Hans RJ West
Kink Aware Coach
Since pre-puberty I had D/s fantasies without having words for it. But feminist ideas were prevalent during puberty. What seemed to a conflict, it resolved when I was 20 out and learned more about BDSM (remember this is waaay before the interwebs) and came out of my personal closet. I moved on to organisational actionism to find a place in the scene ever since. Hosting parties and organising courses.
Professional:
As a physiotherapist, I worked in Switzerland for 9 years where I developed breathing therapy and body-psychotherapy. Back in Holland, I worked in psychiatry wards a few years and now for close to 30 years in non-judgemental addiction care, wjhere I work with people regulating drug and alcohol use, and/or with their partners.
I am not against any drug… I am against drug-use that costs too much quality of life!
Kink Aware:
As told before, as a hobby I gave courses for likeminded people about BDSM-techniques, “1-o-1 BDSM”, “How to be a Dom”, “Polyamory How-To’s”, “whipping for beginners”, “how to find consent and still doing the nasty shit you wanna do” etc. etc.
When I started my own private practice it dawned upon me that I could combine my knowledge about kink and my knowledge about therapy and coaching. So I came out of the closet as a Kink Aware Professional.
Also helping other professionals to be Kink Aware.
Out of the coset as a Kink Aware therapist
Do you want to talk about the love you share with three people, with four? There is no real reason why you cannot have ‘couple-sessions’ with more than two, other than the therapist’s limitation in his thinking. Want to talk about the amount of fetish/kink, wou want in your life. Want to talk about being yourself and getting out of the closet in a clever way? Want to talk about yourself without being kink-shamed?
So KinkindeRelatie.nl (Dutch) and KinkAwareCoach.com were born
What I do for a living
My Motivation
Hans: I started my voyages in the world of kinky sex and BDSM waaaay before the interwebz. Then there were schools of thought with really strict ideas, rules and regulations… And I am not much of a ‘rule-obider’ myself 😉 So I went on my merry way, learning along the way, having fun, using about every drug available at the time, following courses and discussions -as we used to discuss more those days- and organising things for others (being a nice and active guy is always a good way to meet possible sex-partners and kinky friends). Gathering good info along the way).
You know, I am fond of porn. But learning about sex from porn is like learning how to drive by watching “the Transformers”! And I noticed how most of my fellow therapists are not willing or able to give sex-positive answers but only try to silence their clients (…) Making my own share of wonderful discoveries and painful mistakes. Because yes, even with the best intentions, I’ll have hurt people, and people have hurt me. That comes with the territory of interaction. But never that bad.
That is só different for some of my clients. People being hurt deeply by either abusive BDSM-relationships or abusive vanilla relationships (that sometimes looked attractive because of BDSM-tendencies). I have seen people hurting other people, not on purpose or mean intent, but by sheer lack of knowledge or awareness.
Being a sadist or a dominant, you might want to see the reactions to the pain you give, the orders you give, the debasement and degradation you provide… How to explore the boundaries of your submissive without crossing boundaries in a wrong way. And on the other hand, if you dream of abuse, or pain or degradation… how do you prevent yourself being traumatised? Because you are apt to be attractive to the abusive assholes that thinks BDSM is a justifying rape and the physical abuse of partners.
So my motivation? It is to use my personal and theoretical knowledge to help the victims. Not only to lessen the pain and the unnecessary hurt amongst humans but to help people enjoy parties and kinks and kicks, especially amongst my fellow kinksters.
Quotes
We live our lives forward but we have to understand it backward.
Kierkegaard
Love is a matter of chemistry, but sex is a matter of physics….
Unknown
Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
Dr. Seuss
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