Transcript
Intro: Hello and welcome to A Bunch Of Therapists with me, Michaela McCarthy. And me, Dipti Solanki. We’ll be bringing you insights and stories from inside the therapy room.
Michaela McCarthy: So who have we got on this week on our podcast?
Dipti Solanki: I’m very excited about our guest this week. His name is Ben Kaye and his story is about being at absolute rock bottom, to going on this really brave journey and is now at the top of his field in the therapy game. He’s doing something quite unique and helping others who are now in the position that he once was. He’s done so much, and he’s also won awards and things, and yeah, I think we’re gonna have a great conversation with him.
Michaela McCarthy: Well, it sounds like he’s got a lot of good energy, so I’m looking forward to that.
Dipti Solanki: Yeah, I think that’s really true to say so, yeah, let’s do this.
Michaela McCarthy: So welcome Ben, thanks for coming on the podcast.
Ben Kaye: Thanks for inviting me.
Michaela McCarthy: Pleasure. So tell us a little bit what made you go into therapy.
Ben Kaye: Well my own personal therapeutic journey, gosh. It started initially after my parents divorce, when I was 15, so quite a long time ago. And it was at the time my parents separated and my mum thought it would be a good idea for me to go and see a therapist because I started to act out. My behaviours began to change, very common for a child to experience divorce or anything upset at home. It didn’t last very long actually. It wasn’t something I took to at a young age. I just thought I was fine, what are you going to do to fix me, that kind of bombastic attitude.
Dipti Solanki: So the therapy didn’t last long?
Ben Kaye: Not at that point. And then I didn’t revisit therapy until I would say my early 30s.
Michaela McCarthy: Okay.
Ben Kaye: So there was like lots of different situations and life just did what it did through my 20s. And then through my 30s, it was when I threw myself back into therapy, I began to feel very unstuck and thought I need to reach out just to try and navigate my own landscape.
And then from my early 30s, right the way through until my late 30s, I was in therapy. And then again, later on, for different things. And then later on, as I studied as a therapist, I embarked on a different kind of therapeutic journey, just for my own academic experiences. Things I needed to do, which was equally as amazing, but in a very different way.
Michaela McCarthy: So tell us a little bit about the stages of your therapeutic journey and what you learn about yourself?
Ben Kaye: At the time in my early 30s, I think when I was looking for a therapist, I didn’t know what I was looking for. Now it’s easy for me to navigate what modality I’d like to…
Michaela McCarthy: Well, because you know more about …
Ben Kaye: Because I know the language. At the time when you say, I’m going to go see a therapist, you don’t really know what you’re going to go and look for or what you’re actually wanting to unearth. But for me, it was about trying to find someone who would listen to me and to feel heard and to feel supported. There were questions around sexuality, questions around trauma that I’d experienced as a youngster, as a teenager that I hadn’t really addressed, constantly repressed lots of feelings and never really given the space to explore my own thoughts and feelings. So that was something I really wanted to do.
Dipti Solanki: Normally when people go into therapy, I mean, all the issues, all the things that you’re talking about that you unearthed in therapy, they kind of happen as a result of being in that space. So, I’d really love to hear, if you’re happy to share, what were the initial kind of things that were causing that stuckness that made you think, I need some help with this part if you’re happy to share, what were the initial kind of things that were causing that stuckness that made you think, I need some help with this part of my journey?
Ben Kaye: I was unhappy. I really well woke up every day. I was working in the city. I’d worked in the city since I was 16 years old. I wasn’t able to finish my education. In my teenage years, I really wanted to go to university. I wanted to continue to study, but unfortunately that wasn’t part of my journey at that time. I was taken out of school to help support my mum. Yeah, I went to a really lovely school. I had a lovely upbringing until the age of 15, 16, until my life spontaneously combusted, as I often refer to it as. And that change was huge for me because I had aspirations of wanting to go on to university to study, or I had to be a lawyer or a doctor, that’s what my mum wanted me to be.
