Let’s Explore Sex & Power

Grace Ballard and Natashia Fuksman are now enrolling participants for an international process-oriented therapist consultation group. This consultation group is for therapists who work with individuals, relationships, and groups. Clinically, Grace and Natashia specialize in working with issues of sexuality and power and how they intersect in our encounters with our clients. This consultation group will consider these themes, as well as other clinical quandaries.

This group is based on Balint groups in which the therapist’s feelings, affect, and somatic experiences are noted alongside cases and professional issues. We incorporate moment-to-moment process in order to strengthen our awareness of what is present emotionally as cases and issues are brought in for consultation. This approach helps heighten awareness of therapist subjectivity (as opposed to objectivity) and uses subjective experiences as conduits for learning and growing.

We are seeking therapists, coaches, and group facilitators who are particularly interested in working through a queer-feminist lens as they consider how issues of sexuality and power collide. While building long-term community, members of this group share an interest in both somatic and ideological ways in which we in our therapist/facilitator roles impact and have been impacted by power relations. These dynamics unfold in the culture of our therapeutic spaces parallel to society at large. Bringing keen attention to these elements empowers us as well as our clients.

We look forward to building a queer-feminist space with clinicians who are also curious about queer-feminist praxis as an ongoing project.

The Details

Process-oriented Therapist Consultation Group:
Bi-Weekly Fridays: 9-10:30 am PT (with option to extend beyond May 2025)
Session Fee $100
Facilitators: Grace Ballard, MA, LPC, CST and Natashia Fuksman, MFT, CST-SIP, PhD Student
Email: natashiamft@gmail.com or grace@graceballard.com

Who Are the Leaders?

Grace Ballard, MA, LPC, CST (they/them) is a trans/genderqueer AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and licensed psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Grace specializes in working with gender identities, consensual nonmonogamy and varied relationship structures, as well as diverse sexual practices such as kink and BDSM. They have presented at William Alanson White Insititute, Naropa University, and various international organizations. Grace has practiced Buddhism and mindfulness training since 2008 and helps facilitate meditation retreats in The Rocky Mountains. Grace is licensed in the state of Colorado, and provides clinical consultation in New York and worldwide. Grace is an MFA creative fiction writing candidate at The New School in Manhattan, a Muay Thai fighter, and an avid city cyclist. Learn more at www.graceballard.com.

Natashia (she/they): I am a California licensed MFT and a PhD candidate in Human Sexuality at California Institute of Integral Studies. I am a nationally certified sex therapist (AASECT) and a sex therapist supervisor in training. I am a speaker, trainer, and facilitator of groups/workshops nationally and internationally. Working through a somatic-mindfulness approach, I integrate a critical psychology and sexuality analytic. My specialization includes working with clients who are interested and/or identify as: queer, poly, multi-cultural and/or multi-racial. I come from a multi-cultural/multi-continental family and am first generation American-born, having grown up speaking Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, and English. I love the power of group work as it uniquely offers inter-relational spaces stretching us beyond the boundaries of the more typical client-therapist duo. In group consultation we have the opportunity to integrate other members in our therapeutic learning processes–which I think is a gift in terms of growing in environments which presuppose engagement with diversity, difference, and connection.