“Finding a good gender therapist for your child can be a daunting task” writes Darlene Tando, author of the Gender Blog. Finding a good gender therapist for adults is equally as daunting and overwhelming. As Tando says, just because therapists say that they are gender experts, it does not mean that they really are. The points highlighted in Tando’s article are applicable for adults who are on the quest of finding an effective sex positive gender therapist, as well. Here are some other red flags to look out for when searching for a gender therapist.
 
Your therapist is not the priest; no need to feel obligated to share every detail of your life and the therapist is NEVER there to reprimand you or judge you. Share whatever you feel comfortable with and what you think will be necessary for the productivity of the therapy session. You are the master of your own life and the best source of information; trust yourself. If you sense the therapist is not honoring what you share and seems to overlook facts that are important to you, do not be afraid to ask the therapist why they are overlooking these issues. If you do not feel comfortable with the answer, it is time to start your search again for a sex positive gender therapist.
 
Some therapists have the need to blame all life problems on the client’s gender non-conforming or sexual preferences. If you get the sense your therapist is blaming all your struggles on your sexuality and gender identity, see this as a red flag and perhaps not the best fit for someone who is exploring their gender identity.
 
If part of your desire for gender-focused therapy is to transition in an emotionally healthy way, it is important to find a therapist sensitive to that. Deciding to start the transition process is a slow journey. If your therapist seems to be in a rush, ask him/her to slow down. This works the other way as well, if you have been in therapy before and are ready with your decision, but your therapist is rehashing topics/issues/concerns that you have all ready been through, let your therapist know. If you find your therapist is not willing to meet you where you are at, see that as a red flag. However frustrating it is, terminate with your therapist and start your quest again. 

In 2012 the FDA approved the first HIV over-the-counter, home-use test. Users can do a simple oral swab and will receive a response in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately, the test did not get the attention it deserves. The benefits of the OraQuick in-home HIV tests can help people know their HIV status a lot sooner.  The sooner someone knows their HIV status, the sooner they can get help. Treating HIV early improves treatment outcomes and quality of life.
 
The test is a simple oral swab and it will indicate a negative or positive response. A positive result on the test means the person has antibodies for the disease and should go see their primary care physician immediately. A negative result indicates the person has not been infected because the body did not build the antibodies. It is important to note that antibodies take time to build, if you know you have participated in risky sexual behaviors or shared a needle, test yourself again a few weeks or months later.
 
Many people avoid getting tested for HIV because they delay making an appointment, they are concerned about meeting someone in the waiting room, they are afraid to wait for their results an entire week, they get queasy around needles, and other reasons people avoid getting tested. The OraQuick in-home HIV test solves many of the above concerns. A. No waiting to see a doctor. The test is done in the comfort of your own home B. No need to worry about bumping into someone you do not want to meet in the waiting room C. The response is immediate, unlike other test where you wait for your results.  D. If you are afraid of needles, you do not have to draw blood. E. This is quick and easy. If you know you are at risk of contracting HIV you can stock up with these tests at home and test yourself every 3 to 6 months. If you are still not convinced, read this article on 7 reasons to get tested for HIV.
 
OraQuick can be purchased on Amazon.com #gettested
 
*Disclaimer: This article is not about endorsing the product but to bring awareness to the public. The best way to protect yourself from HIV and STD’s is practicing safe sex. 

Originally published by Jewishnews.com http://jewishnews.com/2016/06/21/watch-the-tower-fall-our-acts-of-self-sabotage/
​
Jackie is building a tower with blocks. I watch how she slowly places each block creating a taller and taller tower. Her breath is shallow as she placesthe last few blocks. She inhales before placing the last block. Then something happens. She lifts her arm, swings it back and over the tower, smirking as she watches the blocks tumble to the ground. She then announces “Ah! Just how I wanted it.”

She built the tower just so she can throw it down? Or was she afraid that the last block would cause the tower to fall and she decided to cut to the chase? In psychology the term for this behavior is self-sabotage. Self-sabotage is when we subconsciously destroy something we truly wanted.

We self-sabotage more often than we care to admit or recognize in ourselves. We self-sabotage and immediately follow up with the phrase “that is how I wanted it.” Did you? Relationships are the most common area in our life where we self-sabotage. Friendships, love relationships, marriages, work relationships, and parent/child relationships. You can self-sabotage you fitness goal, a career move, an important exam or meeting, practically any goal you set for yourself can be destroyed by you.