Michaela McCarthy: So when you were caring for mum, was there a reason why you were caring for mum if it wasn’t, you know, the going out to work or…?
Ben Kaye: It was just a case of, it was a private school that I went to and it was very expensive.
Michaela McCarthy: Yep.
Ben Kaye: My parents had a very acrimonious divorce and there were situations relating to my home life that my father wasn’t able to continue to pay for my fees. So I got taken out of school. It was suggested I could go to a state school, which was close by. And as I reflect on this, I’m like, it sounds really quite, you know, why didn’t I stay at a state school? I just I couldn’t land. I couldn’t, I wasn’t comfortable.
Dipti Solanki: A whole different environment and community.
Ben Kaye: Completely, and I really appreciate your understanding with that, because as a child, going through the private education system right the way through, from primary school, right the way through to the age of 15, 16, and halfway through my A-levels, to be pulled out of a school, to go into a local state school, I was a year below all of my peers to do the schooling years again. I just couldn’t, I couldn’t do it. And it was really challenging. So I had choices. I could either stay and do that, or I could go to work. And my family were, parts of my family work in property, and they said, why don’t you go and work in property? It’s all right, why don’t you try and do that?
Dipti Solanki: It was a natural next step…
Ben Kaye: OK… so then literally within six months I was from, you know, an unconditional pass at an amazing university that I’d been promised. If I’d have sat my A-levels, I was working in a property office in central London, in Farringdon, stuffing envelopes.
Michaela McCarthy: And you loved the environment, property?
Ben Kaye: Oh no, I hated it.
Michaela McCarthy: Okay.
Ben Kaye: Oh gosh, I hated it. I felt like I was wearing a costume, a suit as they call it these days. I had to just be a version of myself that I wasn’t ready to be. I was always aspirational. I was always a perfectionist, someone that always strived. I think that kind of level of education, plus my parents always pushed me all the time. So whatever I tried to do, I always wanted to be the best version of myself that I could be. And when I say, when you asked if I liked it, I said I hated it really quickly, didn’t I? It was a really quick response. There were parts of it I really loved. And over the years, I grew to really enjoy working in the industry. And one of the things I loved doing was supporting clients and helping them.
Michaela McCarthy: So it’s the people.
Ben Kaye: I was a commercial acquisition agent. What that means is people were coming to me with a dream or looking to roll out a chain of shops or whatever that might be and I would help them find that space. Yeah. And it was great. I loved that element of it. But wearing a suit every day, being in an office like that, contorted into shapes that I didn’t really feel like I ever really fitted into.
It was a very heterosexual environment at the time as well, property. It was a real boys club, which I always felt quite disjointed from. It got to a point in my property journey that I was given an option to continue to study and become a member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. And I became an associate member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. And I remember receiving all of the books to study. And I just couldn’t get my head around it. It was something that felt really challenging. And I just felt stuck. I just felt stuck.
Michaela McCarthy: So that was the stuckness. What do I do? Where do I go next?
Ben Kaye: I haven’t got… finished my A-levels, any career that I want to do, I need to be re-qualified in. I haven’t got the opportunity. I was earning good money. I had a nice house, had a car.
Dipti Solanki: That keeps you stuck!
Michaela McCarthy: And that’s difficult, isn’t it? Where you become sort of trapped in your salary, so to speak, or your money, because where do you earn the same money? Where do you…
Ben Kaye: Yeah, completely. I was stuck materialistically.
Michaela McCarthy: Yeah.
Ben Kaye: And also I had a house with a mortgage, I had a partner, and on the outside, it was an idyllic lifestyle. In addition to that, I was also promoting parties in South London. I had like a little side hustle, and I loved that. That was amazing. That was really good fun. It was every weekend I was promoting big parties and that was through my thirties.
Dipti Solanki: That’s where you could express yourself.
Ben Kaye: Yeah, I could do that. So it was like a dual, two lives, not hidden from each other at all, but full on a lot of the time. But that stuckness was really challenging because I was in a career that I genuinely thought I wouldn’t be able to ever leave unless something serious happened.
