Ep #26: What is Sex Coaching?

You are listening to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women Podcast, episode 26.

Female Announcer: Welcome to the Midlife Sex Coach for Women Podcast, the only show that combines a fun personality, medical knowledge, sexual counseling, and life coaching together. To create unique sex coaching that helps busy women awaken their libidos, address intimacy issues and learn how to express their sexuality for the rest of their days. Here is your host, certified life coach and sexual counselor, Dr. Sonia Wright.

Hello Diamonds. It’s Dr. Sonia. How are you doing? I hope you are having a great week. So, on the last podcast episode I introduced you to one of my mentors, my sexual counselor supervisor, Evelyn Resh. She is just amazing. Last week’s podcast with Evelyn was about women, sexuality and self-care. It was a really powerful and informative podcast episode. So if you haven’t had a chance to listen to it, go back and listen to episode 25.

Every week Evelyn and I get together and we just have a great time discussing everything and anything around sexuality. I learn so much from her. She’s learning from me. We’re having a great time. And we never really want to get off the call because we’re just enjoying the discussion and just the mutual admiration and respect that we have for each other.

And as I said before, Evelyn is my sexual counselor supervisor. And we’ve been working together in order for me to obtain additional certification as a sexual counselor. So I’m already a trained sexual counselor and this gives me another level of certification. I am always up-leveling for my Diamonds. It’s something that’s really important to me.

So just in case you’re wondering, sexual counseling is a practice that merges medicine with basic counseling skills. A sexual counselor does a basic assessment of the sexual concerns that are being presented to her by her patients. And then the counselor provides sexual and medical information to her patient based on these concerns. The majority of sexual counselors actually provide their services in a medical facility such as a women’s health clinic. And the services are generally provided for just a limited number of sessions.

I love being a sexual counselor but I actually wanted to do so much more with my sexual counseling skills, and more with my clients. I had this big vision of serving my Diamonds to an even greater extent. And that’s why I tend to identify as a sex coach. So what exactly is a sex coach? Another one of my mentors, Dr. Patti Britton describes sex coaching as results focused approach to helping clients reach their highest sexual potential. So Dr. Britton also says that you can think of sex coaching as integrating the mind, body, spirit and sexuality with experiential learning.

So sex coaching usually incorporates educational processes, home assignments and other resources to help clients obtain their goals. As sex coaches we are encouraged to think outside of the box and to tap into all of our resources in order to help our clients obtain the pleasurable sexual intimacy that they deserve. And each sex coach is very different. They bring their own unique experiences and skill set into their practice.

Some sex coaches focus on mindfulness, other sex coaches focus on body work. And then others may not have any actual formal training and they base their work on their life experience alone. So it’s really important to investigate and to understand the background of a sex coach because no one sex coach is the same. You’re the one that gets to choose which sex coach you want to work with. So understand the background and the training that they have. So in short, each sex coach has unique training and/or life experience which informs their sex coaching practice.

For me specifically I combine my sexual counseling skills with my life coach training, and my medical knowledge, and my experience working in a sex toy store. And I bring it all together to create my unique brand of sex coaching under The Midlife Sex Coach for Women. I like to utilize a holistic approach that emphasizes talking and processing feelings, identifying thoughts that are serving us or not serving us and changing the thoughts that are not serving us. And I also like to focus on taking action to improve any sexual concerns with my clients.

I also like to promote body positivity as well as personal empowerment for women. So I kind of throw that in there, the body positivity and also the personal empowerment because I think that’s very important. Personal empowerment is something that’s really important for the foundation of work around sex and sexuality for women. And you know my mission. I’m on a mission to end the emotional pain and isolation associated with sexual difficulties and to help women create the sex lives of their dreams.

So for me, sex coaching allows me to create this unique coaching practice that’s all my own. And to me sex coaching is like going on a sacred journey with my Diamonds, as they explore their thoughts and their feelings about sex and sexuality. I like to think of me as a sex coach as providing a container, a safe place to allow my Diamonds to focus on their unique path that leads to their sexual fulfillment. And the majority of humans are sexual beings, and the majority of people have a right to a fulfilling sex life.

There’s a small percentage that’s asexual, and that’s fine as well. If a client is experiencing emotional distress related to sex and sexuality then I am here to help. It’s my goal to provide that safe, non-judgmental, and healing environment in which my Diamonds can talk about any issues. I focus on helping my Diamonds come up with a plan to improve their situation and to support them while they’re implementing that plan in their life.

But before you get to this point where you are creating and implementing this plan to improve your sexual intimacy, first has to come the understanding of the thoughts that led to the issues, that led to the difficulties to begin with. And that’s where I like to incorporate my life coaching skills. I like to work with my Diamonds to identify the thoughts that are leading to the sexual difficulties that they’re dealing with.

So if there’s a lack of sex then I work with them to find out what their thoughts are about sex. Maybe they’re thinking this is too much work, or maybe they’re thinking this is going to take too long so I’m not actually going to engage in sexual intimacy. Maybe they’re thinking that their libido is broken. But whatever the thought is it’s generating a feeling and this feeling is leading to actions or actually non-action. The action is actually a non-action and it’s ultimately resulting in what they don’t want, this lack of sexual intimacy.

So for example if a woman is thinking my libido is broken, then the odds are that she may be feeling ashamed. And the shame is going to make her not want to engage in sex. So her actions might look like avoiding sex, maybe going to bed early to avoid her partner, maybe withdrawing from her partner’s touch or intimacy because she’s afraid that then she’s going to have to engage in some sexual intimacy act. That she doesn’t want to engage in because she feels that she’s broken and she’s going to end up doing it wrong.

