Intro: Hello and welcome to A Bunch Of Therapists with me, Michaela McCarthy. And me, Dipti Solanki. We bring you stories and insights from inside the therapy room. And our guest this week is…
Michaela McCarthy: Julie Sale.
Dipti Solanki: Yes, and this is.. . part two of Julie Sale’s episode because our conversation with Julie was longer than expected but it was super interesting. I loved that everything that she shared and I think if you remember in the first part she shared all about her working-class roots and the deep effects and impact of childhood illness and the trauma that that created, her journey…
Michaela McCarthy: And also her being the first person in her family to go to university.
Dipti Solanki: Yeah she did, they know she was responsible for a lot of firsts.
Michaela McCarthy: And even though she was a psychotherapist she then went on to train. to be a Psychosexual Relationship Therapist and then she developed her own training institute which is known as CICS and I really enjoyed having her on the podcast and interviewing her because she’d just come with so much of herself.
Dipti Solanki: Yeah, her energy was lovely.
Michaela McCarthy: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Dipti Solanki: So this is part two.
Michaela McCarthy: Yeah, brilliant.
Michaela McCarthy: So tell us now that you trained as a Psychotherapist and then you went off to train as a Sex Therapist.
Julie Sale: I did. So I did my UKCP psychotherapy training with the BeeLeaf Institute in Contemporary Psychotherapy. It was fantastic training.
Michaela McCarthy: I know the institute.
Julie Sale: Yeah, fantastic training under the leadership of Pam Gawler-Wright, who I have nothing but love and admiration for. And then, because I’d had problems with fertility, I thought I would specialise in fertility, because of course that’s a fabulous idea, isn’t it? I’m being sarcastic and ironic. It’s not a great idea to think you can specialise in something you’ve experienced. But I had that naive therapist idea.
Michaela McCarthy: Well, because it’s your experience.
Julie Sale: Exactly. I was like, oh, this is important.
Dipti Solanki: Yeah. But there’s that big trend everywhere now, is it? Just because you’ve experienced something, you think you can help others. But it’s not necessarily always true.
Julie Sale: It could actually be the opposite, couldn’t it? So I thought I wanted to, I would like to specialise in working with fertility and infertility problems. And this next part of the story goes to that point of not really understanding the therapy world, because I was training to be a therapist or trained as a therapist, and I still didn’t understand the pathways to a specialism. So I did some research, again, you know, we don’t have as sophisticated Google systems then as we do now, did some research, and I thought I had to train as a psychosexual therapist to work with fertility. That’s not true.
There are specialist fertility counsellors. I missed that piece of information. Signed up for a two-year postgraduate diploma in Psychosexual Relationship Therapy and when I got there I thought, What am I doing here?
I had never heard the words vulva and vagina and penis spoken in so many times in public in one day as I did on my first training day.
Michaela McCarthy: I mean, I remember when I trained, the words they use like dyspareunia.
Julie Sale: Vulvodynia.
Michaela McCarthy: And vaginismus. And you think, why are they so difficult to remember?
Julie Sale: Still can’t spell them.
Michaela McCarthy: You know, and you know, it’s, but I think, you know, I went, similar to you, I mean, I went off because I was working with addiction and I thought, oh, I know what I need. I’ll train as a psychosexual therapist because then I can learn about sex addiction. And then you realise, actually, psychosexual therapy is not about learning about sex addiction. But anyway, I just went in anyway and I thought, oh well.
Julie Sale: Yeah, me too. When I got there, I thought, OK, right, now we’re learning about sex!
Dipti Solanki: Yeah, so that was that.
Julie Sale: Whose idea was this?
Michaela McCarthy: It was really good though. You learn a lot, you know.
Julie Sale: Well, it’s defined the rest of my career so far.
Dipti Solanki: Tell us about that.
Julie Sale: Well, I trained as a psychosexual relationship therapist, recovered from these repeated use of genitalia words.
