Jen Meyer is the owner and founder of Jen Meyer Therapy, LLC, a private therapy practice in the Cherry Creek neighborhood of Denver, Colorado. As a highly sought-after sex therapist who works with a wide variety of concerns related to sex, intimacy and relationships, Jen strives to provide every client with effective therapy treatment in an affirming and compassionate environment that gives them the greatest opportunity to travel the path towards their best self.. As a highly-motivated professional dedicated to perfecting her craft, Jen travels frequently to obtain training on the latest therapy tools and trends from the best and most well-known minds in the sex therapy world.
She is also active within and has been asked to present to various profession organizations both locally and nationally that help maintain her integrated network of healthcare professionals for her clients benefit, including the following: Sexual Health Alliance (SHA), American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT), American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (AAMFT), Denver Sexual Medical Alliance (DSMA) and Colorado Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (COAMFT). Jen has also pursued a number of professional certifications along the way, including her CST, LMFT and LPC. She obtained a Masters of Art (MA) in Counseling from Oakland University, a fully accredited program by the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), and has completed a one-year program Sexual Health Certificate Program. Jen takes pride in being surrounded by some of the best sexologists and healthcare professionals in her field, many of whom continue to be dear friends, along with many others who continue to inspire her and make her a better person and therapist.
Jen Meyer will be presenting at Sexual Health Alliance’s event, Ethics, Ethical Dilemmas, Decision Making And Countertransference Online Sexceptional Weekend on June 1st and 2nd, 2024. SHA’s Community Development Coordinator, Michelle Melville-Kashon, interviewed Jen Meyer about ethics and sex therapy and the upcoming ethics event.
The gray lines of having a professional and personal life as a sex therapist
Michelle: Hi, everyone. I'm Michelle from Sexual Health Alliance, and today I am speaking with Jen Meyer. Jen, would you like to introduce yourself?
Jen Meyer: Hi, everyone. I'm Jen Meyer. I'm a licensed professional counselor, a licensed marriage and family therapist, a certified sex therapist, and now a certified sex therapy supervisor. So it's been a long journey. I've been doing therapy for probably, I’m getting older, about 20 years, and I've been focused more in the sex therapy realm for a little over ten, I think. So that's a little bit about me.
Michelle: Yeah. Wonderful. Well, we're so happy to have you here today. And Jen is going to be presenting at our ethics event coming up in June. So we're going to talk a little bit about what Jen's going to be presenting about. So, Jen, what are you going to be talking about at the ethics event?
Jen Meyer: I am going to be talking about very excited to be doing another event with Sexual Health Alliance. Love working with you all, but I'm going to be doing just a presentation on how to navigate professional and personal relationships. And what I mean by that is a lot of times as we're building our careers, we're also building our network and our communities and we sort of find our people, our tribe, or people who we think are our tribe. And just like any relationships, there can be some gray, like thin gray lines where we're trying to keep things professional, but we're also trying to have a personal life and not a whole lot of people understand the kind of work, especially for those of us in the sex therapy, sex education, sexuality counseling fields. What we do in coaching and all of that. So it's hard to find folks who can keep up and have the conversations that feel good and helpful for us.
Ethics is not just about clients, it’s about other professionals
Michelle: So somebody watching this might be like, okay, I thought ethics was just for working with our clients. Like, what does ethics have to do with your professional colleagues in those professional relationships?
Jen Meyer: Well, I mean, when it comes to like client work, we know that, you know, can we be friends with our clients? And the, you know, quick black and white answer to that is like, no, that's, that's not okay. And but because they are dual, dual relationships. Unfortunately, when it comes to our personal and professional lives and those relationships that we build in our communities, everything is fluid and in flux all the time. So it's not as black and white. And there are things that we have to be really thoughtful about and considerate about all the time.
Somebody might start off as a therapist and focus on being a therapist and build up a community of colleagues who become friends, who are also therapists, And then one day that person might become a supervisor in a specialty area. Or maybe they're teaching in a workshop or an event and for that weekend or that time period, it might change the nature of that friendship or relationship based on like guidelines, rules from organizations and whatnot that we're a part of.
Michelle: So what are some examples of things that could happen? I know you just mentioned when there's like a power differential, like somebody becomes a supervisor or somebody is a leader. What other kind of ethical dilemmas do sex therapists or sexuality professionals face when it comes to their professional colleagues?
Jen Meyer: Oh, I've been hearing, especially since I've become a supervisor, or even when I was a supervisor in training, a lot of things started to become, I gained more awareness about some of the complexities. I started hearing more and more dilemmas. And one thing that I think about when it comes to certain communities, you might have somebody who is a supervisor and they have a great relationship with their supervisee, and then that supervisory relationship ends. And then the question is, is it okay now if they're on the same playing field and there isn't a dual relationship anymore, can they be friends?