Why do we do it?
Self-sabotage occurs when we are afraid we will fail at our goal. In order to protect ourselves from the feeling of failure we destroy the goal on our own. Thus we can say, “That is how I wanted it”, and we effectively avoid the uncomfortable feeling of failure. Other reasons for self-sabotage are related to internal messages we say to ourselves; the need to control the ending, the need for familiarity, and the belief that one is not deserving of good things.

 “I need to control the ending”
All relationships have moments where we feel shaky and suspect the relationship might end. Some will buckle down and begin to put in the effort to make the relationship work. Others will begin to create chaos in the relationship causing the relationship to end. For example, they will begin to magnify all the flaws of their partner and decide there are too many flaws for them to stick around. Or, they will push their partner out of the relationship by being nasty, rejecting, isolating, cheating, or being difficult. Either way, the relationship ends by virtue of their actions. The dissolution of the relationship does not come as a shock because they took control and ended the relationship.

“I need to stay safe”
As psychological beings we feel safer with what is familiar to us. Even if the familiar scenes or feelings are unhealthy, we prefer the known to the unknown. If things are predictable and follow the same patterns then we know how to deal with it. When things change, even if it is for the better, we feel uneasy and confused. When a person has a history of parental emotional neglect, isolation, or people leaving from their life by divorce, death, travels; they internalize a theme that everyone in their life will eventually leave them. Since they are familiar with the feelings of being left behind they continually recreate the scene. When their relationship is moving toward connection, attachment, or commitment they panic, those are not feelings they are familiar with. After all, “everyone leaves me”. The uneasiness of the new experience causes them to destroy the relationship, forcing the other to leave them. Subconsciously the reaction to the broken relationship is; “Ah! This feels just right.”

Humans are relational creatures. We seek out and yearn for attachment. Yet, if there is a history of failed attachment during childhood, we create an ambivalent attachment map. The feelings of attachment and intimacy are pacifying yet scary. Being attached means loss. As soon as the person senses or perceives a threat of rejection he or she jumps into safety mode. In order to protect the self from the rejection, the person will preemptively leave the relationship. In a situation where most would work through the pain of rejection (or rejection never happens), they run before the rejection can occur.

Another self-sabotaging defense mechanism used to fend off rejection is being attracted to unreliable and unavailable partners. An unavailable partner can be someone who is preoccupied with his or her career, is married, or is emotionally unavailable. These types of attached-unattached relationships are a perfect fit for those who fear rejection. They get to experience superficial attachment but do not have to fear rejection because they never truly attached to the other in the first place. You cannot be rejected, if you do not attach.

“I am unworthy of the good things in life”
During our development we create a perfect imaginary image of what we should look like. I call it imaginary because this image never comes to fruition and the faster we recognize perfection is imaginary, the faster we can begin to move toward a realistic self. We judge our worthiness according to this illusory image and if we do not fit the mold we believe we are not worthy of good things in our life. The subconscious feeling of unworthiness causes us to hold good things at bay.  The feeling of unworthiness can cause constant fretting. Even if good things do happen, it will be taken away. Once again this perpetuates a cycle of avoiding success because even if success is achieved it will be short lived, so why bother at all?

You’ve been studying for many weeks for an important exam. You are confident that you will ace the exam. The night before the exam you go out drinking, you get drunk, you cannot focus on the test the next day, and you do poorly. You rationalize that you did poorly because of your drinking expedition the night prior. But, why did you go out drinking? You knew you had an exam the next day. Because, you knew (feared) you were going to do well and this will open doors for your success. You got scared, “Oh no, I do not deserve success, I am unworthy of good things in life.”

How can we change our self-sabotaging patterns?
The first step to change is to recognize our patterns. Reflect back to relationships in your past. How did the relationship end? Why did the relationship end? Who left the relationship? Are you finding a common pattern? Reflect on your life goals. What are the goals you have set for yourself and did not achieve? What got in the way of your success? Were there obstacles that you put in the way of yourself? Did you give up on your goal at the last minute?