Michaela McCarthy: And then when did you say, right, that’s it, I’m going to change course of action? How did that work?
Ben Kaye: So I didn’t make the choice. The universe made the choice. I used substances from the age of 15 to 37.
Michaela McCarthy: They caught up with you.
Ben Kaye: 22 years and they caught up with me, hugely. So the moment I could change the way that I feel as a teenager, when my parents got divorced, I did. So I often reflect and I say that I was addicted to changing the way that I felt for as long as I could. Because people like to push for a substance. What were you addicted to? Everything I could get my hands on really.
Michaela McCarthy: But it doesn’t work in the end.
Ben Kaye: No.
Michaela McCarthy: Because it’s not fun anymore.
Ben Kaye: It definitely wasn’t fun towards the end. So at the age of 37, after a tsunami of personal circumstances and lots of therapy, I had a mental breakdown.
Dipti Solanki: What did that look like?
Ben Kaye:
It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t pretty at all. I didn’t know myself and so far removed from my, from the version of myself I always wanted to be. I, you know, my life slipped through my fingers like quicksand at the age of 15 and it changed overnight when my parents got divorced and my trajectory changed completely and at the age of 37 it happened again. So it was actually a very, now I can look back and I get two very similar feelings because I’d still hadn’t processed the things that I needed to and I wasn’t in control of my own life at all.
Michaela McCarthy: But that happens, you know, something happens in childhood and then you’re faced with it in adulthood. You know, you do all this escaping or whatever you do and then all of a sudden you’ve just got to deal with it.
Ben Kaye: Completely.
Michaela McCarthy: So that happened to you, and then breakdown. What did that look like?
Ben Kaye: It was messy. It wasn’t pretty. I was using substances heavily, recreationally and not recreationally. It got to a point where I was using them as a crutch, which is something I’m not very proud of, but it’s just, that was my coping strategy at the time. And it was, I got to a point of no return. I had choices, I can continue to do what I was doing, but I was one step away from homelessness. I was one step away from losing everything that I, well, I had lost virtually everything I’d conceivably known. In the age of… two years prior to this, my mother had passed away, lots of serious life events had happened. I had serious stomach surgery, I’d lost my job. There were lots of things that were really difficult.
Michaela McCarthy: So you were a mess really?
Ben Kaye: Yeah, you know, it’s a therapeutic term. I was a mess.
Michaela McCarthy: It’s interesting isn’t it, at 15 you didn’t have any control and then you still didn’t have any control. And that’s what addiction can do.
Ben Kaye: Addiction and just living a life that was never really meant for you. I felt like I was constantly swimming upstream. So when I was really bad, after my breakdown, I had choices and I knew that I needed to get help. So I walked through the front door of a local drug and alcohol service in Lambeth and it was very hard to get seen. Only the first four people were meant to be seen every single day and I kept going back and I was late most of the time. And it was like a free fall, free for all at the front door. I couldn’t get seen, so I kept going back and then I kept missing it, and then four times I went back and I couldn’t get seen.
About the fifth time, I was walking through Brixton, I was really early in the morning, I’d been at a friend’s or whatever I was doing, I shouldn’t have been doing it at that time in the morning in Brixton, and I was walking past a Drug and Alcohol Service and I bought some cigarettes, and I sat on a wall opposite the Drug and Alcohol Service and I waited for it to open. And I was first in, I got assessed, I had to educate the key worker who I was working with as to the substances I was specifically using because they weren’t aware of them at the time, which was really scary because it was 2017 in Lambeth, which is kind of the epicentre of the LGBTQ community in South London. It’s quite a scary thing. And I pressed forward with the support that I needed and did everything I needed to do. And I put myself in quite dangerous situations in terms of my social life and the people I was mixing with. I was really vulnerable and taken advantage of. And one of the key workers recognised that eventually after I’d really pleaded with them at the Drug and Alcohol Service and I was granted funding by Lambeth Council to go to rehab in Bournemouth.
