Not all sexual activities are safe, but that doesn’t mean they’re shameful

Lessons from a sex therapist who’s breaking from normcore psychology

(P.S. talking sex, not assault which is not sex because it is not consensual)

As a therapist in training, one thing is harped on all of the time: “Your client’s safety should come first!”

And that’s true to an extent! It’s a mix of caring about your safety because we care about you and (let’s be honest) a fear of being sued.

At DomCon last week, a presenter from The Kink Collective brought up a good point:

BDSM isn’t safe.

We can communicate, prepare, and safe-word until the cows come home, but people still die in consensual kink acts (it’s very rare but non-zero).

And that got me thinking about how maybe one of the most important parts of becoming a s*x therapist has been to expand my capacity to hold the idea of “safety” in new or different ways.

My version of “safe” might not be yours and that’s okay. How can we hold space together to figure out what that is?

A lot of folks don’t necessarily know their own boundaries around safety: this is a really common trauma response.

And I’d argue that the “all or nothing” way therapists look at safety is a trauma response too.

But trauma responses as a response to a trauma response don’t really get us anywhere- this is where I think a lot of therapy can fall flat.

Just because something is inherently not “safe” does not make it bad or the person who does it bad (um, hello, driving a car anybody?!).*

You are not shameful just because you have an interest in something that isn’t “safe”.

*in 2021: 3 people died related to BDSM related deaths while 42,939 people died in car accidents that same year. And yet no one is shaming automobile drivers!

Instead of immediately having an automatic “all or nothing” response to safety, it’s actually really juicy to think of safety as an umbrella topic.

Such a rich area to explore!!

There’s themes of safety, risk, connection, self-care, access to resources, self-identity & expression, and so much more!

How do you know when something is safe? What does that mean?

What feels safe to you? What feels risky but worth it? What feels risky and not worth it?

What comes up for you around risk? How do we tolerate the discomfort of risk? How can we expand that?

(These would all make excellent journal prompts BTW).

And if you’re a healer reading this, where do you need to hold yourself? Support yourself to create space for you and your client?

Having a fear response and immediately shutting someone down for wanting to express themselves can recreate trauma.

For instance, a client tells you they have a specific fetish and you shut down the conversation out of fear: that recreates the dynamic of the world telling folks with a fetish that they’re “bad”, “wrong”, or “dirty”.

Overall, I think there’s a lot of nuance and juice in our own personal conceptions of safety and risk. A lot is lost when we ourselves cannot tolerate the risk.

If we could investigate our own thoughts, feelings, and actions around safety/risk/boundaries/self expression/sexuality, maybe we could stop projecting onto others… and what a world that would be!