And the final result of all that is that there definitely is going to be reduced sexual intimacy. But if she’s working with me then we work on exploring her thoughts and making that sure she understands that her thoughts will ultimately dictate her results. So she could actually change her thought to something like my libido’s not broken, it’s still there, it’s just in a different form. Then the feeling that she would have would not necessarily be shame, but then it could be changed into somewhat of a more neutral feeling, maybe something like curiosity.

And just shifting that thought and shifting from that shame over to that curiosity is going to make a big difference. Her actions are probably going to change as well and then she might want to explore ways that she could actually enhance or kick start her libido. And the result is going to be very different with overall improved sexual intimacy.

So as sex coaches we’re here to bounce ideas off and to regroup when plans don’t necessarily work the first time. It doesn’t have to work the first time and most of the time it won’t work the first time. Failure has to be incorporated in this work. We need to recognize that this work is experimental which means we’re figuring it out as we go, as well as experiential. There’s the component where you’re going to experience things and tweak things and you’re going to kind of bring it all together and figure out what works for you.

And we also like to emphasize as sex coaches that there is more than one way to address an issue around sexuality. And remember, sex coaches are here to do the hard work with you. So like life coaches we accompany you on the journey. We don’t leave you in the middle of the wilderness. We’re actually here for the entire trek till you get to the other side.

So if we look at sex coaches and sex counselors they actually differ from sexual therapists in that we focus on accomplishing a goal within a shorter period of time. We’re not necessarily focused on long term therapy like a sexual therapist would be. So if a client is dealing with ramifications from say trauma, or sexual abuse, or an issue that’s going to take a long time to address then it is more appropriate for the client to go and look for a sexual therapist for the care and treatment that they need as opposed to a sex coach or a sex counselor.

So also sex coaches, we don’t spend as much time dwelling on the past. If there’s childhood experiences and trauma which are impeding sexual pleasure and a deep dive is needed to sort out the issues in the past and family dynamics. Then also a sexual therapist is probably a good place for you to start as opposed to with a sex coach or a sexual counselor.

Finally, anyone that’s dealing with mental health concerns, such as depression or other psychiatric conditions, would probably work directly with a sexual therapist who is specifically trained to deal with psychiatric issues. So as I was saying, sex coaching tends to focus on the present and the attainment of our goals in the near future, not necessarily a year or two from now, but usually in a shorter period of time.

And one important factor to recognize is that the client, not the sex coach is the one that determines what the goal should be. And then the client and the sex coach work together to make that goal into a reality.

So sex coaching is a collaborative effort, it requires a client who is motivated to work. It’s not one of those things where you just come, you come and hire a sex coach and you expect that you’ll come sit down and talk to them a couple of times and fix everything. It’s not enough for the client to just show up for sessions. They must be willing to do the work outside of these sessions as well. It’s that important work outside of the sessions of implementing the actions that lead to the new results.

So when you’re with the sex coach we’re focused on your thoughts, and your feelings, and what’s going on behind the scenes. But at some point actions will need to be taken and those are the things that are taken usually outside of the setting of the session. And usually that’s kind of what we call home assignments.

And home assignments can involve many different elements such as having hard conversations with your partner, possibly journaling, doing body work and also sexual activities, and also self-pleasure to learn more about your body. So there are home assignments that we normally incorporate into sex coaching. Accountability is an important part of coaching. The coach and the client together decide on the homework assignments. And then it’s up to the client to be willing to do the work.

And even though the assignments are done outside of the sessions, the clients are never alone. For instance, with me, I’m in contact with my clients, especially my private clients between sessions either by email, or direct messaging, or texting. So if they ever have a question they can reach me directly. And that’s also another component of being a sex coach is having that connection, that continuity with our clients.

And then of course technology makes sex coaching even more convenient. I live in Minnesota but I actually have clients all over the country. So we can talk in person, if you live in Minnesota we can talk in person, or we can actually do the work via conferencing, or on the telephone, or now with the direct messaging and the texting. So there’s so many different ways that we can keep in contact with each other and that I can coach.

I do have a client that I exclusively coach through text messages because that’s how she prefers to be coached. So there’s so many different ways that we can do this coaching. There’s definitely no one way to do the sex coach work. The most important part about it is that the coaching gets done and the clients’ sex lives improve.

So, in summary, in terms of looking at what sex coaching is, sex coaching puts the client in control of the process and the outcome. The client and the coach come together and they figure out what’s the important issues to work on. And it’s something that where the focus is on the present, and creating a future goal, and not necessarily spending too much time in the past. Yes, we do look at the past in terms of how it informs the present situation. But we do spend more time looking at now and going into the future.

Also sex coaching allows practitioners to combine their training and their life experience to create their unique form of sex coaching services. So I love sex coaching in the fact that it can look like anything. But the fact that it looks like anything means that you do really need to have a good understanding of who your sex coach is. And what they’re going to be focused on, and what their training or their background is so you understand what you’re getting into. I think that’s something very important.

And then there is a focus on accountability and self-directed work. And all those things come together to help the sex coach help the client figure out how to get the results that they want.

Okay, I hope that gives you a better understanding of what sex coaching is all about.

Okay Diamonds, that’s all for today’s episode, I will see you next time. Take care. Dr. Sonia out.

Female Announcer: Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of the Midlife Sex Coach for Women Podcast. If you enjoy Dr. Sonia’s fun and caring approach to sexual intimacy, head to soniawrightmd.com to learn more.