How do you help someone who’s in dire straits but needs advice that’s outside your expertise?
Get tips with with Reid Mihalko from http://www.ReidAboutSex.com and Kamala Devi from http://www.kamaladevi.com/.
Reid: What do you do when you get somebody writing you a question and sharing and it’s one of those emails where they’re in dire straits and it’s out of your area of expertise? I’m Reid Mihalko from http://ReidAboutSex.com. This is my Sex Geek Summer Camp t-shirt, http://SexGeekSummerCamp.com and when I have the green t-shirt on with the camp logo that means this is business advice. This is a dear friend and educator, author, mother, and lover of the world, Kamala Devi from http://KamalaDevi.com and we’ve been shooting some videos for the YouTube channel and I shared about email I got this morning with a woman who’s in abusive relationship but trying to save it in a situation where she can’t leave the relationship financially, for health reasons and insurance, and all kinds of stuff. We’re answering that question and what we realized was we actually need to shoot the video for you all about…
Kamala: We get this heartbreaking request and it’s like, “Ahhh”. As much as we want to save people or help them or share with them, this is completely out of my area of expertise and even though they were attracted to me and it’s like, “Oh, she looks so empowered. She could offer some help.” It’s my moral responsibility to know how to refer. I feel as a sex educator and as role model that we all should be willing to say, “Hey, I have my limitations and this is my area where I really shine and this is another area that you want to go seek someone who has a lot of resources. Women shelters and hotlines, that’s just not my forte.
Reid: I’m also a big proponent of from doing coaching with people to make sure they have a therapist that they’re seeing so that I don’t have to be the soul processor for all of the things that coming up for them and pointing people to and also creating disclaimers we’re like, “I love that I got his email and I am not a crisis management person or organization. I’m not a social worker. I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m not this, I’m not that. Here are great resources.”
Kamala: And here’s the catch on it is that the work that we often do when were bold enough to step into sex education as our life calling is very holistic. Sex touches every aspect of life. It affects your health, it affects your wealth.
So what’ll happen is when we’re working with someone sex is there willing to share all kinds of areas and that catch is that we want to work holistically with people, we have a specialization in sex but it is valuable to get specific people who are specialized for example legal financial advice should really go to a lawyer and even though they’re coming to us as their mentors or their teachers and we are in that position of guiding or coaching, it requires our humbleness to say, “Okay, I don’t know everything and you would really do better to go get help in this areas.”
Reid: And even if you did know everything, you want to role model and get them to exercise their muscles to have a diverse support system, six fingers pointing back at us.
Kamala: Yes.
Reid: So that you don’t anchor some weird situation that you’re the only one who can help them that doesn’t help them in life in general and again these are the things I’ve had to learn and continue practicing for myself.
Kamala: As we point back at ourselves we need to be well-networked. We need to not just like you said to take care of our own, life have different areas handled but also get to know people in different fields, get to know people who are specialists so that you can have a broader base of referrals.
Reid: And this is same as flag for camp. This is one of those places where there’s a lot of cross-pollination. We’ve got therapist meeting marriage counselors, we’ve got marriage counselors meeting kink educators, meeting polyamorous activist, meeting cam girls, and all this cam boys and whatever.
There’s a place for people to meet and create peermanship connections so that you know and trust people that you can refer other things like conferences, like CatalystCon, Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance, even things like AASECT and whatnot and then you run a lot of different events, Poly Palooza is a great event where it draws a lot of sex educators.
Kamala: Yeah. I would say Poly Palooza is a great place to play and expand your own pleasure limits and experiences. It’s not necessarily like a professional networking place but it’s a place to have deep bonds and deep friendships.
Reid: And frolic like take some time off and not be working.
Kamala: So I’d love to see you at Poly Palooza. Thanks
Reid: http://KamalaDevi.com, http://SexGeekSummerCamp.com for all that kind of stuff. Thank you Kamala Devi for being a part about this
Kamala: My pleasure.
Reid: Leave some comments. What are some great resources for you and one last thing, join some Facebook groups that are filled with sex educators and sexologists because you can always post there, “Hey, who’s got a referral for crisis management center, social worker, kink aware therapist?” something like that.
Kamala: Crowdsource the problems and use the hive mind.
Reid: Yup. Thank you.