Description
This course can ONLY be taken after the prerequisite, Sensate Focus in SBA for Couples. The information in this course builds off of that one, rather than repeating slides and text.
**This course will provide the participant with 2 General Learning Type BACB® CEUs**
Description of Learning Type CE Event: This course can ONLY be taken after the prerequisite, Sensate Focus in SBA for Couples. The information in this course builds off of that one, rather than repeating slides and text. In this follow-up to the CEU event Sensate Focus in SBA for Couples, we will be exploring contextual variables that would imply a need for an individual focus and the modifications to protocol such may entail. (If you are curious about what Sensate Focus is, please check the base training’s description out, as it is a required prerequisite to enter this course!) This session will acknowledge a behavior-analytic approach to addressing sexual “trauma responses,” sex and/or porn-related compulsive behaviors, persistent avoidance of initiation, and potential ways to treat individuals who express an MO to do self-work in these areas while not partnered. Special emphases will be on the avoidance of mentalism through stimulus-response focus and on the fidelity of data, when a consultative model is being used and most data collected is from individual self-report from the client/payer of service. All CBS-C Student attendees will also receive a copy of the protocols for use in supervised applications.
About the Instructor: Nicholas Maio-Aether owns Empowered: A Center for Sexuality in St Louis, where he and his occasional teams of partnered Universities’ students work to assist humans with and without disabilities achieve sexual access, sexual freedom, gender affirmation, and self-control of compulsive behaviors. Nicholas works throughout the US training BCBAs/Behavior Analysts so persons in Individualized Supportive Living (ISL) programs gain access to applicable and generalizable comprehensive sex ed and sexual opportunities. Nicholas provides Sexual Behavior Analysis, and has assisted polycules, kinksters, gay couples, trans and nonbinary humans, among others, on their journeys. Trained by GLSEN in 2003, Nicholas started Gay-Straight Alliances across Alaska while in high school, and provided them sex ed materials and trainings. Nicholas spent five years managing Hustler Hollywood in St Louis before moving into Behavior Analysis, and joined AASECT, where he currently sits on two committees. He then completed a Sex Therapy practicum under Linda Weiner, LMSW, CSTS, in 2019 before getting a second Masters in Marriage & Family Therapy, and meeting those hour requirements under Angela Skurtu, LMFT, CST, along with his LGBTQIA+ Family Systems Specialist certificate in 2021.
Target Audience: This course can ONLY be taken after the prerequisite, Sensate Focus in SBA for Couples. The information in this course builds off of that one, rather than repeating slides and text. Level 2/CBS-C Students, as well as any other BCBAs® curious about work that requires additional competencies to provide behavior-analytic services to individuals experiencing sexual concerns commonly labeled as: low desire/arousability; initiation avoidance; vaginal tightness and/or dryness; delayed or inexperienced orgasms; erectile difficulties; infidelity; porn compulsions; perceived “trauma responses.”
Learning Objectives for Participants: As a result of this course, participants will be able to…
- Acknowledge concerns for which Sensate Focus is an appropriate venue for an individual or an individual focus within a couple’s system.
- Operationally Define the following behaviors: Compulsive Porn-Viewing, Individual Expectation-Setting; Fusion/Avoidance Cycle — and link these to ACT-based treatments.
- Address and engage in problem-solving discussion about the issue of between-session data given as in-session narratives, when only one person is reporting (i.e., individual self-report).
- Determine appropriate ways of demonstrating tangible behavior change in individuals who do most work between sessions.
- Gain exposure to the Individual Sensate Focus protocols and review them with a behavior-analytic lens.
- Determine how Sensate Focus can serve as a DRA process.
- Address the “to-dos” for when an individual protocol is found to be punitive or reinforcing.
- Determine at which point treatment is considered successful or unsuccessful, addressing also the fading out process, which may be a move into Couple’s Sensate (if partnered) or maintenance and discharge.