Dipti Solanki: But also it sounds like you really had to drive the process even once you were in the service as well to really fight for what you needed.
Ben Kaye: I really had to drive the process because the service is great but the chap who was, I was involved in the chem sex scene in South London. And…
Dipti Solanki: For our listeners and viewers, can you please explain what chem sex is?
Ben Kaye: So chem sex are specific substances that are taken by a certain, a genre of person. So they’re called GBMSM people, gay/bi men who have sex with men. Crystal methamphetamine, GHB or GBL and or methadrone taken in a context, in a party environment or not as the case may be, and used to enhance sexual pleasures. So inhibitions are lowered, sexual libido is increased and you know, it’s all bets are off basically. It’s kind of like you’re free for all. And it’s people craving intimacy, coming together. And I say intimacy, it doesn’t essentially mean sexual intimacy. That comes too. It’s the intimacy that drive for people to kind of want to be together and to connect on a level in a very hedonistic way. And the chemsex lead within the service was on paternity leave when I walked through the front door of the service, which is why people didn’t understand what was going on. There wasn’t a handover, no one knew really what was going on, which was actually quite scary. And I kept having to relive my trauma and explain to them what it was and go, you know, go over and over it because I knew they were the only way out of that situation.
Michaela McCarthy: So turning up to rehab in Bournemouth, how long were you there?
Ben Kaye: That was an experience. I just remember I’d finally granted, I was granted funding for three months and I knew that this was my one shot at sorting myself out. And it was really scary, actually. I remember arriving in, I remember them saying, you have to get a train from Waterloo Station down to Bournemouth. And I thought to myself, with my passport, and I just said, you’re giving me my passport and all my things are in a bag. I don’t know if I’m gonna, I don’t know where I’m gonna end up. And it’s unlikely to be Bournemouth, if I’m honest at the moment. So my family paid for-
Dipti Solanki: Is that because you were feeling frightened or?
Ben Kaye: It was a chance to escape. I just thought, there’s a chance now, got my bags packed, I will wave goodbye. And I remember my family booked a taxi for me from London, from Essex to Bournemouth. And yeah, and I remember I used in the services on the way down… my last use up as they call it. And…
Michaela McCarthy: That happens quite often.
Ben Kaye: Yeah, and I arrived at treatment, it was just, and I laugh because there was everyone sitting outside in the smoking area and I’d arrived completely like I wasn’t with it at all with my sunglasses on. I got out, I fell out the cab and I asked someone if they were going to help me with my bags. And they looked at me as if I was…
Michaela McCarthy: That’s you checking into a five star hotel.
Ben Kaye: Literally, and they were like, definitely wasn’t an exp… and they still, they say my arrival was one of the funniest they’ve ever had. And I looked at them and I said, I don’t know what’s funny. I mean, I’ve just arrived. Is anyone going to help me with my bags? But I’m like, I’m really embarrassed to say that because it’s just not me anymore. And they said, would you want to leave and start again? Come back in again. I was like, okay, so I did. And they were searching my bags and said, have you got anything with you? And I said, no. And then out pops a couple of cans of gin and tonic and all of that stuff. And I offered it to the manager of the treatment centre, which is just like, no, all right, thank you. It was a very, it was like a skid landing into treatment. And I remember being shown my room. And they offered to, they said, we’re gonna share a room with this guy who I’d never met before. And I just remember manipulating the situation to get my own room. When they finally gave me my room, I remember saying to the guy, who’s a heterosexual guy, cisgender heterosexual guy. And I said to him, you know I’m gay, don’t you? And I was sharing, obviously I wanted my own room. But it was manipulation at its finest. And his face just kind of, I ended up getting my own room and then the manager of the treatment centre walked in and he was clapping, he said, ‘Well done, you’ve landed really well, you have’. And they knew I was gonna be a bit of a handful to start with and I wasn’t actually. I unpacked my bags and I stayed in my room for a week and I just cried. I just cried. Like, I cried and I slept because I’d left something really traumatic in London.
