallel as well of talking to your colleague when you were the peer counselor of I would kind of expect you to know this or have a little bit of exposure to this, and then also hearing that from this, this, wanting this counselor to have that exposure and experience of just how, how much people don't know about Inc and BDSM and power exchange,

I think, well, you touched on something I don't think, I don't think I did expect my colleague to know yet, if this makes sense, I was surprised to know that that was Somehow in group information, because it had been, because I was part of the Fetish community since I was 18, right? And so it was, you know, I'm going on, I'm going on 810, years at that point of involvement, and of, and of, kind of just being immersed in this community, and again, very specific subculture, you know, the one thing that I that I want to share early and often in this conversation is that there's a misconception that there's a kink community. There's not just one. There are many, many ways that people engage in kink and in BDSM and power exchange and authority transfer in person and online, within a local community and on a broader scale. And so one misconception, or misperception that I hear a lot is that, you know, there's some sort of homogenous similarity, and this is not unique to kink I think this has been something we've been working on and working through as for many, many years, since the 90s, when we started talking about multicultural counseling, before social justice was not, not sort of simplifying group characteristics, or not assuming that Just because you know about one aspect of somebody's culture that you know who they are. And so I encourage people to think of kink as part of the multifaceted nature of identity and culture that you know how someone experiences a power exchange relationship as a person of color is going to be different how somebody experiences authority transfer as part of a married heterosexual couple is going to be different than how somebody experiences authority transfer as part of a poly cool and so, you know, it's there's not just one way to be kinky. And I think as media and social media, attention to these topics has grown in some ways, that has increased awareness, at least kind of a superficial awareness, and yet, on the flip side, my personal opinion, is that it has also unfortunately kind of ground in some really sort of stereotypical depictions.

We could spend an entire podcast talking about issues of 50 Shades of Gray. I'm just going to put that out there at the moment, for sure, that

is not real. None of that is that is bad, bad BDSM, that is non consensual, that is misogynistic, that is bad BDSM, that is not good kink. So if you read 50 Shades of Gray and you were kind of hot and bothered by it, good for you, you might have discovered something about yourself, and I appreciate that for you. And also, there were a lot of ways that that what that series depicted was simply a patriarchal sexist. Actually, one of the things I researched when I was in my master's program was deviant sexual fantasy. Communities. And so research told us, and still tells us, that rape fantasies are very common, and they're very common because they're something that people don't feel like morally they would want to engage in, or want to admit to, or want to have anything to do with, in real life, in fantasy, they're safe, and so I think that's sort of what I you know, I have to be compassionate. I am trying to be compassionate about that book series. It literally put my spouse and I to sleep multiple times, like we tried to finish reading the first one. I ended up reading it on my own for, like, you got to know this right research purposes. You got to know what's out there. But it was awful,

well, and it, and it's the something you mentioned about, like rape fantasies and and like non consensual, or things that are considered taboo, that there's such a I think that there's, there's a way that those fantasies become appealing, and that the large issue, at least for me, with that book series and some of the other ones that are popular right now, we could talk about haunting Adeline or whatever that book Is that is also problematic, but we think about these books, and what people forget, especially people who aren't actually involved or know anything about kink, is that it is a fantasy. It is something that you are stepping into and stepping out of. And a lot of people see that, see those books, see those series as this is just life, and that's where it becomes problematic. I do want to take a second though and kind of zoom out. We've used a lot of words that I imagine a lot of our listeners are not quite familiar with. I'm curious just to explain a little bit about, you know, toss some stuff out here and then let you take it a little bit. So BDSM kink more generally, but also we've talked about power exchange, authority exchange, a little bit about what those terms mean and what they look like. If you want to talk a little bit about consent, safe, sane and sexy, that kind of terminology, just so our listeners can be a little bit more familiar with what's out there and what it means. Yeah,

