Are you suffering from sexual frustration?
How do you find professional support to find and explore your true sexual self? Jonathan Aldfrith explains how professional help has transformed his sex life.
After many years of experiencing sexual frustration and feeling unfulfilled, I decided that the best way to make changes to my rather dull sex life was to seek some professional sex therapy.
The first step was finding and working with a sex therapist, then a sexological bodyworker who helped me listen to my inner feelings and desires. They supported me in adopting a positive attitude, encouraged me to think and act differently and gave me the confidence to go for it. And, believe me, I have truly gone for it.
Finding the right person to work with is absolutely crucial, and for me, it was Sue Newsome, a qualified sex and relationship therapist with over 20 years of experience who supports couples, individuals, and people with disabilities to have more satisfying relationships and sexual fulfilment.
But it took me quite a time before I found Sue, and I have to admit to several false starts in my sex therapy journey.
If you are looking to find someone to support your sexual journey and help with sexual frustration, here are a few things to bear in mind.
Sex therapy – where to start?
You’ve probably heard of sex and relationship therapy, but there are other professionals working in this area, too, such as sex coaches and sexological bodyworkers.
Essentially, a sex therapist will practice therapeutically by talking through issues and exploring them with their client with the intention of effecting beneficial changes. They should be accredited to governing bodies such as ASIS (The Association of Somatic and Integrative Sexologists) or COSRT (College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists). They are likely to work with a supervisor who offers support and can provide a clinical overview of their cases.
Other professionals include sexological bodyworkers who are more practical and have a bottom-up approach. They work with the body more than the mind, helping you explore what feels good through physical touch and sensation. The organisation to which practitioners belong is The Association of Certified Sexological Bodyworkers.
Without a doubt, the best way to find someone—whether you are looking for a sex therapist or a sexological bodyworker—is via a personal recommendation, and I was lucky as this was how I found Sue.
If you don’t have a recommendation, you can try various directories such as Sex Coach You. When searching, look for professional qualifications and membership in a certified body. Then, look at the language a practitioner uses on their website, check their ethos and see if all this fits with you and the sex therapy support you are after.
Finding a sex therapist that’s right for you
After reading Sue’s website it was evident that all the professional boxes were well and truly ticked. And she seemed to speak my language. So I arranged a brief online conversation with her to see if we could work together. It’s important that this initial meeting is not a sex therapy or coaching session. It’s an exploratory discussion for both parties. If you don’t feel things are working or the match isn’t quite right, try someone else.
Sue and I clicked quite quickly. We shared a corporate background, which I found greatly helpful as we could readily analyse a situation and relate it back to overall aims. More significantly, she has a very strong and genuine desire to help people develop sexually.
Passion, knowledge, and empathy are really important things to look for in a sex therapist. Other qualities may be important for you, but I, would suggest you make a note of them before you start searching so you can fit the professional to your brief and not your brief to the professional.
Sue and I agreed to have our first session together over Zoom.
“Getting to understand what the client is really after is where I like to start,” explains Sue. “Very often, an initial enquiry can be a cry for help or support. But I try to get beyond this and find out what is really going to make a difference to them and what they actually can do to change things.”
How to talk about sexual issues and sexual frustration?
Our first sessions were very exploratory, and Sue let me express and explain my sexual frustrations, which I found hugely cathartic. “I could see your struggle and that it was making you very unhappy,” she tells me, looking back after many months working together.
But it was when Sue tried to get me to think beyond problems and articulate what I could do to change things I began to take small but significant steps forward.
“Finding out what might make a practical difference is one of the keys to progress,” says Sue.
For me, this moment came when we devised tiny new ways to express my sexuality. This involved everything from changing my masturbation routine, learning new ways of self-stimulation, pleasuring myself in ways that did not lead to orgasm and occasionally venturing out without underpants under my trousers, among many others.
But the physical aspects of my work with Sue were—for me at least—definitely secondary to those involving my thoughts and feelings. I began to accept my sexual desires and stopped fighting against them. I started to see my sexual self differently, and I began to not only appreciate it but see it as something special and unique which needed to be nurtured. I redefined my sexual code, and in so doing, I truly opened my eyes. It was like suddenly seeing in colour for the first time.
