My approach is trauma-informed, sex-positive and non-judgemental. You set the focus of therapy, and sex work does not need to be the reason you seek support in order to be welcomed here. People who do sex work may look for counselling, psychotherapy or sex therapy for many reasons—just like anyone else. Sometimes work is part of the picture; sometimes it is not. In my practice, sex work is not treated as something that needs to be explained away, defended or fixed. I begin with what matters to you: what you want support with, what feels safe to talk about, and what you would like to be different.

Sex Work Is Not the Problem

Many sex workers have had difficult experiences with health and mental-health services. Australian research has found that sex-work stigma can significantly affect mental health, and that selective disclosure may be part of managing safety and privacy. Participants also described experiences of practitioners assuming sex work was the cause of distress, approaching it with fascination, or overlooking the concern the person had actually sought help for (Treloar et al., 2021).

Therapy should not become another place where you have to manage stigma, explain yourself, or work out whether it is emotionally safe to be honest. Good support makes room for complexity, privacy, agency and choice.

Therapy Without Assumptions

When I say my practice is sex-worker affirming, I do not mean I make assumptions about how you feel about your work. I do not assume you love it, hate it, feel empowered by it, feel harmed by it, want to leave it, or want to stay.

I also do not assume that every issue in your life is about sex work. My role is not to tell you what sex work means about you or what decisions you should make. My role is to help you make sense of what is happening, recognise patterns, support your wellbeing, and work toward changes that matter to you.

What You Can Bring to Therapy

Some people seek support with work-related stress, burnout, boundaries, privacy, selective disclosure, workplace experiences or stigma. Others want to talk about trauma, anxiety, shame, dissociation, relationships, sexuality, intimacy, grief, or mental-health concerns that may have little to do with work. Sometimes these threads are connected; sometimes they are not. Part of therapy is gently putting the puzzle together rather than forcing a story that does not fit.

Boundaries, Consent and Repair

You may be reflecting on an interaction at work and wondering whether you crossed someone’s boundaries, acted in a way that caused harm, or did not communicate consent as clearly as you would have liked. This can bring up guilt, shame, anxiety or uncertainty, particularly when your work involves complex interpersonal, sexual and professional boundaries. Therapy can be a private, non-judgemental place to look at what happened with honesty and care. We can explore accountability, the impact of your actions, how to respond to harm where appropriate, and how to strengthen your understanding of sexual and intimate consent. The focus is not on punishment or shame. It is on developing clearer consent language, recognising cues, practising boundaries, and building safer, more respectful ways of working.

Privacy, Choice and Selective Disclosure

I work in a collaborative, non-judgemental and trauma-informed way. You do not need to disclose more than feels relevant to your goals. You do not need to educate me out of prejudice. You do not need to perform either empowerment or damage in order to be taken seriously. For some people, the most important part of affirming care is simply being able to exhale: not having to scan for judgement, work out whether a therapist’s curiosity is clinical or voyeuristic, or spend the first session deciding whether honesty is safe.

A Trauma-Informed Approach

Sex work itself is not a diagnosis. It is not, on its own, evidence of trauma, pathology, poor boundaries or an inability to consent. At the same time, sex work can involve a wide range of experiences, circumstances and meanings. For some people, it may be experienced primarily as work, income, community, autonomy or survival. For others, it may be shaped by coercion, exploitation, violence, financial pressure, discrimination, limited options or trauma. These experiences can also coexist, change over time, or be understood differently at different points in a person’s life.

An affirming therapeutic approach does not require you to describe sex work as either wholly empowering or wholly harmful. Instead, it makes room for your own account of your life, safety, needs, relationships, choices and circumstances. Therapy can support you to explore what is working, what is not, and what you would like to change—without judgement or pressure toward a particular conclusion. Sex workers, like anyone else, may be in relationships, be parents or carers, study, hold other jobs, or balance multiple roles and responsibilities. They may also experience burnout, anxiety, shame, dissociation, grief, relationship concerns, workplace stress, financial stress, discrimination, violence, sexual assault, violations of bodily autonomy or boundaries, or complicated feelings about sex, work and intimacy. A respectful therapeutic space needs to hold this complexity without reducing a person to a stereotype or assuming that sex work is the sole explanation for distress.

