Sexual Attitude Reassessment · Reflective Exercise

A Settled Fact

This exercise resolves a tension the course has created. An earlier case required you to take a history the client had not raised. This one requires you not to.

The case this is built on

A clinician is seeing a client who came about work-related anxiety and who mentions, over several sessions, that they have never experienced sexual attraction. They describe it matter-of-factly, as settled and undistressing.

What the clinician did next is withheld until the end. You will have written your own rule by then.

Estimated time to complete this exercise: 25 minutes

1Your rule
2Seven cases
3The premise
4The rupture
5The cost
6Close

Before you begin

How this one works

Nothing is graded on the reflective parts and nothing you type leaves your browser. There is no submission, reloading discards it, and you can copy your own responses at the end.
This exercise resolves a tension this course has created. An earlier case required you to take a trauma history from a client who had not raised it and did not think it relevant. This case requires you not to. Both are correct, and the reason is the subject of the exercise.
You will be asked to write your own rule before you are shown one. Write it badly rather than not at all. A rule you can see is a rule you can correct.
One part of this exercise asks you a question that contains its own premise. It does that on purpose, and you are encouraged to answer it as asked.

If you have already done the trauma-informed assessment exercises in this course, you may find yourself resisting this one. That is the right place to start from.

References

  1. American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787
  2. Bogaert, A. F. (2004). Asexuality: Prevalence and associated factors in a national probability sample. Journal of Sex Research, 41(3), 279–287. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490409552235
  3. Bogaert, A. F. (2015). Asexuality: What it is and why it matters. Journal of Sex Research, 52(4), 362–379. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2015.1015713
  4. Brotto, L. A., & Yule, M. (2017). Asexuality: Sexual orientation, paraphilia, sexual dysfunction, or none of the above? Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46(3), 619–627. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0802-7