so I'm going to lean into my my academic side, a little bit, and also early and often share our resource, the king clinical practice guidelines project, happened. I don't know. I think it started about 10 years ago, but they published in 2019 clinical practice guidelines for working with people with kink interests. And I really appreciate the way that they defined kink. So they said, we conceptualize kink as sexual identities, erotic behaviors, sexual interests and fantasies, relationship identities, relationship orientations and relationship structures between consenting adults not accepted by the dominant culture. We specifically include BDSM, which stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, or sadism and masochism, leather and fetish as important parts of the umbrella term of kink. So I'm going to break those down a little bit because again, I think for folks who aren't part of these cultures or communities, some of those words you know, can can be a little bit activating. So bondage and discipline and dominance and submission and sadism and masochism frequently referred to physical manifestations of kink. So there could be activities again between consenting adults. That's a very important distinction that you know are not part of our traditional I'm going to throw another term in there, our traditional ideas of of sexual or recreational activities. And so for people who are not oriented to BDSM or kink, we call them vanilla. So within vanilla relationships, there are normative acts like, you know, sexual intercourse or having an egalitarian relationship structure. So one of the assumptions in the United States, which is a heteronormative and mono normative culture, is that folks will have some sort of binary gendered pairing and mono normativity, which is a term coined by peeper or Piper and Bauer. Or some number of years ago, assumes that you'll have one partner and that you'll be monogamously paired. And so again, thinking about relationship orientations and relationship structures. For someone who's involved in BDSM or kink, there might be partners that you have that are play partners or scene partners, and those are temporary folks that you are temporarily very connected to, and consent is a huge part of kink and BDSM culture, way back when I first got involved, it was RAC risk, aware, consensual kink. There was SSC, which was safe, sane and consensual. That was sort of that fell out of favor, because people didn't like the implication of sanism that people with mental health diagnoses, or, you know, neurodiversity, you know, were excluded by saying safe and sane and so. So now there are sort of new ways to talk about consent, but consent is really important, another thing that, again, sometimes gets missed, is that I would add unimpeded consent. And so, you know, when I came up in in King culture, like the clubs and the parties, like there were, there was no alcohol served at all, and there were no other substances permitted on the premises. And if you were inebriated or intoxicated or visibly under the influence of some other substance, you could be asked to leave, and that was for very significant safety considerations. Because, as we all know, right, there are some things that can lower our inhibitions, and so when engaging in something like impact play or breath play or even even spanking, you know, somebody's pain threshold or their ability to consent or their their perception of the risk of those activities might be altered if they were under the influence of one or more substances. And so So I realize that has changed, and I realize that there are a lot of events now that are okay with with other substances, but But going back to terminology, so sadism and masochism are also things that are sometimes misunderstood, because in the DSM, tr, five, tr, there are still diagnoses for sexual sadism and sexual masochism, I Want to make a very clear, very robust distinction, that the reason that those are in there is because they talk about people fantasizing or wanting to enact activities with non consenting partners. And so you know when in doubt, if you're talking to somebody as a counselor or as a counselor in training, and they're describing a relationship that sounds like there might be an intentional power imbalance or some kink involvement, and all of your countertransference is coming up, and you're thinking, that's not Healthy, that's risky, just just, you know, yes, get supervision, and come back down to a space of asking yourself, Is it consensual? Is there verbal, uh, affirmative, you know, affirmative, enthusiastic consent involved. And if there is what it looks like, and what those consenting adults do is not your business. You don't need to go sightseeing. Just trust that. The same way I and I use this example just because like it. It sometimes people find it off putting, but it's the same way that, you know, if you're somebody who identifies as heterosexual and you have a client who identifies as a gay, cis male, you know, are you going to go down the rabbit hole of saying, Well, tell me about your sex life, like, what do you do with your partner or your spouse? No, that would be egregious. You would never do that. Right? When it comes to working with kinky clients, there is some sort of fascination that people are like, you know, oh, well, what do you but? But, tell me about that. And, uh, and so I. Just want to I want to gently. I want to embrace that you are willing to learn as a counselor or beginning counselor, or somebody who hasn't had contact with this culture, and remember that your client is the person who is coming to you for some sort of support or some sort of, you know, facilitation and please, please, don't go sightseeing in their lives.

Well and it, and it's, I really appreciate you saying that, and I love this phrase, sightseeing in the lives. I think I might steal that to use with my students, if you don't mind. But the this idea that for marginalized communities, folks that are part of dominant communities, taking sightseeing trips or having this almost kind of like Sideshow excitement about this part of your life, and really collapsing that person only into one aspect, a Very flat aspect of their identity and their experience is something that I'm really appreciative of you bringing in, because when we think about kink, and when we talk about kink, you mentioned this earlier, it is a culture there are and not just one culture, right? There's multiple subcultures, not of homogeneous culture, correct, and that that really that is something that I think, if we can also kind of shift our cultural language around and how we think about it and how we talk about it, that that also brings in a little bit more of that space for compassion and empathy and seeing people as Real people, instead of whatever a character type, Show, carrot, caricature, yeah, absolutely.

