Kink & BDSM
Kink and BDSM are healthy expressions of sexuality and relationship for many people. Plenty of kinky people have had the experience of a therapist who treated their desires as a red flag, or who quietly pathologized what is, for them, a source of pleasure, connection, and even healing. At MLC, we offer therapy with clinicians who can hold this part of your life without judgment and without needing you to explain the basics first.
What this work makes room for:
- Shame about your desires, often absorbed from a culture, religion, or family that treated kink as deviant or dangerous, and the slow work of setting that shame down
- Integrating kink as a healthy part of who you are, rather than as something to hide or to be at war with
- The ways kink and BDSM can be genuinely healing, including the trust, communication, presence, catharsis, and reclamation of power and the body that they can offer
- Questions about consent, negotiation, aftercare, and the ethics and communication that good kink depends on
- Navigating kink within relationships, including mismatched interests, introducing kink to a partner, and finding community
- The relationship between kink and history, including when play touches trauma, and the difference between consensual processing and reenactment that needs care
- Coming out as kinky, or choosing not to, and the stigma that can come with it
- The intersections, including how race, gender, queerness, disability, and trauma history shape your particular experience of kink
What this work can look like at MLC:
- Working with shame and the cultural, religious, and family messages that shaped it
- Supporting the integration of kink as a healthy and welcome part of who you are
- Holding the ways kink can be a site of healing, including trust, catharsis, and the reclamation of the body
- Navigating kink within relationships, including mismatched desires and finding community
- Working with the places where kink touches trauma history, with care and at your pace
- Supporting decisions about disclosure, and holding the stigma that can come with it
- Holding the intersections of identity that shape your experience
The therapists at MLC bring this work with real knowledge and real respect. We treat your sexuality, including your kink, as a legitimate part of who you are and a legitimate part of the work.