Dipti Solanki: Yeah.
Julie Sale: And got fascinated by the whole thing, and that’s where my specialism did develop and that led to me setting up my own training organisation.
Dipti Solanki: So that was very unexpected.
Michaela McCarthy: Maybe that was the mistake you had to make.
Julie Sale: Yeah, one of many.
Michaela McCarthy: Rather than plan it, you turned up to it.
Julie Sale: Yeah, so after qualifying as a sex adn relationship therapist, I went on to set up a specialist
Michaela McCarthy: And it’s called?
Julie Sale: The Contemporary Institute of Clinical Sexology, and we call ourselves CICS.
Michaela McCarthy: CICS.
Julie Sale: So people, when we say the word CICS, see the word in English, K -I -C -S, KICS as in kicking a ball.
Michaela McCarthy: Yep.
Julie Sale: And that’s another Northern thing, we abbreviate everything in the North. So it’s C -I -C -S, we say CICS. Right. We do abbreviate everything. You can’t have a name and keep your own name. Where I grew up, your old names were altered. So my name’s Julie, and in the South and East, I’m always called Julie.
But where I’m from originally, it’s Jules or Jume or JK. And you’ll even lengthen short names. People can’t leave names alone.
Dipti Solanki: They’re terms of endearment though, right.
Julie Sale: They are. Yeah.
Dipti Solanki: If you get called Julie, you’re in trouble.
Julie Sale: That’s exactly right. Yeah. I’ve had to get used to it.
Michaela McCarthy: So coming back to your training. So where were you at with your training?
Julie Sale: As in the school?
Michaela McCarthy: Yeah, the development of your school.
Julie Sale: Yes, the school’s really well established now. We have a very well-established qualifying Diploma in Psychosexual and Relationship Therapy. That’s the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists accredited, and it leads to becoming a registered Psychosexual and Relationship Therapist. And COSRT, which is the abbreviation for that organization. So we have a Qualifying Level 4 General Counseling Diploma now, and we also have an Advanced Diploma for people who are graduates of our qualifying Diploma and a Diploma in Supervision. It just grows. A couple of certificates and an in-depth diploma in compulsive sexual behaviour. We take a slightly different approach to the classic sex addiction approach. So yeah, it grew. It grew a lot.
Michaela McCarthy: And so has it gone beyond your expectation?
Julie Sale: Yes, it was a passion project. And this is me all over. I’d had no real foresight on how difficult it would be. And I think that’s been a helpful part of my character and also a problematic part of my character my whole life.
Where I’ve gone, this sounds like a great idea. I used to work in training, this isn’t hard. And then you set up here, oh actually it’s really, really quite hard.
Dipti Solanki: Yeah, it’s an incredible learning process as well, isn’t it, to do something like that?
Julie Sale: It’s very difficult to run a training school. You’ve got people who are learning They’re learning psychotherapy or counselling, depending on the stage they’re at. That turns your head inside out. That should come with a health warning and a letter of warning to all friends and family. They’re going to lose their plot for a little while and question you and everything. So, I mean, it’s not surprising that people are unsettled. Then we’re focusing on a subject that you can’t avoid yourself in. You can’t avoid yourself in the subject of sex and relationships.
I could avoid myself in the whole of my core training on a subject like addiction because I wouldn’t say I’ve had an experience of being addicted to anything. I did have a father with some alcohol problems, but it just wasn’t in my frame in that way. So I could kind of avoid my own soul in that. You can’t avoid the theme of sex and relationship, whether you’re sexual or not, whether you have a relationship or not, it’s core to being human. So it’s not surprising that people are really churned up.
Michaela McCarthy: And people will ask, what does it mean? You know, a lot of people kind of get, okay, couple therapy, family therapy. And then I hear, you know, people say, you know, what is sex? What is psychosexual? You know, what is it? What is it you do? What do you talk about?