Um, so I do. I I realized there were multiple parts of your questions, so I'm gonna gonna do my best to stay on track and come back. So you also mentioned power exchange and authority transfer. So those are two aspects of kink that come under an umbrella of consensual asymmetry. So what that means is relationships, and I'm going to use dyadic a dyadic partnership as an example, because it's a little bit simpler to start with. But consensual asymmetry is a dyadic relationship where that again, contrasts with normative ideas that romantic or intimate relationships should be egalitarian in nature, that that's the ideal. And again, to all the counselors out there, who are? You know, I see this in school counselors a lot, because they work with so many adolescents. You know, there's this idea that there's one sort of normative, quote, unquote, healthy relationship, and that doesn't look just one way. And so consensual asymmetry, which can also be called Power Exchange, is where within a dyadic relationship, the partners have agreed to have an asymmetrical power dynamic. This is also sometimes grading for counselors who are really, really into social justice counseling and maybe have a little misperception about what that means well, and

I also, I want to pause for one second, because I there's a layer here that I'm seeing as you're talking about this of also assumptions that counselors are going to struggle a lot more with This asymmetrical, consensual, asymmetrical power dynamic when the power holder, quote, unquote, or kind of the the authority of that is particularly a cisgender man, and then a cisgender woman experience, or is the the submissive, or that, that's at least part of the thing I think I see a lot of People struggle with is, are we enacting the patriarchy,

or, or, or any ism I've seen it in, you know, and, and I am going to call out, call in my own trigger warning for folks. So one variety of authority transfer, our MS relationships, which stands for a master slave. And I've also, you know, seen folks who really from the outside of one of those relationships, really have a problem with a white identified person in the role of a master and somebody who is black or a person of color in the role of a slave, they cannot tolerate that, or they judge both parties, right? Oh, you must have internalized, you know, racism. You must, you must, you must, you must, when you. Honestly, unless or until one of those partners is coming to you and saying, I'm concerned about my role in this relationship. I'm concerned that I'm losing my autonomy. Don't judge it from the outside or from the roles, because Ms relationships or authority transfer relationships are characterized by, for one thing, a tremendous amount of open communication about desires and about experiences and about, you know, background in history. And I'm gonna throw another term out there. Some of some people choose to live in what they call a 24/7 dynamic DS, dynamic, dominant, submissive. So capital D little s with a slash in between, stands for dominant and submissive. And so people in a 24/7 DS, dynamic, have a 24 hours a day, seven days a week, embedded power dynamic, or power differential, with a partner. And this takes a tremendous amount of care and consideration on the part of both partners, the person who is in that dominant role is constantly thinking about the well being, the comfort the you know, concerns, or the challenges of their submissive. The submissive frequently, not always. And again, these are kind of generalizations. No two Ds relationships are exactly the same, but submissives are often oriented toward service. What can I do for my dominant What can I do as an act of service? So there might be a domestic arrangement where they live together. Um, but again, coming back to your point about where counselors might have a problem with this, you know, it's harder um age diamond dynamics, too, can come into play when someone who's a dominant has a significantly different, you know, significant age gap. And I've seen ageism come out as well. They're saying, Oh, well, the submissive is being taken advantage of because they're younger. Or, you know, this is like the example that you pointed out. This is a sexist relationship, because it's a cis male and a cis female in a DS dynamic. And so the the encouragement that I would give you is not to judge from the outside, to understand that at their core, consensually asymmetrical relationships are also focused On an intentional distribution of social power that is oriented to create comfort, security and trust and deep, deep understanding and compassion between those partners. They are not on the whole, you know, exploitative or imbalanced in in other ways. And another sort of misconception that comes up is that, you know, kink and BDSM are inherently sexual. I've given a couple of examples already that you know, they're not necessarily. DS relationships very frequently are oriented around deep levels of intimacy. For some people, research has looked at at kink and BDSM as a way of coping with something do you know it's different for everybody, or sensation seeking, right? People want some sort of physical engagement, some sort of tactile engagement, and it's not necessarily sexual or erotic in nature. It can be for some people, spirituality too. That's the other. There's a lot of more, increasingly, more writing about kind of the transcendent qualities of being in subspace, which is submissive mindset. And so not everyone comes into canker BDSM relationships for the same reasons. Not everyone has the same experiences within them. And yeah, that's