Once you have recognized your patterns in past experiences, you can begin to identify the current behaviors you continue to do. For example, in the past, whenever you got close to getting a promotion at work you did something that caused your boss to rethink the promotion, such as missing an important deadline. The next time you are up for a promotion, become your own detective. Watch all your actions carefully. Remind yourself that these are the moments where you self-sabotage.

Knowing how to self-sooth will help you curb you self-sabotaging behaviors. As mentioned above, we sabotage ourselves because of our fear of failure and fear of rejection. If you are able to sooth your fears you are less likely to run from the possible experience of failure. A good self-soothing technique is having a short motto that you say to yourself, such as, “failure is a part of growth” or “I have the skills to overcome my failures.”

You can also self-sooth by making a connection between a past experience and your current experience. This would require the ability to introspect and identify the emotion or the internal message you are saying to yourself. Once you identify the internal message, such as “I am unworthy”, or the emotion of fear, helplessness or others, you can recognize that your message/emotion is related to a past experience or early childhood. You are simply replaying something from the past that is not necessarily current. Today does not have to end the same way as yesterday.

If your self-sabotage is because of your fear of rejection, seek out rejection. This seems counterintuitive. If one fears rejection, why would they go out and look for it? This experience would be similar to an experiment or exposure therapy. You are going to expose yourself to the stimulus you fear most. The goal is to share something about yourself or do a behavior that you believe can or will cause rejection. Begin with relationships of lesser value, perhaps a colleague before your spouse. For example, your colleague talks loudly on the phone disrupting your concentration at work. You never asked her to change because you fear that if you tell her she will dislike you. Experiment with approaching her. Then, see if the relationship takes a drastic dive. When the relationship does not fall apart and she does not reject you, do a little dance and recognize that rejection does not ALWAYS happen. If she does reject you, do a little dance as well and recognize that the feeling of rejection is not as scary as you thought. You can now up the ante on your experiment and disclose something you have been holding back from your spouse, a close friend, or parent. Follow the same steps as above and keep on dancing. Bonus points: sharing personal flaws or concerns with your partner enhances intimacy.

The next time you raise your hand to swing over your tower, ask yourself; “Is this really how I want it? Living a life where you are always obstructing your path to success is hard work. Therefor, self-sabotaging is a bad habit worthy of breaking.

Originally posted by Jewishnews.com

Distance and space are essential for creating sexual and erotic tension. Just as a burning fire needs space to burn, so do our emotions and feelings. One of the key generators of attraction is emotional space: the understanding of where you begin and end, and where the other begins and ends.

Emotional space is often created by physical distance. For example, when your lover travels abroad or is away for a business conference. The physical distance leads to feelings of longing and desire. Emotional space can also be created by emotional distancing, such as a fight. Arguments and fights between lovers distance them from each other and thus create emotional space. It is this temporary emotional detachment that results in makeup sex being so arousing and sexually stimulating.

What is it about space that fires eroticism? It’s the human nature to desire what we can’t have or what’s further than an arms distance. At the age of 5 it is the red lollypop that was taken away from us, at the age of 12 it is the computer game our parents won’t let us play, and at 16 it’s the boyfriend our friend has. From there on, throughout our adult life, we are attracted mostly to what appears out of our reach.

Creating emotional space doesn’t require physical distance or an uncomfortable fight. Emotional space can be created by self-confidence. In fact, confidence is the most effective and powerful tool in generating such space. When looking for a partner, people have different preferences and often find certain physical and personal features attractive. However, one specific feature that often tips us head over heels is a person’s confidence and assurance in their own abilities. Yes, there are a few exceptions: some people are attracted to a damsel-in-distress. However, can such attraction last? What happens when the other is no longer in distress, does the attraction fade?

Confidence creates distance because it sends the message: “I’m fine, I can function without you.”  For example, suppose you accompany your partner to her office’s holiday party. You observe her as she engages with her colleagues and boss. You see her in a different environment, playing a different role, and all of a sudden you find yourself more attracted to her then you’ve been in weeks. You might attribute it to her new party dress or perfect makeup, but it isn’t so. The “you-can’t-have” bells are beginning to ring. In this case it isn’t necessarily what you can’t have but rather about what you are not guaranteed. You realize that she has her own identity and that she is not dependent on you. You realize that she has a life outside your relationship, a corner of her own.