Michaela McCarthy: I imagine you tired yourself out, you’re exhausted. It’s an exhausting life to continue like that but you don’t know until you get off the treadmill.
Ben Kaye: You don’t know, but I know that I’d left something really… I feared for my life in London in a very serious way. Not in a ‘in my own mind’ way. I’d put myself in very difficult, dangerous situations and treatment was my safety net. And I knew for the first time, other than another time when I was in, I was arrested before I’d moved to London, before I moved to Bournemouth. And I talk about the story quite candidly because it didn’t just happen overnight. And I, other than the time that I was in a prison cell for 24 hours where I felt safe, I actually felt really safe in treatment. Because I’d given them my passport, you know, you’d signed your life away. And I just, yeah, cried for a week.
Michaela McCarthy: And they were there to look after you.
Ben Kaye: Yeah, they were amazing. The therapeutic environment in that space was just…
Michaela McCarthy: So from start, how did you feel? I mean, start to finish and then coming out of there, you know, it’s…
Ben Kaye: I was… I liken it to taking the… um, what are they called on the bicycle?
Dipti Solanki: The training wheels?
Ben Kaye: The kids’ bikes…
Michaela McCarthy: Oh yeah, the…
Ben Kaye: What are they called?
Dipti Solanki: Stabilisers.
Ben Kaye: Stabilisers. I felt like the stabilisers had been taken off and I was really wonky because when I was in treatment I’d lost the back of my hair through alopecia, I suffered chronic PTSD, flashbacks, my mental health was horrendous. I was heavily medicated. It was a very difficult experience for me and I was held so deeply therapeutically.
And for the first time, when I landed in treatment, the therapist said to me, whatever you’ve been through, I believe you. And I was just, ‘What?’. I couldn’t believe that someone had believed my story or the version of my story because it was so far-fetched. No one did.
Dipti Solanki: Yeah, yeah. What did it feel like to be believed? What did it enable?
Ben Kaye: Just relief.
Michaela McCarthy: But I imagine there was some acceptance as well. You know, I’ve done this but here I am.
Ben Kaye: I didn’t ever really, I kept questioning her. You really believe me? Are you lying just to make me feel safer? She’s like, no I believe it. Now working in drug and alcohol services as an addictions therapist, the story that I told is actually not uncommon. At the time, I hadn’t heard anything like it. There weren’t even phrases coined for grooming and cuckooing, which is what happened to me. But at the time, it wasn’t even out there, but now we hear about it quite often. And that’s what happened, and that was my reality. And I was able to reflect. And you say how was the journey, the therapeutic journey when I was in treatment, it was a mixture of one-to-one sessions, group therapy, LGBTQ specific therapy, because the treatment centre was, had an LGBTQ specific training programme, chems groups, specific chems groups as well, which was great. So I went to a treatment centre that was recommended and they could really hold me in a way thatmI wasn’t, I’d never been held before.
Michaela McCarthy: So you could get some form of self, you know, sense of belonging.
Ben Kaye: But prior to all of this, there was an amazing therapist at The Awareness Centre that I’d engaged with at Abbeville Road. She was awesome. She had more letters after her name than actually what her name was. I was so impressed. She’s really young as well. And I just remembered, I was in a session and the next session I came back, she said, ‘Before we start, I just want to, here’s a leaflet about chemsex’. I was like, ‘What’s that? What are you talking about?’ Because that wasn’t even really coined, it was new.
Michaela McCarthy: It was all new.
Ben Kaye: It was all new. And she said, maybe I think you need to engage with a specific drug and alcohol service and therapy… therapists that can really help you understand what you really need. And she was amazing.
Michaela McCarthy: So tell me, when did you start thinking about training to be a therapist?
Ben Kaye: So when I was in rehab, someone came in from Bournemouth and Poole College. I think when everyone leaves rehab, they’re a therapist. I mean, that’s just it.
Michaela McCarthy: You wanna help everyone.