yeah. How much do you think. Like the mono normative assumptions of relationships in as many monogamous relationships don't actually necessarily prioritize open communication that there's a lot of assumed communication. So how much do you think that's overlapping with these biases showing up too? I

think, I mean it, it's funny. That tickled my funny. Ben, I think, um, you know, I'm gonna blame the media. I'm gonna blame the blame and and I will, I will say this as somebody who, very much as a child, grew up on a steady diet of Disney movies, like I lived, definitely lived in some fantasy world where, you know, and I didn't question, I didn't question as a as a young person, I didn't question the horrifyingly racialized depictions of, you know, anthropomorphic animals in so many movies that now I watch and I just cringe, but, um, I only watch them because I have a child. And now we talk about why that's not what, why that's mean, um, but the point is, mono, normative expectations. I think there's this and reality TV. So I'm just going to call myself out on all these things. Reality TV, I think, feeds into this idea that there is this one singular, quote, unquote, perfect person, and, gee, all you have to do is find them. There's billions of people on the planet, but why don't you just go find that needle in the haystack, and when you do, right, you found that person. So many reality shows are built around, you know, eight to 12 weeks and you're gonna find that person. And of course, everybody does by the end of eight to 12 weeks, because they need it for the ratings. And hardly any of those relationships last. But the the the misperception is that then when you find that person, you don't have to verbalize desires or wants or dislikes or anything. And so when faced with the reality of a longer term relationship where maybe not everything is clicking in terms of physical intimacy or even emotional intimacy, where people are realizing, Oh, we have really fundamentally different values around partnership or around domestic tasks or around parenting. People are so frustrated because they've been sold this idea that, well, I shouldn't have to say anything, you know, my partner should just know. And I can say that this has infected queer communities as well. It's not limited to the straight experience anymore. It's still this idea that if you're with that perfect person you know, they'll just know. And what I love about kink, and have always loved about kink, is that you don't have to assume anything. And in fact, you don't assume anything you communicate, even if you know engaging in in something like a scene at a party with somebody that you have no intention of having a longer term relationship with you sit down and you negotiate, or at least you used to. I used to growing up, growing up in kink. You sit down and you negotiate. What are those? What are those persons hard limits? How will they let you know if something is getting too close to a limit? How will they let you know if they're uncomfortable. Old school, back in the day, we used to have red, yellow, green. I Red was a was a hard stop. Yellow was a Go ahead, but cautiously, Green was all systems go. I'm loving it. And the reason why it wasn't a word like stop is because for some people that play acting or enacting of struggle is part of what turns them on. And so saying, Oh, please don't do that is like getting them kind of green. So you come up with other words, safe words, right? And frequently, safe words are something ridiculous that you would never say otherwise in a in an intimate situation like hedgehog, um and so. So again, that the thing that I think kink relationships have to share with the hetero, mono normative world, the vanilla relationships. Is, communication is great. Communication helps any relationship, open communication, transparent communication, whether it's verbal or non verbal. And again, leaning into research there, you know, there have been studies among people who identify as kinky within disability communities and disability justice communities that talk about how empowering it is to be part of kink involvement, because there's nothing atypical or, you know, odd about wanting to negotiate about sensory sensitivities, or about, you know, physical concerns or considerations, because that's just how everybody does it.

Yeah, and there's, there's all of these pieces to it that sound so like they they just make so much sense in terms of communication and communicating, not only when things are going poorly or when things need to change, but also communicating when things are going well, like there's so much that can be learned just from the open communication and That not making assumptions that I'm hearing you talk about when you're working and like training counselors, or thinking about counseling folks who identify as kinky or who even kind of exploring this aspect of identity or experience. You mentioned the guidelines that will be linked to the episode. But also, are there any other kind of ethical guidelines or standards of practice that you would also recommend counselors be familiar with or kind of lean into when working with this community?

