The practice of manifesting has gained a lot of attention over the last few years, and so for this final episode of series three I wanted to understand how manifesting can show up in our dating lives, relationships and sex lives. Defined as the practice of thinking aspirational thoughts with the purpose of making them real, I see a lot of cross over with my work as a therapist. Both practices are about helping people to remove barriers and self-doubt, build confidence and helping people to...

Despite being a condition which impacts one in five hundred women Vaginismus is a rarely discussed and often misunderstood sexual dysfunction. It’s characterised by the involuntary contraction of the muscles around the vagina which can make penetration painful, difficult and often impossible. There are unlimited reasons for why someone might be struggling with this condition, and equally many ways that it may show up for them in terms of challenges with sex, relationships, dating, body...

Love is a huge part of our humanity, and for many of us it plays a big part in how we engage with the world whether it's the love we have for a romantic or sexual partner, familial or friendship love, or the love that we have for ourselves. Our social context has changed so much across the centuries which has impacted how we love and how we think about love. So with all these changes to the world and how we live, has the role of love in our lives changed? Have we adapted love to fit our new...

Anxiety can show up in every area of our lives, and sometimes with what feels like no logical explanation or reason. One of the hardest things can also be not knowing how to communicate or explain to a partner about how we are feeling, particularly if from the outside it looks like nothing has changed. Performance anxiety can show up for us in situations both old and new, and anxiety in other areas of our life can leak into our intimate lives. This has the potential to disrupt the...

Sexual experiences involve the participation of both our bodies and our minds; and so the relationship that we have with our bodies and how we think and feel about them can hugely influence our experience of sex. Body confidence is something that comes up a huge amount in the therapy room for both men and women. Whilst it may not be explicitly obvious that it’s why we are struggling with sex and intimacy; challenges with body confidence and negative thoughts about our bodies can distract and...

Break ups are one of the inevitable risks of starting a relationship, and something that most of us will go through in one shape or another during our lifetimes. Break ups are also regularly the theme of stories on our screens, stages, books and in our music and in many ways we are obsessed with love stories and their endings. There are also so many questions around break ups that we don't have the answers to.    Is there a 'good' way to break up? Can we ever be friends with an ex? Can it...

Whenever I discuss what I do as a job there is much curiosity about what happens behind the door of the therapy room. This is why I really wanted to host a conversation with someone who knows what that's like from the other perspective, as the client. This is because as much as I can talk about therapy from the position of the therapist, it will never give a full view of what the experience of psychosexual therapy is really like.  So my guest for this episode is author of the...

The idea of 'the talk' is something that fills many parents and caregivers with anxiety. The worry about what to say, how to answer questions and getting it right can feel pretty daunting. Paired with the fact that many of us didn't have a perfect version of 'the birds and the bees' chat ourselves means that we don't feel set up to know how to talk to our kids about sex and relationships.    This is why my guest today is the brilliant sex educator Sarah Sproule, who makes it her mission to...

Shame is a feeling that often comes paired with sex, and is an emotion that as a therapist I regularly hear people describe that sex makes them feel. This is why I really wanted to host a conversation around the relationship between sex and shame, where we think it comes from and what we think is maintaining it. Sex is so much more than just the act of what we are doing, and it holds meaning for us which is why when we view what we are doing sexually as shameful, or feel shame around our...

Our sex lives are subject to many gendered messages and narratives which shape how we think that our sex lives 'should' look. Engrained messages about masculinity, manhood and how men should act in sexual situations can influence sex lives both consciously and unconsciously, in what today's guest Cam Fraser describes as the idea of 'Man Box Culture'.   Cam and I unpack some of the myths of masculinity and sex that are impacting men.  We also talk about how the language that we use can be...

Induced menopause refers to when menopause happens after surgical removal of the ovaries, radiation or chemotherapy damage to the ovaries, or from the use of other medications to intentionally induce menopause as part of the treatment of certain diseases. The main difference to the process of natural menopause is that there is a rapid onset of symptoms rather than the gradual onset that occurs with natural menopause. It’s also often happening at the same time as diagnosis, treatment or...

Kicking off series three is a conversation with the absolutely brilliant Eleanor Tattersfield @marbyandelm who has been collecting the UK’s sex secrets. Anonymously sent to her on postcards this collection of cards are absolutely stunning, and they really do have a story to tell in terms of what’s going on in our sex lives and how we think and feel about sex.   I talk to Eleanor about how I think the postcards are a form of sex education; and are opening up our narratives about what we find...