Ben Kaye: I mean, that’s it. I’ve been therapised. I could do that. It’s easy, isn’t it? It’s easy. They just sit there and nod a lot and go, ‘Yeah’. That’s fine. And I was one of those people. But Bournemouth and Poole College came into the rehab centre and they said you can all restudy, and you can all retrain, what do you want to do? And as I say that again, I’ve got goosebumps because it was just the most profound moment in my life. I was like, are you serious? Like, I never thought I would be able to do this. And he said, yeah, of course, what do you want to do? I was like, what can I do? I’ve got my GCSEs. They were good GCSEs. I was a bright kid at Chigwell School. So I had my GCSEs, but nothing further than that. And the college came in and said, what do you want to do? So I had to go back to the college and do my English exams again and my Maths exams again and at that point they said you could do a Level Two Counseling course, if that’s something you would be interested in. So I thought, yeah, let’s do it. I started volunteering at a local drug and alcohol charity in Bournemouth. I walked through the front door when I came out of rehab in November and offered to volunteer because I didn’t want any paid work at all until I’d…
Michaela McCarthy: Sorted yourself out.
Ben Kaye: Understood what I want to do. Know what I want to do. So I started volunteering at a drug and alcohol charity. I actually walked through the front door and I said, you have an LGBTQ recovery group. Can I, do you have anything specific? And they said, no, but do you want to launch one? I was like, yeah, that could be cool. Let’s do that.
Michaela McCarthy: Put your skills into practice.
Dipti Solanki: But then you’ve just achieved so many incredible things while you were in Dorset, right? In Bournemouth. So tell us about those.
Ben Kaye: So yeah, that was the… thank you. That was the beginning of it. When I walked through the front door, they trained me on a peer advocacy and peer mentor training programme that was really amazing. And on the back end of that, I launched the Dorset’s first, the charity’s first LGBTQ recovery groups. The charity had 80 locations across the country from as far south as Cornwall to as far north of Scotland. And I launched the first LGBTQ recovery group and there were 14 to 15 members at the height of its capacity. And it was just incredible.
I got offered a job at the charity and I was at the same charity for eight years, or thereabouts, which was another really great achievement. And during that time I launched, I was… through my own experiences, I wanted to change the way the members of my community were accessing mainstream services. And I knew how hard it was for me, which meant it was hard for other people. So I specifically targeted the entry points into service that specifically focused on people that were using chems – crystal meth, GHB, GVO and/or methadrone – outside of a major central London, a major town.
Michaela McCarthy: But also like an education for, you know, this group too.
Ben Kaye: What I did was take a step back, look at where the gaps were within the organisation and across Dorset I created a chemsex drop-in clinic with a local… Sexual Health Dorset and we saw a rise in people that were using chems across Dorset by 367% that were accessing service because of the service that we/I helped open with the service I was working for. It wasn’t just me.
Michaela McCarthy: Sure, but it gave them somewhere to go.
Ben Kaye: Yeah, it gave them somewhere to go. They knew they could be heard, knew they could be understood. I changed the way in which people accessed service. We became much more accessible. I didn’t reinvent the wheel. These services were already happening in major cities. I took it outside of London. So across the south west, and I was offering training across Devon and Somerset, Cornwall, Dorset, parts of Wales. And it was just an amazing experience to be able to do that outside of central London and just to raise awareness. And I helped launch the charity’s first LGBTQ+ web chat facility so people could land from the community, actually land and talk anonymously and confidentially.
Dipti Solanki: First point.
Ben Kaye: First point of contact. Really great for them. And I trained the organisation with regards to chems. So I was also leading a project on a pilot, which is the Chems NSP Direct to Home pilot across two sites. So we were offering clean injecting equipment across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and in Liverpool.
Michaela McCarthy: That’s really important.
Ben Kaye: And that’s now been rolled out nationally, before I left the organisation.
Michaela McCarthy: So tell me, you’ve done your level two. So did you carry on doing your therapy training?
Ben Kaye: I did my level two, my level three, and then two years of level four, my diploma, which was incredible. I never thought I would get that level of education. And then I went and did a humanistic counselling degree at Chichester University.