I am not going to be able to quote you the exact part of the 2014 ACA code of ethics, although I cited it in one of one of the papers that I relatively recently published. But a number of the sections, I know, one of them is in Section A so one of the sections talks about counselors refraining from imposing their personal values. And I think this is one of the things that folks kind of look at on the surface and go, Well, of course, I'm not going to do that. Well, sure, until your client comes in and says that they have a foot fetish, or until your client comes in and says that they really like it when their partner makes them clean the floor on their hands and knees. And then I'm just going to float the idea that maybe, as a counselor, your personal attitudes or beliefs might emerge. And so this is where, again, getting specialized supervision if you do want to work with this population, I think is a is an absolute imperative, so that you don't do harm, so that you don't unintentionally impose those values. Even the idea of mono normativity, right? Folks who for a variety of different reasons, in their family of origin, culture of origin, certain faith beliefs you know, are going to adhere very strongly to the idea that mono normativity is is superior, that that's the ideal for a partnership. And so if a client, perhaps has a marital partner, and they're engaging in kink activities or power exchange with multiple other partners, you know, just be aware that that might create a values conflict between you and your client. You're going to resolve these values conflicts the same way that you would resolve any other values conflict, which is by getting consultation going through an ethical decision making process, you know, again, sort of checking yourself with with outside people, maybe whose perspectives or values are different than yours, so that you're not just inflicting again, those values or attitudes or beliefs on your client. This also comes into play with Section E, which pertains to assessment and diagnosis again. You know, if you have a client who identifies as kinky or BDSM involved, and their concern is anxiety in social situations, it is not ethical to diagnose them with sexual sadism or sexual masochism. Their primary diagnosis, their concern if they want a diagnosis, if they need a diagnosis for insurance reimbursement, for example, would be something in in, you know, anxiety or mood disorders and so, you know, thinking about again, the social power that you have as a counselor. You have the power to to either facilitate empowerment in your client or to further marginalize or oppress them. And so that is a responsibility that I would encourage you to take very take that to heart and and to be serious about that responsibility and careful with it. The other thing that can sometimes come into play is, you know, being respectfully critical of previous diagnoses that your clients might have received, right? You might not be the one to diagnose somebody with sexual sadism or sexual masochism. It was almost within my lifetime that homosexuality was still in the DSM. So we would be foolish to think that this text that we're currently using is not influenced by ebbs and flows in social and cultural norms. And so, you know, let's say you get a client again who identifies as kinky, who comes in who says that they were diagnosed with a stigmatizing label, challenging that and talking through that with them can actually be really healing. The other, you know, part that I would really, really lean into is, please don't try to practice outside the boundaries of your competence or scope of practice. So Section C, you know, kind of talks about that. And, you know, I get that there's a gazillion people on psychology today's therapist directory, and that folks want to distinguish themselves somehow. And maybe there's a little bit of that, you know, oh, I want to, I want to work with a sexy population, okay, well, that's your stuff, right? Figure that out. But you know, again, supervision, so section a supervision challenge your personal biases. But you know, please refrain from claiming a specialization in working with this community before you have adequate training and supervision. And again, maybe I'm a little bit old school. I realize that folks are doing stuff like faster now and wanting to get to the finish line really speedy. I will blame white supremacist cultural norms in the US for privileging getting there faster rather than taking your time. But bottom line, if you have read, you know, one article about kinky clients, you are, in my opinion, you are not qualified. If you have, you know, watched bonding on Netflix. You are not qualified

