Blog

All children need help to find their voice. For some young people, the act of speaking up or speaking out is associated with experiences of being ignored, discredited or silenced. To mark the beginning of Children’s Mental Health Week 2024, adolescent psychotherapist and author Jeanine Connor reflects on the therapeutic process of enabling a young person to believe that their voice matters – and to feel heard outside the therapy room, too.

How can we best support clients with issues related to Gender, Sexual and Relationship Diversity? How can we ensure that therapy doesn’t overlook guilt and shame – or foreclose pleasure and pride? Continuing her blog series, psychosexual therapist, supervisor and author Cate Campbell discusses some common client concerns relating to sexual identity, shares some helpful interventions, and emphasises the continued relevance of such learning when working with straight, cisgender clients.

Questioning what gender and sexuality mean for us as individuals is an ordinary part of development. Yet for many young people engaged in this process, being mislabelled and misunderstood by professionals – and parents – is too often the response. Jeanine Connor, adolescent psychotherapist and author, delivers some pressing advice for anyone tempted to dismiss a young person’s contemplation of gender identity as ‘just a phase’.

Curiosity is an invaluable therapist tool. But it also has a shadow side. As therapist and sex educator Lucie Fielding explains, trans and gender expansive people are only the latest to experience invasive and objectifying questioning in the guise of clinical curiosity – especially when it comes to sex and bodies. Here, the author of Trans Sex proposes a new curiosity framework to benefit all clients, and shares three principles for practising with ‘ethical curiosity’.

When it comes to sexual issues, some of us may be avoiding the subject with clients while others are in danger of working beyond our competency. Where do the borders lie between ‘regular’ therapy and sex therapy? What kinds of physical difficulties and relational concerns can we listen out for? How might we make informed choices about professional development and referral? Beginning a new blog series, psychosexual therapist, supervisor and author Cate Campbell outlines the numerous ways that sexual issues may show up in therapy – or be lurking just out of sight.