Can they hang out on a more personal level? What if they have shared interests, common activities, common communities, like maybe they're both involved in the kink community? Are they able now, since they are no longer supervisor-supervisee, and there's an awareness that they have this common interest and maybe they're trying to protect themselves from being in spaces where clients might be. Is it okay if they are in that kind of kink community together or maybe engaging in play activities, or is that a no go? Right. I mean, there's definitely people who have their own opinions or preferences, but to me, that seems like an ethical gray area
Michelle: Right. Because ethically, like if somebody is your supervisor, are you just not supposed to do things like that with them outside of like your supervisor-supervisee relationship?
Jen Meyer: If you are the supervisor, then obviously you cannot cross that boundary because that would be a dual relationship, right? You have power over that person. But if that relationship ends, the person gets certified and you're back to being on the same playing field again where you have the same power, that power differential is no longer there. Does that still hold true?
I'm thinking about other situations too. I mean, it's just like other personal relationships. What if you are somebody who's out there networking, you’re excited, you know, you're maybe a young professional or you're new to the field and you're getting to know different people and you don't realize that you've now developed friendships with people who've had a falling out. And you somehow, unintentionally are in this space of getting triangulated. And one of the people who you might even look up to, wants you to choose, but the thing is, you're in this position where it's like, Oh, gosh, I really appreciate both of these people. Both of these spaces. This is really good for my career. Like, I like to be here and doing this for my career and over here and doing this for my career. Why should I have to choose? But you have somebody who's maybe asking you to do that. You can get kind of stuck.
I'm even thinking about other situations where you might have somebody sharing with you about a friend that they've had a tough occurrence in some sort of other professional relationship with them. And you have to sort of keep that, hold that, maybe hold that secret. I mean, it's not like the person did anything that would need to be reported. But you're hearing somebody complain about a colleague and friend, and you were shared this information. That information was shared with you in confidence. So you really can't approach your friend and talk to them or confront them and bring it up with them. You've got to sort of hold that and keep that private from somebody who you might call friend.
Small circles and small communities can have big problems when it comes to sex therapy ethics
Michelle: Yeah, And I think too, with sex therapy and sexuality professions, I think it's so kind of a new and upcoming profession. And the circles are a little bit smaller. Like people tend to know everybody else. And, you know, you meet up at the same conferences or attend the same events. And so I think that might happen a little more in this industry or in smaller professions.
Jen Meyer: It absolutely does. It absolutely does. And people are learning at different paces. I know that we've had a situation that this came up for us a few years back where there was a training and one person, it was there was a married couple attending the training, but one person was attending as a student and one person was technically the teacher. And so even though they had been married for 20 plus years. Per some of the organized national rules guidelines, they were supposed to not engage in touch, but they're a married couple and have been married longer than longer that they've even been engaged in the profession. So like, that creates kind of an interesting dilemma.
Michelle: Yeah, that is interesting because in that situation, what are you supposed to do? Is the one spouse supposed to just not teach and miss that opportunity to teach? Or one spouse supposed to not learn? Or you just pretend like you don't know each other? Like that's awkward!
Jen Meyer: Especially if, as you were saying, our small communities, everybody already knows you know each other or you're married. It just creates a very odd dynamic indeed. Yeah, absolutely.
Michelle: So do you think in like the sex therapy and sexuality professions, there's maybe like different ethical dilemmas that happen than in like other professional organizations or professions?
I do, because we do have a more, I don't want to say sexually charged environment, but that topic is sort of out there and there are different, different sub communities within the field. Whether it's like kink or consensual non-monogamy or even like LGBTQIA+ folks where it's like you get these like minded people who might be a part of different organizations, like other organizations outside of our professional organizations together, where it's just natural to form a bond, a friendship. And it can be difficult with some of those. I guess I hate the word marginalized, but like communities that just aren't as well, they're not as well known. Like it can be harder to meet folks within those communities.
So then when you find somebody who they appreciate what you appreciate, they're part of the organizational community. They do what you do. They speak therapy. I mean, therapy alone. I mean, let alone sex therapy. But, you know, when I think about this kind of the field of mental health, I've talked to many a friend who they're not sex therapists and we joke and talk about how small talk can be kind of tough for us. Like we don't. How do you do that? Like, you just want to go deep. For a lot of people who are in the field, whether it's coaching, you know, it's hard to find other people who will go to that level that quickly. And so when you layer on these other complexities of like, oh, and who else wants to talk about like the latest kink con, you know, who's going to that? Trying to hang out or be able to be more authentic to who you are as a sexual being. And integrate that into your personal life. But trying to keep that separate from your professional life when there might only be so many of us in a general area, like a metro area, in the location in the country.