Julie Sale: Yeah, well, I think there’s a there’s a Venn diagram really, where there’s an overlap between some of the themes that a general psychotherapist would work with that are sex related and relationship related, and the things that psychosexual therapists would work with that are specific to psychosexual therapy.
So themes like childhood sexual abuse, sexual violence, domestic violence, relationship breakups, not being able to find a relationship, dating, they’re very much part of a general psychotherapy practice and people go from their general counselling or psychotherapy training to learn to work with couples and intimate partners. So very often people have done a lot of work one-to-one or couples but not trained in sex therapy.
Michaela McCarthy: And some therapists won’t talk about sex.
Julie Sale: That’s right because I think perhaps they shouldn’t if they haven’t been there professionally because you know you could open something up that you’re not really going to be comfortable holding. But for psychosexual therapists, we’re working with sexual problems as experienced and defined by the client. So the nitty gritty bit is working with, so-called, sexual function.
Michaela McCarthy: And I think that can carry a lot of shame to say, you know, I can’t do this. You know, people seem to think well, sex, they’re all good at it because everyone’s practised and they might not have done that. And, you know, what’s good sex and what’s not?
Julie Sale: Exactly. And who’s defining that? So, yeah, there’s a lot of cultural pressure around sex and we’ve got a split personality around it in our culture where there’s a lot about sex on the TV. And yet we’re still not really very good at talking about it. But a psychosexual therapist will be working with clients who are experiencing problems with erections or orgasm or ejaculation or painful sex or lack of interest in sex.
So it’s very specific. We also work with people for whom their erotic preferences are not integrated for them. They might have kinks that they are ashamed of or unhappy about. And we’re helping people to integrate their erotic desires, so long as they’re consensual and lawful, of course.
Michaela McCarthy: So tell me, why do you think sex carries a lot of shame from your experience being a sex therapist? What is it all about for people?
Julie Sale: I think partly the shame is one step further on from privacy. So there’s a difference between something being private and something being secret. But sex is seen as a private thing. societally, which is not necessary, not, you know, I don’t have an issue with that.
Dipti Solanki: I can see that. Because that’s the space where you want to be uninhibited. And you can’t do that when there isn’t any privacy either. So I think that’s an aspect of it.
Julie Sale: We have social rules about where people do this thing, right? And you can’t get down to it in Tesco’s. It’s got to be some, it’s a private thing. And I think that privacy aspect can, can develop into secrecy, particularly if people are not having experiences that are pleasant or positive.
Michaela McCarthy: And some people have been abused?
Julie Sale: Of course. And then it’s what sex has meant and how you’ve experienced it. And if you’re more natural development, it’s a very loaded word, natural, in a psychosexual context. But that kind of more typical development where sexual responses, if you experience them individually first, and maybe engage in solo sex if your culture allows you to, or even if your culture doesn’t allow you to. And so then you’ve got the shame narrative for something that in our culture would broadly be perceived as a natural thing to do. And then in adolescent development and experimenting with your peers. If you can go through that kind of process, and I think you can have the potential for a different relationship to sex than if your first experience of anything like that is as a child with an adult. We’re not in the territory of sex then, we’re in the territory of abuse.
So of course that’s going to lead to shame. And I actually think social narratives, culture, religion, narratives for people who aren’t marginalised, people that potentially, apparently hold all of the privileges.
Narratives around heterosexual sex, they all belong in society and they’re perpetuated in people’s lives in a way that is very often not helpful for them. So dominant heteronormative messages like women are supposed to be sexually reluctant. However, you’re not supposed to be, if you watch Channel 4 and all of the programs that you get on Channel 4, they’re supposed to be erotic. But if you’re erotic as a woman, then you’re also going to get the shadow side of being criticised for that still, for that really conflicting narrative for women’s sexuality.
Michaela McCarthy: Where it can be positive for a man but negative for a woman.
Julie Sale: Yes, that’s still around.
Dipti Solanki: And also where do you go to learn about sex?
