Why Training Alone Is Not the Work (and Why It Still Matters)

Existential Sex Therapy

Clinical training matters. Hours matter. Education matters. And yet, in existential therapy, training is never the work itself. It is preparation for presence.

As part of my doctoral training toward a PhD in clinical sexology, and in completing the advanced education required of a certified sex therapist, I have accumulated more than 240 hours of formal clinical sexuality training. What deepened most through this process was not simply technical knowledge of sexual functioning or intervention models, but a more refined understanding of how sexual concerns reflect the deeper existential tensions clients bring into therapy: fear of intimacy, ambivalence about freedom, anxiety around identity and the avoidance of choice.

From an existential perspective, sexual concerns are rarely technical problems in need of correction. They are expressions of meaning. Low desire may reflect a life lived out of alignment. Sexual pain may signal boundaries crossed or unspoken. Avoidance may function as protection against loss, rejection or self-confrontation. No amount of technique can address these experiences unless the therapist is willing to sit with what they point to.

Advanced training within a PhD in clinical sexology sharpened my ability to listen beneath content. It refined my discernment around timing: when an intervention clarifies and when it prematurely resolves something that needs to be understood first. This is central to existential work. Not every insight is helpful simply because it is accurate.

In existential sex therapy, education does not replace relationship, and expertise does not override lived experience. Whether one is pursuing certification as a certified sex therapist or advanced doctoral study, training serves the work only when it deepens attunement, ethical restraint and the capacity to remain present with uncertainty rather than rushing toward solutions.

This is why existential therapy often feels different from more directive or technique-driven approaches. The work is not about mastering protocols. It is about cultivating judgment, presence and responsibility in the therapeutic encounter.

Clinical hours and credentials matter. But they matter most when they support meeting sexuality as a human experience shaped by meaning, fear, embodiment and choice rather than something to be fixed.