Working in sexuality is different from other professions
Michelle: And I think too, that like with sex therapists and sexuality professionals, we're put in situations with our colleagues that other professions would never be put in. You know, if I'm thinking of like going to like an in-person SAR or like a more advanced SAR. Never in my life have I ever sat and watched porn with my colleagues until I started working at Sexual Health Alliance and I started going to the SARs. And so it's something that was brand new for me and it was a brand new experience. And I think that's very unique to this profession.
Jen Meyer: Absolutely. It definitely is. I mean, we're talking about certain topics that a lot of people don't talk about at all. I mean, we, this country, does not do a great job of getting us to learn how to talk about sex. Right. So, you know, for us to be in a space where that's essentially the bulk of what we're talking about, the conversations that come up, I mean, my goodness, like the things that we talk about, if you were at a typical corporate, in a typical corporate environment, you could get charged with sexual harassment.
I mean, I think of, you know, one example that comes up for me is that my partner at one of his work events, it was a meeting of sorts, and people were really pushing, asking him what I did for work. And at some point he did share. And one person all only said was, Oh, she's a therapist. What kind of therapist? Well, technically, she is a relationship therapist. He always tries to like water it down. And then somehow, you know, people kept pushing and he's like, well, technically, she's a relationship and sex therapist. That was all he said. But that was enough for one of the people to go back and complain and say that that was a concern for them.
Michelle: Wow. Yes. And it's so hard. And I know my spouse feels kind of the same way, like going to, you know, explain to people what I do for work. It's like you don't want to make other people uncomfortable. But also, there's no shame, and what we do is amazing work, you know? And so it's like finding that balance is really hard sometimes.
Jen Meyer: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know, it can be tough not to talk about our work. I mean, we live in we live in a world where one of the first questions that people tend to ask one another is, what do you do? And I mean, for a long time, for multiple reasons, I've learned how to have different kinds of boundaries around that. I remember when I first started off in the field, I thought, Oh my goodness, this is going to be so fun to talk about in my personal life or at like cocktail parties or something, you know, what do you do? And people will gather around and it'll be so fun.
And then I realized the type of attention that I attracted or who I attracted when I would share what I did for work. That was not fun for me. The people who cornered me either thought that me being a sex therapist meant that I was potentially a sex worker. Where there's nothing wrong with that. But then the energy I would get from them did not make me feel comfortable. It wasn't fun for me. Or I would maybe end up speaking with somebody who had a little too much to drink. And they wanted like all kinds of advice and asking invasive questions in a different kind of way.
Michelle: Knowing how to handle those kind of situations is something that is helpful to know when you're in a sexuality profession, like therapists, educator, counselor, coach, like knowing what kind of language you're going to use and that kind of thing can be helpful.
Jen Meyer: Absolutely. Well, even thinking about I think about people who I've known in this particular niche in this field who are worried about coming out about who they are. And here we are trying to do the work where we're helping our clients integrate who they are as a sexual being with their life, whatever that may be, and then it can feel really vulnerable for folks to say, Actually, I'm in an open relationship dynamic. I'm kinky, I'm, you know, I identify as non-binary. It seems like orientation, it seems like for a lot of folks, they might not be as worried about that. I will say that the field does a pretty good job with that.
But things can be weaponized. People turn out friends today, colleagues today, just like in our personal life and can turn on us. I've seen so many relationships gone awry where people were business partners or workshop partners like co-presenters, and they were really aligned until they weren't. And all it takes is for one of those people to get a little vengeful, get a little vindictive. And, you know, I've heard of people having false complaints filed against them, whether it's through a professional organization or maybe through a state licensure board.
But that's really scary and damaging. And so when we're making decisions about who we're going to align ourselves with, these are all things that we need to take into consideration as well as other people who could be impacted. But it's hard to know who could turn on you. You just never know.
Being prepared to handle professional ethical dilemmas can save your career
Michelle: And that kind of leads me into my next question for you about, what can happen if you're not prepared to handle these ethical dilemmas? And an ethical situation comes up with a colleague and you haven't thought through how you might handle that. Like what could happen?
Jen Meyer: Well you can be putting yourself in a real pickle. I mean, often, especially if you have been doing things on the up and up, like you haven't crossed any real boundaries, there hasn't been a boundary crossing of sorts. And you're you're dealing with someone who maybe did something out of vengeance or spite. Chances are you're going to be able to find a way to work around that, or you start to figure out who you can talk with, who you can consult with.