like

you're laughing, but this is what, no, no, I'm

laughing because it's relatable. It's it's absolutely relatable,

and this is why I appreciate intergenerational relationships in research and in scholarship and in consultation and in supervision, because my colleagues who are not of the same generation as I am, have informed me that there are now thing like their kink talk is a thing. So there are people who are watching a 20 to 32nd video and a thinking that they know how to engage in very high risk behaviors like health wise, high risk behaviors like breath play because they watched a 20 to 32nd video. That's what we're dealing with. So please don't be the counselor who then watches, you know, five minutes of King talk and think that you know how to do the things. There are a couple of relatively there are some reputable sources, if you are somebody who, for one actually, I will also put out there folks who are counselors, who are members of these communities. I gently and affectionately call you in to please be part of the workforce to serve our own communities. If you identify. As kinky and queer, you know, please serve those communities. If you identify as kinky and hetero, please serve those communities if you can, if you feel comfortable, if you have worked through your own stuff. And can, you know, separate that again, because there that lived experience and and, you know, adding on facets of of marginalization, kinky queer counselors of color there, there's there is a need. There is a great need, because there are so many parts of the country where it's hard to have that community. And, you know, going back to what we talked about earlier, there's not just one kink community. There are kind of the local communities, and then there's the online community. So FetLife is a big sort of community gathering space. It's also been criticized for, like any other social media platform being a place that people can enact their racist or sexist or misogynistic views, however, FetLife is, is one place to sort of, you know, if you're part of these communities, it's a place To connect with with potential clients or potential supervisors. The other resource that I would offer is the National Coalition for sexual freedom, which is an advocacy group run by and for kinksters, is has a database called kink aware professionals, and that has every kind of professional person that you could possibly want. So there are, you know, lawyers, if you're involved in things like child custody cases or legal battles, there are discrimination cases, anything like that where you need an advocate, there are medical doctors, there are mental health professionals. Recently, I've seen more sort of healers and those, those kind of holistic folks who are in, involved in, like, more of the psychic side of things. There are also, you know, physical and occupational therapists, and so you know, that's one place to look for or to offer to your clients, to look for folks in their area. I will also, though, say, being somebody who came from a very, very densely populated urban area with a really thriving King community, and move to someplace that thinks it's a city. There's also a really big disparity between urban, suburban and rural communities in terms of the number of providers you're going to find. And so actually, more recently, one of the projects that I'm working on, I've had the the great privilege of talking to older kinksters about their experiences, and part of what they've shared is kind of how they how they broached the topic of kink, or how they came out to their medical professionals or other folks in their lives and and some haven't, honestly, because they don't engage in forms of kink or BDSM that that would be relevant to that particular kind of care. And so again, I'll Harken this to like sexual orientation and the narrative around coming out, it's not always safe to come out. There is no superiority in coming out. That narrative does not fit everyone. And so if you're in a cultural community or a geographic community where there would be a danger or a risk to coming out as kinky, if that would impede your ability to get a job or, you know, maintain your housing, then, you know, as counselors, please, again, don't impose your values on Your clients and say, Oh, well, you should come out. Why? Right? That that may not be the best choice for them, and that's up to them when and if they want to. Hopefully you've been a supportive enough presence that they'll come to you and they'll tell you that they're considering that, but that day might not come. Yeah.

And so some of the work that I've been doing, that I'm continuing to do, relates around queer and particularly like trans self disclosure and counseling and higher education and in these in a lot of different aspects, but primarily counseling and higher education. And I. So there's some of the things that have come out that you touched on a little bit. Is like, how do I come out within my community? So like, wherever I'm located, or wherever I'm I'm working, and is it safe to come out and I come out? What does that look like? But then also having a specialty area, as a person with the stigmatized identity, minoritized identity, working with or specializing with, and somehow, or some ways, losing access to that community, because now that community is made up of your clients. And I think, I think telehealth offers some really great options to expand some of that out, but that's something that I'm I think we could also just have another entire podcast episode worth of just that conversation, but that being a consideration as well of serving a community that you are a part of, and especially as a mental health professional, what aspects of that community do you then lose access to?

The fun parts is right? The

parts where you don't have to worry about running into your client at a party.

So that actually did happen. And you know, again, when, when I was working back east and and more newly licensed there, there were specific populations that I was like, okay, you know, I'm, I'm where I publicized, you know, the LGBT Center, and, you know, I was on the kink aware professionals list, or whatever, and so, so when did that change? You know, my, my one of my client, then clients comes in and is like, Ah, I finally found and so this was somebody who was, who was, at that point, exploring their their gender and their gender identity, and they were kind of in early stages, and they were assigned female at birth, and they came in and they were so excited, and they said, I finally found a party for women and trans people. Oh no, and it's here at this place in Brooklyn, and I'm like, yep, been there, done that many times. Won't be going this month, because any you know that was a judgment call, right? Right. I don't, I don't mind running into my clients in certain places, but if it's going to involve one or both of us not having clothes on like I'm going to skip it right? My personal preference, because social power dynamic, and I don't want to, I knew that I had the privilege as a cis woman, that I could find another place to be kinky. I knew that my client did not have that same privilege and needed, in my opinion, needed and would benefit from that space and that, you know, opportunity to explore all more than one of their identities, more than I needed at that point, right? I knew who I was and what I was doing and what I was into and what I wasn't, right. And so, yes, sometimes your world gets very, very, very small. And this was legitimately like, New York City has millions of people. But again, depending on what communities you're in, it's like, oh no, all of a sudden, I'm in a small town. And so, you know, thinking about that and kind of being prepared to to have those conversations with your clients, to know how you're going to not break confidentiality if you are going to the same event or the same party, if you're part of The same you know, kink related social organizations like Yeah, so it's definitely a consideration, and definitely something that as the counselor and the person who has greater social power in that relationship, I think it's incumbent upon us to step aside if there's a if there's a question of whether or not really inhabit that space well,

