An Inclusive Therapist In Austin For Your Journey To The Top

Currently, I’m accepting potential clients on a waitlist-basis. Please reach out to discover if there is availability or to be added to the waitlist. 

In brief, sex therapy is just therapy about sex. I work with all sorts of folx on all sorts of issues but I specialize in topics related to gender, kink, queer and trans identities, polyamory, purity culture, and yeah, sex. Though there’s nothing sexual about the therapy itself I do work with several body-based approaches including meditation, polyvagal theory, and somatic experiencing. I also team with Lauren Mason Yoga to provide collaborative and body-informed care.

In short, as long as it needs to and as often as it should be. Everyone’s needs and resources are going to be different. When I work with someone new it’s generally my hope that we can start by getting together once a week, at least for the first month or so.

With couples, we’ll often start with a couple of group sessions before occasionally breaking out and meeting one-on-one. Most folx will experience some form of relief within 3 or so weeks, with lasting change in as little as a few months.

But again, everyone’s needs and resources are going to be different, and that’s okay. We’ll work together to find a strategy that works with what you have and meets your needs.

Both! I have an in-person office located off Mopac between Jollyville and Far West at 8810 Business Park Dr #100, Austin, Texas 78759.

Maybe. Counselors are encouraged to avoid dual relationships, which is to say if you are my client I don’t want you to also be my dentist or my barber, or the parent or partner of my other client. In the real world there are definitely some inevitable exceptions to this idea- if I know you are a barista at such and such coffee shop I’ll likely avoid the place but if I sit down with my family for dinner and you happen to be the one bringing out our menus I’m not going to announce ‘THIS PERSON IS MY CLIENT’ and storm out of the restaurant. In fact, if you and I do bump into each other out in the world, trust that unless you initiate conversation I will pretend we’ve never met in order to protect your privacy. 

Many if not most therapists will refuse to work with or perhaps even speak to couples on an individual basis. The thinking here is that when working with a couple, ‘the couple’ itself is the real client, rather than the actual people in the relationship. Personally, I reject this framework whole cloth. When I work with a relationship I often ask if we are here in order to heal or improve a relationship or to find a healthy way to end it, or perhaps trying to figure out which is best for us. The idea is always that the relationship and the work we are doing on it is in service of the constituent members, the people not the institution.  

When I work with a relationship I typically invite each individual member to meet with me one-on-one. The purpose of these meetings isn’t to be conspiratorial or to keep secrets from each other but I also recognize that even as we are working towards better communication and greater intimacy there may still be things you aren’t ready to tell your partner, that they aren’t ready to hear or that you could use some help in knowing how to say. While I don’t require a perfect one-to-one ratio I do expect that we keep the number of individual sessions more or less equal between partners in order to avoid not only my own biases, but the appearance of those biases so that everyone can feel safe and comfortable within the counseling relationship. 

Further Reading: Is It Ever Okay to Treat a Couple and an Individual in It? When is individual and conjoint therapy appropriate and clinically indicated? By Dr. David Ley for Psychology Today 

Over the course of my practice, I have had to adjust prices as I’ve gone from intern to LPC and as inflation and Austin’s cost of living continues to rise. For many of the clients who have found me at various stages of my career my current price points would be challenging or unreachable and so since opening Valence Counseling I have never raised prices for established clients.

If we choose to work together I commit to maintaining a lifetime price point commensurate with the one agreed to in our original contract to the best of my ability and currently have no plans to increase anyone’s rates.

I recognize that counseling can be very expensive and, like most aspects of American healthcare, exists in a financial system that many of us find untenable. I strive to be accessible by working with insurers and offering affordable care through my partnership with OpenPath, the use of legacy pricing, and pro bono work.

To reduce that burden I invite all of my full-pay clients to request up to a $50 reduction in fees for any reason. No income verification, no hardship waiver, just a commitment to pay what you are able to.

In an effort to work towards a more just world compassionate pricing is offered upon request to all teachers, sex workers, non-profit employees as well as families of trans youth.

Yes- therapists are generally encouraged to keep their personal values and beliefs if not a secret then at least out of their clinical work but with my rather public advocacy and educational work with the Atheist Community of Austin it would be silly to say otherwise.

As a member of the Board of Directors, show producer, and host on the Atheist Experience Network I can plainly say I am an atheist, an empiricist, and a materialist to the extent that such things matter. That said while many of my clients come to me from the atheist or #exvangelical community I work with all sorts of folx.

Many of my clients, past and present, hold beliefs in a god or gods or other beliefs about the supernatural and we continue to do beautiful work together. I have no interest in using my clinical work to ‘convince’ or ‘recruit’ anyone to any sort of belief system- I just want to meet you and see what sorts of ideas I can help you wrap your mind around on the way to growth and healing.