11: Kink Informed on the Leather Couch with Stefani Goerlich

The Natasha Helfer Podcast

I’m so glad I got the chance to talk to Dr. Stefani Goerlich all about kink! So many misperceptions and taboos abound around this sexual topic and anytime we can dismantle discrimination and edify education, we all get healthier.

Stefani Goerlich is an award-winning author of The Leather Couch: Clinical Practice with Kinky Clients, and the advance-practice sequel Kink-Affirming Practice: Culturally Competent Therapy from the Leather Chair. Stefani is an AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist and an expert in working with Gender, Relationship, and Sexuality Diversities as well as religious minority clients, and has over 15 years’ experience in supporting survivors of domestic and sexual trauma.

Describing herself as “building bridges between the margins and the mainstream,” Stefani has worked with high-risk young people, commercial sex workers, and survivors of human trafficking- among others. In addition to her work as The Society for Sex Therapy and Research’s Diversity Chair, she is the founder of Bound Together Counseling, a boutique private practice based in Detroit, Michigan, where she offers Sex, Relationship and Mental Health therapy to members of the GSRD community, their partners, and their families; and co-founder of the Securing Sexuality podcast and conference which educates listeners about safe sex in a digital age by exploring the intersection of intimacy and technology.

Stefani holds a Master’s in Social Work from Wayne State University, where she specialized in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, earned her Post-Graduate Certificate in Sex Therapy from the University of Michigan, and recently completed her PhD in Clinical Sexology. A member of the University of Michigan Sexual Health Certificate Program Teaching Faculty, she is a licensed Clinical Social Worker in Michigan, Ohio, and Arizona and is currently putting the finishing touches on her next book, With Sprinkles on Top: Everything Vanilla People and Their Kinky Partners Need to Know to Communicate, Explore, and Connect, coming in Fall 2023.

You can follow Stefani on Instagram at @BoundTogetherCounseling and by visiting www.boundtogethercounseling.com or www.securingsexuality.com

Intro ("Fisher's Hornpipe") and outro by Otter Creek

Podcast edited by: Ashley Pacini