Julie Sale: Such a good point.
Michaela McCarthy: Love Island.
Dipti Solanki: Oh my gosh.
Julie Sale: Imagine.
Michaela McCarthy: But I think younger generation, you’ve only got to look at TikTok. And, you know, sexuality is everywhere.
Julie Sale: It is.
Michaela McCarthy: That’s what’s being projected on socials and on TV.
Julie Sale: Yeah.
Michaela McCarthy: And I wonder, with different cultures, what that brings up for cultures, because some cultures are not meant to have sex…
Julie Sale: …before marriage.
Michaela McCarthy: All that kind of thing. So there’s lots of different pressure and stuff.
Julie Sale: There is. So I think that the connection between sex and shame is about anyone that feels any different to the dominant social narratives. And that, I think, is many people. And add on top of that, some specific messages that specific families have, and specific experiences that some individuals have, and you’re in shame territory. And I don’t think we teach shame particularly brilliantly as in the psychotherapy profession, we’re getting much better. We’re obsessed with trauma. Psychotherapy is obsessed with trauma.
Big T trauma, as in big events and small T trauma. And it’s only been in more recent years that we have really paid attention to what shame is and how to work with it professionally.
We’ve got some great people speaking about that now. But it’s that shift of lens where it’s, I think it’s definitely possible to get through life in this culture without a big T trauma, a big sexual abuse, sexual violence. Being a human is traumatic and difficult and having any kind of marginalised identity immediately brings traumatic experiences of discrimination and injustice, absolutely. But I’m not sure humans get through life without trauma. experience.
Michaela McCarthy: No. I don’t think so. I mean I remember when I, well, I moved out quite young, but then I was moving in with my partner. And then it was like the generation used to go, well, in our day, you know, we had to get married. We couldn’t be living in with a partner.
Dipti Solanki: Or you might like each other, but not be compatible sexually as well. But then where do you go with that if you had to get married before you even could be with somebody?
Julie Sale: But look, the conversation that we’re having in at least two of our lifetimes. This has changed so dramatically. It’s changed so dramatically. My mum got married at 16. She had her first kid at 18. 16!
Michaela McCarthy: I know. But it was the thing, wasn’t it? And then the older generation, they would have a double bed. And then I remember my grandparents when they would have the same room, but two single beds, and then they would have separate rooms. I don’t know whether that structure kept people together, whether that was right or wrong, or we’ve just evolved and we want something more than that life.
Julie Sale: We do, and I think this wanting something more has been very important that culture’s moved on from where my mum was, where my grandma was. But I think where we are now is where the focus is potentially too much on the individual wants and needs. And I think we’re losing the skills of relating to one another and caring about connection. And many of the leading researchers and writers and thinkers on relationship therapy, and really turning their attention to that.
So the Gottmans, Terry Real, turning their attention to the loss of relational connection. And our profession of psychotherapy perpetuates that because we’re looking at individual needs and wants. And that’s a reflection of this culture and society.
Michaela McCarthy: Because you’ve got to learn how to live with another person, you know, share space..
Julie Sale: We’re relational creatures
Dipti Solanki: It’s also a valuing difference within relationships, let alone in society generally. It’s knowing that there may be parts of that relationship where you aren’t compatible, but how do you learn to love and respect that about another person and allow that space?
Michaela McCarthy: I think that’s where we find friends. You know, you can’t, I don’t think one relationship can meet all our needs.
It meets some of our, you know, our close needs, but then we meet other people to meet other needs.
Julie Sale: Because I think that’s another part of where the narrative has shifted over time, which is this romance myth. And I call it a myth and we kick it about at CICS. We unpack all of these things and ruin people’s Disney idea of love.
Dipti Solanki: It’s necessary though, I think, right?
Julie Sale: Because there’s this idea that you can meet this one person who’s going to satisfy all your needs. I mean, if you do, brilliant. And also, there are more people. You can have one intimate partner, but multiple, multiple friends. And also, newsflash, you can have more than one intimate partner.