As a result, my sexual confidence grew, and the world of tantra was something we began to discuss.
What else can sex therapy offer?
By now, Sue had a good understanding of me and knew that I needed a truly supportive and nurturing tantric practitioner, someone who could ease me into tantra slowly, gently and safely. She introduced me to the sexological bodyworker Jem Ayres.
I submitted a very detailed ‘intake’ form to Jem and then spoke with her over the phone. Again I felt very quickly that Jem was a very good fit for me. But this feeling needs to be reciprocated if the client/therapist relationship is going to be a good one. Luckily for me, it was.
“I like to work with someone who is open-minded and appreciates that sex is more than something that is just functional,” Jem explains. “You definitely met these two criteria. And the fact that you had a wider understanding about tantra definitely helped, and that you weren’t daunted about breath work and energy circulation.”
With Jem I’ve enjoyed several hands-on tantric sessions, experiencing the richness of breath work and discovered how to truly let go and feel pleasure. I’ve enjoyed an array of different forms of touch (and not always on places you might think might be touched by a tantrica!).
During one particularly intense session that didn’t even involve genital touch, my whole body started shaking into what you could call a full-body orgasm. I was taken aback by the intensity of this and still can’t believe that it happened. But this is something Jem has witnessed often among those with whom she works. “It’s like the nervous system releases energy,” she says. “It’s often a sign that the body is comfortable enough to let go and can be a really positive experience.” I totally agree. It felt as if my muscles and nerves had been, almost literally, switched on and connected to some intense, wonderful and benign power source.
Continuing your journey with sexual therapy
I joined one of Jem’s mixed online book clubs, where about ten of us discussed Mind the Gap: The Truth About Desire and How to Futureproof Your Sex Life by Dr Karen Gurney. Talking about sex with both men and women put me out of my comfort zone for sure. But I think that is why I gained so much from it. I’ve learnt that you grow when you push against your boundaries, providing you push in the right way with the right support.
I also went to one of Jem’s Tantric Temple events, which was the biggest step I’d yet taken. Here I found new forms of connection and touch. Indeed, much of the work was around the tiniest and most subtle of touches—a stroke on the palm of the hand or fingers running up an arm.
“When it comes to sex,” Jem explains, “less is so often more. Much more. It’s so often about doing less and simply tuning in to what can seem really little things—like the nature of the touch of a finger on a wrist.” There was so much to appreciate when I learnt how to focus on just this. And I mean really focus.
Then, when it came to asking how I would like that finger to move and how much pressure to apply, my sense of touch seemed to move to a different, almost ethereal level.
Further into the session, I began to learn how to sense what I wanted and also to articulate this. I also learnt how to know what I didn’t want and what my boundaries were. All these were new lessons for me, which were going to prove critically important for some of my later explorations.
While I kept my underwear on throughout the event, others didn’t and being in a space where people were so free and open was beyond liberating.
How sex therapy has helped me
My work with Sue and Jem has given me the confidence to take steps I would once have thought too adventurous, and I recently enjoyed a visit to a fetish club.
I asked Sue about my achievements so far, and she was very honest: “I always felt you were going to progress, I was just unsure what shape this might take. I have been struck by the milestones that you have achieved, and for me, this is tremendously rewarding.”
Sue is also very supportive of new practitioners and those who also provide accessible sex education, “Sex therapy is a really important area which is much needed right now. Working in this field holds both challenges and enormous rewards.”
As for my sex therapist journey, I feel as if I have grown a great deal, and this is apparent in other parts of my life. I no longer feel sexually frustrated, and that has lifted a massive burden off me. I am more positive, I have more energy, and I am far more confident in life in general.
If you’ve been feeling sexually stuck recently, perhaps unable to express your desires to your partner or even yourself, or endlessly striving for seemingly unattainable sexual goals, I can thoroughly recommend giving sex therapy a try.