Like I think I've I've known some people who've had to do paid consultations because that's all confidential. So, like, you can talk about your dilemma if you're paying for the consultation and it's confidential and it's not you violating any other guideline, principle, that the work is the organizations might have in place. You're not like bad talking the other person who could be bad talking you, but you definitely you definitely want, you need guidance, you need help. And so because I see so many people who will be in these situations and the issue is that they feel really isolated, really alone, sometimes bullied or harassed. If things get really ugly and you know, what happens if, like the people who you were aligned with are people in positions of power? Right. Maybe they were further along in their career. Maybe they aspire to be heads or leaders of an organization or a board. And you did something that they don't like and now they're upset with you, right? And so just being able to think about knowing what's legal and what's ethical, understanding the distinctions, there is something that you would really want to do.
Make sure you've got good support systems. And if you can find someone to do another trusted colleague who's maybe a little bit more separate from a situation and pay them for their time and pay them to do a consultation so that it can be something that is confidential, so that you can get the guidance that you need that can be really helpful and relieve a lot of stress and headache.
Michelle: Yeah, and I think that's so important because coming full circle, like we talked about at the very beginning, a lot of people might feel more prepared to handle an ethical dilemma with a client. They might have done more research on that, but then an ethical dilemma with a colleague comes up and they weren't expecting anything like that to happen and so this can be really helpful for them.
Jen Meyer: And I would say in thinking about things that I've seen and different like again, more of those niche communities like when we're talking about sex therapy and we're talking about, you know, sub communities like kink communities within the sex therapy field, people who specialize in that, and maybe are part of those communities themselves. I'll often hear from folks that, you know, if they're engaged in their local metro area community, their clients, they have found ways to navigate potential run ins with their clients. And their clients tend not to be the ones that create issues or problems, it’s colleagues. Unfortunately, it's colleagues.
SHA’s Ethics Event for sexuality professionals provides a framework for you
Michelle: And so I'm thinking we're going to have a lot of different people attending this event coming up in June. So we're going to have sex therapist, counselors, educators, coaches, other professionals. So what can these professionals gain by attending our ethics event coming up in June?
Jen Meyer: I think just a general like awareness of how to think through, like a framework for how to think through and be more thoughtful about who we choose to align ourselves with. And it really doesn't matter if you're a therapist, a coach, a counselor, or an educator, these will be good guidelines, you know, to sort of think about. Checkpoints, if you will, to try to do as much as you can up front to ascertain whether or not this is a good idea to forge forward in this relationship, personal and professional, and find a way to integrate those things.
Michelle: Yes. And I love that our attendees are going to be learning the skills because we are going to do some role playing and talking about different specific situations and dilemmas. But it's impossible to address every single thing that could possibly happen to someone. So learning the skills, so when something unique to you comes up and knowing like, okay, this is how I'm going to think through this, this is how I'm going to work through this ethical dilemma is so important.
Jen Meyer: Super important because like you were saying, you cannot foresee all the, the possible issues that ethical issues that can arise, all the situations that can come up. And for most people, it's like the rug has gotten pulled out from underneath them, like, oh my gosh, I never saw this coming from this person. I thought we were friends. I thought they were a mentor. Maybe we were even so close at some point in our personal relationship, I thought we were sort of like family or family of choice. And so it's just it can really take the wind out of a person's sails. So like having a framework to understand, to like, do that upfront where you're doing your due diligence as best you can is a great way to come at it.
And you know, I don't want people to feel paranoid. I mean, that's sort of the, that's the thing that kind of stinks is that, you know, you got people walking around on eggshells in some of the organizations feeling like they can't trust colleagues. Like even in certain mentor mentee relationships. And that stinks because the more vulnerable we can get, whether it's in a training, in a supervisory relationship, a workshop, whatever that may be. To me, when we ask those tough questions or we ask the things that we're really curious about, we don't know and we feel vulnerable, like we get to ask those questions, that's when we learn the most.
And so many people I see a tightening up of that vulnerability. People are scared to just ask questions because they worry about being attacked. They worry that they might not know something that everybody else seems to know, and then nobody talks about it. Ethics is an area where, like people do want to talk about it. It's gray and it's messy.
Want to see Jen Meyer in person? Get your ticket for Ethics, Ethical Dilemmas, Decision Making And Countertransference Online Sexceptional Weekend now! Remember, if you can’t make it to the live event, you can purchase a ticket with the recording to watch later!
Watch the video with Jen Meyer here:
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