Reclaiming Touch: Intimacy Coaching for Survivors and LGBTQIA+ Lives

My Journey to Intimacy Coaching

After many years of performing various forms of erotic labor and working as a sexuality educator, in May of 2025, I decided to start my own intimacy coaching practice. But what is “intimacy coaching,” and how and why did I approach this work?

While earning my Master of Education degree in Human Sexuality Studies at Widener University, I focused on the effects of interpersonal harm in transmasculine populations, ultimately producing a thesis entitled TransMasks: Transmasculine and AFAB Non-binary Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Assault.

In 2017, I presented my findings at the University of Amsterdam’s Division of Obstetrics and Gynecology and was met with a lot of interest and engagement from the staff and students. Still, I felt there weren’t many great opportunities to directly address healing for survivors of such trauma, and fewer still that were culturally relevant to LGBTQIA+ experience.

While at Widener, I learned about surrogate partner therapy (previously referred to as “sex surrogacy”) through a presentation by Integrative Mind-Body Therapies (IMBT). I was instantly intrigued. I saw such a clear use for survivors of sexual trauma who wished to reclaim their sexual autonomy, and for transgender and non-binary people eager to rediscover how to engage sexually in a body that had changed through medical and surgical transition. I wanted to learn more, which tipped off a nearly decade-long professional exploration into hands-on touch professional work.

Lessons from Trauma Work and Survivor Advocacy

Prior to coming to grad school, I had worked as a case manager for unhoused and system-involved youth and later for transgender people struggling with addiction. Here I learned about trauma-informed care and supporting the unique needs of each client in my caseload. I had a strong desire to help others, which is what led me to sexuality education in the first place. I knew how damaging sexual shame could be, and how the effects of sexual trauma could disrupt someone’s entire life and sense of self.

Sharing accurate information on sexuality in a non-judgmental manner has enabled me in some small way to undo the negative messaging regarding sex endemic to our Western culture. Speaking on the purpose of lesbian image making, photographer Honey Lee Cottrell said, “Most of my work is a point-for-point retaliation for damages done to me.” This is how I view my own work in the realm of sexuality, as a survivor of sexual violence as a child and adult.

In my case management experiences, I had the opportunity to work with many survivors of sexual harm, some of whom had a trauma history dating back to early childhood. I learned a lot from these experiences, and eventually worked as a prevention education expert at a small liberal arts college and eventually a large university. In all of these roles, touch was extremely discouraged because of the potential for abuse and violation of professional boundaries.

However, I reflected on all of the times I wished I could hold a client’s hand while they cried, or hug them after they shared a story of violence they’d experienced. I maintained my distance, only ever engaging in touch if a client asked me first.

In 2019, I completed Sensate Focus training through IMBT, which is a type of touch-based practice that encourages non-sexual touch that may be sensual in nature, but is designed to help a client explore touch in a graduated, highly boundaries manner. This can be used between a touch professional and a client or between romantic/sexual partners.

I started to get a clearer vision of how I wanted to approach touch work, but I wasn’t sure if surrogate partner training was the best fit for me. I kept engaging with surrogate and surrogate adjacent organizations, presenting for the Surrogate Partner Collective on best practices when working with gender diverse clients and regularly attending the AASECT Special Interest Group for Somatic Sexuality Professionals.

In 2025, I completed training to become a Certified Cuddlist, where I learned how to engage in platonic touch modalities and maintain professional boundaries. After meeting with a mentor and a separate consultant and explaining my background, skills, and approach to the work, intimacy coaching seemed to be the best fit.

Intimacy Coaching Was the Best Fit

As an intimacy coach, I work with clients to develop and achieve their goals, whether it’s coming to terms with their sexuality, understanding their relationship to their gender identity, developing a sense of sexual self-acceptance, or engaging in touch-based practices that encourage a felt and embodied sense of safety. Some clients come to me to work in tandem with their regular talk-based therapists, which is known as a triadic model. In these collaborative relationships, both the touch practitioner and “neck-up” therapist work together to meet the client’s needs if traditional therapy still isn’t producing the full desired outcomes.

I find my work deeply rewarding and feel such gratitude that my clients trust me with something so vulnerable and intimate. I love getting to help people feel more at home in themselves and to feel more confident in exploring intimacy in their own personal lives.

If you are a therapist working with clients who struggle to overcome sexual shame, trauma, or have a fear of touch-based intimacy, working with a surrogate partner therapist or intimacy coach may be a great way to augment your practice. I highly recommend reaching out to the Surrogate Partner Collective, Cuddlist, or IPSA (the International Professional Surrogates Association) to find touch practitioners near you. These can be deeply rewarding and profoundly impactful experiences for both clients and professionals alike!