This is also why I take a trauma-informed approach: one that prioritises choice, collaboration, safety, transparency and respect. You remain the expert on your own experiences, and you decide what is relevant to bring into therapy.

Sex Therapy and Sexual Wellbeing

If sex work is part of what you want to talk about, we might explore boundaries, safety, stress, nervous-system load, sexual wellbeing, intimacy outside of work, body-based responses, shame, or the impact of stigma. If it is not the main issue, we can focus on whatever is. Therapy should be shaped by your concerns, not by assumptions about your work.

Sex Work and South Australian Law

Australian jurisdictions take different legal approaches to sex work. Some states and territories have adopted decriminalisation, while others retain regulatory or criminal-law approaches that can affect sex workers differently depending on their circumstances and the type of work they do. A systematic review found that criminalisation and enforcement practices were associated with harms to sex workers’ health and safety (Platt et al., 2018).

In South Australia, the act of providing sexual services in exchange for payment is not itself illegal. However, various activities associated with the usual operation of sex work remain criminalised, including street-based solicitation and activities connected with premises that may be legally defined as a brothel (Scarlet Alliance, 2023).

The absence of comprehensive decriminalisation in South Australia can contribute to uncertainty, stigma, privacy concerns and barriers to accessing support. Sex-worker-led organisations and allies, including the Sex Industry Network, Scarlet Alliance and SHINE SA, continue to advocate for law reform and the full decriminalisation of consensual sex work (SHINE SA, 2022, 2023).

This legal context can affect how safe it feels to seek support, disclose work-related experiences, make decisions about safety, or access health and mental-health care. If you work outside South Australia, elsewhere in Australia, or internationally, it is important to check the laws and regulations that apply to the type of work you do, as legal frameworks differ significantly between jurisdictions.

You are not required to disclose more than feels relevant to your wellbeing and therapeutic goals. I do not provide legal advice; if legal information or advocacy is needed, I can support you to identify an appropriate sex-worker-led or legal service.

Take the First Step – No Matter Where You Are

If you are looking for a therapist who will meet you with respect, curiosity and without assumptions about your work, you are welcome at my therapy practice. Counselling can be a space to talk through what matters to you—whether that involves work, relationships, boundaries, sexuality, stress, privacy, trauma, or something else entirely. I offer individual counselling, psychotherapy and sex therapy in person from Goodwood, Adelaide, and virtually online for clients across South Australia, interstate and internationally, where appropriate. You are welcome to book a session when you feel ready.

Book your first session here.

*Please note I am not able to see clients from the United States of America due to insurance constraints.

References

Platt, L., Grenfell, P., Meiksin, R., Elmes, J., Sherman, S. G., Sanders, T., Mwangi, P., & Crago, A.-L. (2018). Associations between sex work laws and sex workers’ health: A systematic review and meta-analysis of quantitative and qualitative studies. PLoS Medicine, 15(12), e1002680. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002680[journals.plos]

Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association. (2023). South Australia sex work laws. https://scarletalliance.org.au/resources/laws/sa/

SHINE SA. (2022, June 1). Why SHINE SA supports International Sex Workers Day and the decriminalisation of sex work. https://shinesa.org.au/decriminalisation/

SHINE SA. (2023, May 31). International Sex Workers Day and calls for decriminalisation in South Australia. https://shinesa.org.au/sex-workers-day-2023/

Treloar, C., Stardust, Z., Cama, E., & Kim, J. (2021). Rethinking the relationship between sex work, mental health and stigma: A qualitative study of sex workers in Australia. Social Science & Medicine, 268, Article 113468. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113468