and I agree with that, and I appreciate you sharing that, sharing that story and that example I'm hearing and especially working with, I work primarily with master's students, so it's always very black and white. It's always very rigid and that i. In practice, and from what I've heard, what I'm hearing talking to you, and what I've heard talking to other people, and experienced is there is more flexibility in terms of broaching. Let's talk about this. Let's let's talk about boundaries. And of course, kinksters are often, hopefully, more, more better about boundaries than most of the rest of the population, and so let's talk about it. Let's address it. And then I also really appreciate this piece of recognizing the social and structural power that you had and that we have as counselors, and knowing when we need to make that decision, to step aside or we need to broach that, that that is our responsibility to do, and not on the client to do.

Yeah, I will say that's the one funny part about I, you know, also train and supervise master students. And part of I'm always like you will never find a set of clients more willing to talk about power like, absolutely you're if you do come across kinky clients, like, they will talk about power all day long. And it's actually really, it's really interesting, because there, there are so many ways that, again, they're considering and navigating power all the time. And so thinking about social consciousness, thinking about, you know, kind of the the socio political historical landscape that that we live in your your clients might have already thought about a lot of these things, and depending on how they found you, like any other aspect of identity, they might already have beliefs or assumptions about you. They might think that you know you know certain things or you don't, and so you know being willing to use the social power that you have to benefit them through advocacy, I think is also really important simply because you inhabit spaces that they may or may not have access to.

Yeah, I I feel like we could just keep going on this for hours. I really appreciate your time and your energy and your expertise and sharing that with us here today, as we wrap up, I just really want to ask, like, for the counselors, and you mentioned a little bit earlier, but for the counselors in training, or the current counselors out there, even the educators who are kinky and in this profession, what words of like support, advice, wisdom, do you kind of want to leave with today?

Uh, you're not the only one. First and foremost, and and we're glad you're here. We're really glad you're here. You have a community within a community. We're not always great about finding each other. I, you know, I remember, I think it was ACA in 2020 or even 2019 there was a special interest at the conferences. They do these, like special interest roundtables, right? So anybody just who wants to show up and talk informally, meet other people, network around a special interest, special interest topic can do so. So, of course, they were at like, eight o'clock in the morning, and then and they had one about sexuality. That was it, broad umbrella sexuality. And you know, this is a conference of 1000s of people. Three of us showed up to the table. We had a great conversation. And I know that there are more of us out there. As a counselor, educator, I talk all the time about unity within our profession, about advocacy, both social justice advocacy and professional advocacy. And as a as a supervisor and practicing counselor, I can say that we need you. We need you to to advocate, even if you are again, not comfortable being out about all of your identities in your community, that's your personal judgment call and your choice. Please get involved in some way with advocacy, um, if for no other reason, then you. Know there are clients out there who are still very much struggling with outdated laws being on the books in their jurisdiction, with judgment, with stigma, with discrimination. The NCSF also does a survey every couple of years of bias incidents related to kink and BDSM identities, and so that you know the data are continuing to show that there is still stigma and discrimination experienced by members of these communities, and so please do what you can to advocate for and support those, those folks and you know, get in touch with us if you want to, if you are feeling alone in Your in your community or in your program, I can also say that the it took me, for some reason, I felt so comfortable being open about who I was and what I did and all these things with clients, when I took on that sort of social role as a counselor, educator, or as a supervisor. Suddenly I was like, oh, there's all these things that I can't talk about. Well, that was a me thing, and it has taken me years to sort of undo that perception that, you know, I have to be I have to put parts of myself away in the closet in order to be an educator or in order to be a supervisor. And so I just, I hope that that speaks to some of you out there who are questioning. You know, can I be an educator? Can I supervise? If this is part of who I am? Yes, yes. Yes, you can,

yeah, and that, and that visibility is so important. I really appreciate you kind of tying back into visibility, because you kind of mentioned, you mentioned that at the beginning as well. And I just again, want to share my my sincere thank you for for being here today, for sharing your experience, sharing your expertise, and also the resources and the recommendations. I am hoping that other folks find this as informative and engaging as I did, and so again, thank you all for listening. This is Mickey white with the thoughtful counselor, and we will see you next time.

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