Michaela McCarthy: Exactly, things have changed.
Julie Sale: Yeah, I think they’ve always been that.
Michaela McCarthy: You could have intimate, great at sex, great at whatever, but then, you know, they can’t cook. They’re not very good at going for grocery shopping. You know, some of the practical things and you sort of think, Well, hold on a minute. You know, I’m doing all this shit stuff, although I love cooking, but do you know what I mean?
Julie Sale: As you’re talking, I was thinking, which on the list would be more important to me right now?
Dipti Solanki: We’re all doing that right now.
Michaela McCarthy: Do you see what I mean? Or then there’s this issue as well. I know when I’ve worked with couples, what time they go to bed. You know, some people go to bed early and another person will be going to bed like one in the morning.
Dipti Solanki: That’s a big one. Some of you are morning people, someone’s like not.
Julie Sale: As a sex therapist, I’d say we need to immediately challenge this idea that sex happens at bedtime.
And I’m not bothered about whether people share a bed. as a couple or not. It’s what works for that family.
Michaela McCarthy: Well in some cultures they don’t. They have single beds and then they come together or they have their own room and then come together. The whole family do that. They have their own quarters, don’t they?
Julie Sale: I love my own quarters actually. You have to work harder for that. This idea that there’s an immediate problem in your relationship if you’re not sharing a bed with your intimate partner.
Again, it’s built on the idea you only have one intimate partner and some people have multiple partners. But if one’s waking up at five for work and the other doesn’t have to wake up until eight, and once a night owl, sex is about connection and pleasure and joy at its best. So why compromise your availability for that experience by being tired and grumpy with your partner because you haven’t slept very well? Of course, this comes back to practicalities a lot of the time, because who’s got a house big enough for everyone to be in separate rooms?
Michaela McCarthy: In their own quarter.
Julie Sale: Yeah, in their own quarter, imagine. But I just want to knock that idea on the head that there’s a problem with your relationship if you aren’t sharing a bed.
Beds are for sleep, they’re a comfortable place to have sex, but there are multiple other times of the day to do that, if you can get the privacy. I mean, good luck if you’ve got kids. That’s all I can say. They’re inbuilt contraception for the rest of your life.
Dipti Solanki: Well, you get very good at improvising.
Julie Sale: You do, exactly. I saw a glint in your eye there, Dipti! You figure it out, don’t you, because you do need privacy.
Michaela McCarthy: So can you elaborate a little bit more, Julie, for the listeners and viewers, you know, about having more than one relationship?
Julie Sale: Yeah, more than one intimate relationship. So I think it’s fair to say that the cultural expectation is still monogamy. And that’s, again, talking about what belongs in the social piece and what’s expected of us. And that doesn’t align for some people. Some people experience love and sexual interest as being infinite and separate, so not necessarily combined. And so we don’t call relationship therapy in our organization couple therapy, we call it intimate partner therapy.
And it’s the intimacy piece, which is a reference to the idea that sex may or may not be happening or may be expected in these relationships. And some people will identify themselves as being polyamorous, which means multiple love, and they’ve got the capacity to love multiple people.
And some people have an emotionally monogamous relationship and have an agreement that sex can happen elsewhere.
There are multiple different ways of thinking about intimate relationships in terms of the number of partners involved and the status and time investment in each of those relationships.
So that’s what we’re thinking about when we’re thinking about multiple partnered people.
Michaela McCarthy: That’s a good way to probably end because you could talk about sex for a long time really.
Julie Sale: And therapy and our own lives.
Michaela McCarthy: Yeah exactly.
Julie Sale: Thank you very much for inviting me.
Michaela McCarthy: Thanks for coming on Julie, it’s been great.
Julie Sale: Thank you for inviting me, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation.
Dipti Solanki: Thank you Julie.
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 soon.