So that box tick, all those years that I wasn’t able to go and do, which was just amazing, and I just loved it. And I remember my tutor saying to me that the moment you landed, you were literally the keenest thing they’ve ever seen. I was so excited.
Michaela McCarthy: You arrived.
Ben Kaye: I’d arrived and all the time throughout these, level four was 40 hours of personal therapy. And my degree was another 40 hours of personal therapy. So it’s a lot of inward reflecting, but as you know, it’s an onward, it’s a continuum.
Michaela McCathy: So just out of interest, what made you come back to London?
Ben Kaye: So there was, after my degree, there’s a mixture of different things. It was torn, it was a real argument between my head and my heart. My partner’s in London and I wanted to continue to study, so I’m halfway through a psychology masters at the moment at UEL, which I’m really excited to be there. It’s a great course as a conversion course. And so that was a really good course to go for. My partner’s in London, job opportunities, career opportunities, and I felt like it was time. It has an amazing recovery community, it has career prospects, my family in here. My partner and I are getting married this year, we’re buying a house at the moment. So yeah, thank you, it’s great, really exciting. So it’s just, it’s everything, it’s the next chapter within my journey.
Michaela McCathy: So what made you come back to The Awareness Centre?
Ben Kaye: To work?
Michaela McCarthy: Yeah.
Ben Kaye: Because I just, it was something that had a really, that amazing therapist that I met at The Awareness Centre, I thought this is a really good spot to be in. It’s in great locations, the flexibility of the rooms are great. And I checked online looking for an LGBTQ specific therapist and I applied. And that was it. It just felt very organic and very right. It felt like the next step.
Dipti Solanki: Full circle.
Ben Kaye: Yeah, full circle.
Dipti Solanki: So what are your specialisms and tell us about that.
Ben Kaye: So my specialisms are LGBTQ+ substance misuse and addiction. Chems and or chemsex, it doesn’t specifically mean just for the LGBTQ community. GB and MSM people, gay, bi, men who have sex with men. And as well as common mental health problems. So addiction in heteronormative society isn’t just, I’ve worked in the addiction field for over eight years, about to start another job for another national drug and alcohol charity in addition to my therapy practice on the 1st of July. So it’s really meeting clients where they are and just giving them the space to explore whatever they want to. Grief, trauma,
Michaela McCarthy: Intimacy.
Ben Kaye: Intimacy. It’s really sometimes members of the community and those are engaging in certain circumstances sometimes can feel really embarrassed going to a therapist who don’t really understand their needs and I know that there are some amazing therapists that can hold spaces for lots of different people.
Michaela McCarthy: Some people, some therapists, some people feel uncomfortable with speaking about sex. Yeah, of course. You know, I wasn’t one of those therapists. I mean, I trained to be a psychosexual therapist to actually work with sex addiction because I worked with addiction, but it’s all different when you come out of it. And I think when you train as a sex therapist, you just keep, you talk about sex, sex, sex all the time. But I think people struggle with that. They really, and to share the shame, there’s a lot of shame around their behaviours around sex, I think, and until they meet someone that they can share how they feel around what they’ve done or what they want to do or intimacy, I think that, you know, it’s finding the right therapist, isn’t it?
Ben Kaye: I’m very interested in a sexology course actually after I’ve done my master’s, it’s really interesting, but a lot of it is interlinked with the work that I’m doing at the moment anyway, it’s kind of mutually inclusive completely, but it’s a real privilege to be able to hold space for people the way that which people held space for me.
Dipti Solanki: Ben, you mentioned MSM, men who have sex with men. For many people listening, they may think, well, doesn’t that just mean that they’re gay? And then have not been able to accept that. But clearly there’s a big difference. Can you help explain that a bit more, please?
