About Geoff Plint, MA

I understand that finding the right sex & relationship coach or counselor is a direct reflection of your investment, time, energy and money in getting the help you need. It can be exhausting to teach, educate, and inform someone new about your world, your upbringing, and your values. I freely offer this section to highlight:

• Tools and offerings you will benefit from when working with me
• My professional philosophy and values
• Common characteristics shared by successful clients

TOOLS & OFFERINGS

• I believe everyone is doing the best they can with the tools they have. Transformation and change can take place when we notice what we are trying to build and share resources accordingly. I offer:

• An open-minded, safe, and inclusive environment to be heard
   
• Community resources, groups, and organizations tailored to your goals
   
• Concrete tools and strategies to better manage common realities (low mood, anxiety, overwhelming emotions, grief, loss, pain)
   
• Specialized training in Relationship Counseling & Sex Therapy to improve intimacy and connection in your relationships
   
• Individual and group facilitation experience with teens and young adults (in person in Victoria, BC, in-person retreats in San Francisco Bay Area and online sessions globally),
   
• A caring, compassionate and professional relationship working for you

PHILOSOPHY & VALUES

I was born, now live, and continue to work and to play on the unceded and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, but I work online with folks from all over the world. I welcome people of all races, genders, sexual orientations, and experiences, and I commit to expanding my education, awareness and solidarity in and around issues of privilege and social justice. I value:

• Honesty: Real talk gets all of us more of what we need
   
• Laughter: The joyful glue that binds people together
   
• Curiosity: Acknowledge ignorance; be courageous to learn more
   
• Sexuality: Real relationship to self invites strong relationship to others
   
• Community: Embrace the people that love you the way you deserve
   
• Expression: Show up and be whatever you want to be.

Methods I am trained in and use in my counseling & coaching approaches:

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

Coping with distress and pain is a normal and valid personal experience. For some, the emotional and physical aspects of pain come and go, like tides of the ocean. For others, distress and pain arrives much more frequently and intensely - system flood. At times these experience can feel unending, or chronic, and can overwhelm the body. DBT focuses on identifying coping challenges that emerge as response to distress and pain, and offers opportunities to incorporate new and adaptive distress tolerance skills. Common areas include: 

• Numbing out through food, alcohol, drugs, or self-harm
• Isolating yourself/taking your feelings out on other people
• Avoiding pleasant activities (eg. social events and exercise)
• Focusing extensively on past pains, mistakes problems
• Worrying about possible future pains, mistakes, problems

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

ACT puts the spotlight on the actions that both enrich and impair your ability to engage the world around you. Consider situations in your life that you skillfully avoid - communicating directly in your partnership(s), drinking more than you hoped at your work party, or watching a binge-worthy series of Netflix in place of studying for tomorrow's exam.

ACT recognizes that your efforts (conscious or not) to avoid painful feelings - fear, sadness, anxiety, disgust - create suffering and put distance between where YOU ARE and where YOU would like to BE.

Through the use of metaphors, visual descriptions, and mindful exercises, I guide you to understand in an experienced way the suffering that is yours to accept and identify the steps needed to take committed action and lead the life you want to live. 

Somatic Therapy

Somatic or body-oriented approaches focus on the experience of sensation in the body. Our nervous systems are impacted from events ranging from rejection and neglect to accidents to interpersonal and systemic violence/abuse. Rather than solely zooming in on the story of the event, I invite you to process overwhelming experience through mindful tracking of the body's sensory and emotional data.

Have you ever experienced the moment when listening to a song through your speakers and as the track switches, the volume sharply increases? Ouch! And let's not forget the persisting irritation afterwards...

Tuning in to your sensations helps the nervous system learn to self-regulate and settle, much like a sound mixer regulates the volume of your favourite tunes.

Sexuality and Sex Therapy Approaches

Eroticism, intimacy, sexuality, and sex are plastered across the media - online, radio, print, television, movies - and have real implications on relationships. Yet, without context and space to discuss them safely, sexuality all too commonly feeds fear, anxiety, and disengagement. Sex Therapy supports you in navigating your sexual style(s), exploring sexual, physical, spiritual, and emotional boundaries, and supports you in communicating desire, whatever that looks like, to whomever you need. Whether in partnership (one or many), married, single, or exploring the reality of ending/separation, my role is to enhance conversation and reflection around acting with integrity, accountability, and honour in relationship with those around you.

Sexuality is complicated, and no two experiences look alike. All configurations, expressions, and desires welcome.