To make it clear, I am not referring to a snotty, arrogant, and stuck up behavior, but rather what I am describing is a genuine self-confidence and assurance. Indeed, life with a partner can enhance our experiences and our sense of who we are as people. However, having an identity outside the relationship is important. Confidence within a relationship is being comfortable and happy with who you are independently of whether you are in a relationship or not. To clarify once again, I’m not advocating for fear and paranoia that our partner might actually leave us. Living in such fear has the effect of pouring water on fire. Rather, we simply need to become aware of the emotional distance between ourselves and our partner. It is in this space that eroticism can flourish.
​
The next time you dress up – while you’re putting on heels or a fancy tie -remember that attraction is strongly dependent on your confidence and not necessarily on the way the tie brings out the color of your eyes.

Disclaimer: I use the pronoun she to describe the victim since many of the media stories about college campus rape are a male perpetrator and a female victim. This is not to discredit or overlook the rape and abuse of male victims. Where I use the pronoun she can easily be replaced with he and the facts of why we don't believe the victim would be the same. 

In the previous blog post I wrote about societies failure to admit to rape, calling rape accusations - false, and preferring to blame it all on alcohol use or on the victims behaviors and not the rapists actions. In this blog I would like to highlight some points about how the media and the court system builds their case that a rape accusation is false. Thereby, allowing the rapist to carry on without taking full responsibility for his actions. Statistics show that out of 1000 perpetrators, only 6 are convicted of rape and go to jail.   

1. The most popular reason is blaming the victim. She was asking for it, she was dressed slutty, she was into it (what does that even mean?) she was so drunk she can't remember that she said yes.
2. The victims memory is vague. "If she can't remember what happened, then how can we know she didn't say yes?" There are countless of research studies explaining how memories are altered in the event of a trauma. In order to protect our psychological wellbeing our brain will suppress the details of the traumatic event, known as dissociative amnesia. This memory loss can be short term, with the memory and details of the event surfacing shortly, or long term, where the memory and details never surface or the memories return many years later.  
3. Friends, family, colleagues, classmates of the rapist claim "he's such a nice guy, he would never do this?" As Laci Green expresses in her YouTube video "rapists aren't creepy men hiding in the shadows, they are normal guys ..." 
4. The victim convinces herself it didn't happen and retracts her statement, or comes forward months later. To admit that someone violated your most intimate space is too painful. Some victims attempt to suppress all memories of the event and they convince themselves that nothing ever happened. But sometimes, the pain keeps resurfacing and the with the help of friends, family, or a therapist they choose to come forward about the rape. Coming forward weeks or months later is used against the victim. Additionally, When a victim recognizes that she is going to have to replay and repeat over and over what happened to her in a public realm, she shuts down, and retracts her statement. She's been violated once, she cannot be violated again. 

Countless of campus rape stories and trials are in the news. Along with these public rape trials or shall we call it, public slaughter of the victims, comes the cry of "it's a false rape accusation" What terrifies me most is that the cry of false accusation is not that we've got the wrong perp but that the perpetrator claims his action was not rape. "He and the victim were merely drunk, yes of course she enjoyed it" The rapist has the audacity to claim that consent was given by someone who was so intoxicated that she doesn't even remember the details of the night. 

In stead of the focus being on a horrific sexual act and the behavior of violating a woman it becomes all about the alcohol and drinking, as you can read in the letter by the Stanford rape victim. We start to campaign against campus drinking in stead of campaigning against rape. We start to preach about controlled drinking instead of teaching consent.  We announce that alcohol is the cause of bad choices, in stead of pointing a finger at the rapist and saying "HE made the bad choice" Why? Is the topic of sex still so taboo that even when we need to protect others we still refuse to admit that sex is a thing - that we do? Society and its leaders are so comfortable speaking about campus drinking and they refuse to speak about campus sex. Dear leaders and educators, I will say it in the best way I know how; "college students are having sex!" Quite with the abstinence talk, quit with the save it for marriage blabber, quit with the threats of STDs, and start talking about SEX. Teach young adults about sex, pleasure, safety, consent, and their right to make choices! Teach young adults that they have the right to pleasure and sex as long as they ask and don't take. And maybe, just maybe, the next person who rapes won't be so confused about what consent TRULY means. ​