Ben Kaye: I mean, I’m not, however someone chooses to identify as their own decision and however they want to label it or not is completely their autonomy. I caveat that completely. But there are certain genre of men that are using chems specifically that are having sex with men whilst under the influence of specific substances. So there are men that identify, well they don’t identify as being gay or bisexual, some may be in a polyamorous relationships, some may not, but when they take certain substances they have sex with men and when they come down again they’re extremely distraught, full of shame, full of guilt. We see lots of the male prison population, that are MSM specifically, that will just maybe have male sexual partners in prisons and when they leave they don’t.
Michaela McCarthy: They’re like that never happened.
Ben Kaye: That never happened. Sexuality as we’re learning, as gender, is a spectrum and it’s something that really needs to be spoken about and understood by many different therapists that, as opposed to trying to pigeonhole and put our clients into boxes, let’s just meet clients where they are in the room. But I open the door for that and let people know. However, I get it and I understand and I support whatever you’re bringing. And I’ve worked with men who have sex with men previously and I find it a real privilege when a very alpha macho male discloses this very private information and wants to process it in the space that I’m holding for them.
Michaela McCarthy: But if you were to think about outside the people listening and watching this podcast, what would be your message to them if they’re struggling or sitting with themselves.
Ben Kaye: Well. Reach out. You’re not alone. Make sure you do your homework as to who you reaching out to…
Michaela McCarthy: Yeah.
Ben Kaye: Because I know what it feels like to not be heard properly. We can be listened to.
Michaela McCarthy: Yeah.
Ben Kaye: But are you ever really heard?
Michaela McCarthy: But there’s a difference, isn’t there?
Ben Kaye: Huge difference.
Michaela McCarthy: To be feeling heard.
Ben Kaye: Yeah.
Michaela McCarthy: Where you know, people say, I am listening, I am listening, but when they really hear you, that’s the intimate bit.
Ben Kaye: And if people are looking for therapists, have discovery calls with as many as you need to.
Michaela McCarthy: Yeah.
Ben Kaye: Connect with as many as you need to and if you’ve engaged with one you don’t like the way it’s going, find another one. Because there are lots of therapists and they’re all amazing in different ways. People offer different things, but it’s about really connecting with the therapist. And it’s about really giving yourself what you feel you need, because everyone’s worth it. Kind of mustering that awareness, that self-awareness, that self-love that anyone would need listening to this in order to kind of make that first step.
And I wouldn’t be where I am without being at my lowest and my rock bottom. And everyone’s rock bottom is different. That’s something I’d really like to stress. Like what was mine may not have been someone else’s and vice versa. You don’t always have to be at rock bottom to reach out to get the help that you need.
Dipti Solanki: Would you say that you need to find a therapist that is from the LGBTQ+ community in order to feel heard, to be seen. And I’m asking that question through the lens of the first therapist that you saw, I don’t think was. But what’s your take on that?
Ben Kaye: You definitely don’t, which is why I say you need to find a therapist you can feel heard by. I was…
Michaela McCarthy: Build that attachment.
Ben Kaye: Yeah, the last thing I wanted to do when I was in the middle of my issue was to be met with a male therapist, a male gay therapist. Far too confronting for me. So, and I always worked very well with females. It’s just, it’s just who I gravitated towards. I came from a family full of very strong females. What I grew up with. I’ve had really good therapists, irrespective of how they identify. But finding a therapist who speaks your language is really, really important.
Ben Kaye: I share my story quite honestly, because not because essentially I need someone to find me who’s going through exactly the same thing, but it’s what brought me into therapy.
Michaela McCarthy: So thanks for coming on the podcast. It’s been great.
Ben Kaye: Thank you for having me.
Michaela McCarthy: Yeah, sharing and your journey and everything and hope it keeps continuing.
Ben Kaye: Thank you and thanks for all that you do with The Awareness Centre and it’s just a real privilege to be able to sit here and just be my true self after years of not being that person. So thank you for seeing me.
Outro: You’ve been listening to A Bunch Of Therapists with me, Michaela McCarthy and Dipti Solanki. And if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to review, like and subscribe to wherever you listen to your podcasts and do follow us on our socials. Until next time, see you you listen to your podcasts and do follow us on our socials. Until next time, see you soon.