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Now, as The Pleasure-Centered Therapist, Croft says, “As a writer, if I get too attached, that’s just how it’s going to be. Objectivity doesn’t exist and, in fact, is a tool of white supremacy.” She says, “What I want is to be on the front lines, not writing about people who are on the front lines.”

After undergrad, Croft joined the Peace Corps, taught Sex Ed, and did crisis counseling, but found that she was thrown into the field with no training. After her time in the Peace Corps, she came back to the United States to get her Masters of Social Work (MSW). During this program, she says she swore she would never be a therapist, but realized she could bring her big picture ideas into individual settings and found being a therapist was right for her.

In graduate school, Croft’s research was around survivors of sexual assault and rebuilding their relationship with sex and pleasure. As a sexual assault survivor herself, she had nothing but invalidating experiences with therapists, which led to her curiosity about what therapy modalities are possible for survivors. Now, that’s the work she’s doing.

After being a long-time follower of her sexual wellness education platform on Instagram, @pleasure_collective, and her own private practice, The Pleasure Centered Therapist, I sat down with Hannah to ask her about her work.

Q: What does it mean to be pleasure-centered?

For me, when I think about pleasure, I think about it as a tool for resisting capitalism and white supremacy and that comes in a lot of forms. When people think of the word pleasure, they think of sexual pleasure and that’s valid and centering pleasure in my practice is really about supporting folks in recognizing pleasure as something we deserve to feel on a daily basis and not something we have to earn. We should have something joyful and pleasurable every day, especially when the world is as it is. Joy and pleasure are acts of resistance.

Q: How does your queerness inform your therapy practice?

How doesn’t it? From the zoom-out perspective, it has been important for me to queer traditional models of therapy. I tell my clients: You can ask me anything you want, but if I don’t want to, I will tell you why. I’m not a robot. Therapy often relies on power dynamics that are harmful. My favorite thing about being queer is writing my own rules and questioning tradition.

Instead of being rigid and stuck in one particular modality, it's important to me that my work is fluid and adaptable to my clients' specific needs. Queerness is the most present thing in my practice. Even if i'm working with clients who don't identify as queer, I'm still trying to queer traditional models of therapy. 

Imagination is a big part of my practice, and white supremacy takes that away from us. By centering radical imagination, I hope to create space for my clients to let things be different than they've always been. It’s also important that my clients know that I’m queer. If my clients don’t know I’m queer, then I fear they are out of the loop. It’s important for my queer clients to know they are not a token queer on their therapist’s caseload.

It’s not just the theoretical lens it informs, but my practical practice, as well. Hopefully it makes me a more relatable and accessible therapist.

Q: What does being trauma-informed mean to you?

Being trauma-informed is being able to move slowly enough so I can put things into context and understand that when someone has a reaction to something I’ve said or to something, it’s contextualized in their lived experience. It’s being able to take a second and put everything into content rather than looking at our world at face value or flat. It’s also about being curious enough for things to be grey and being gentle enough to lead us to tools for curiosity and understanding, rather than something that continues to harm.

Q: How do you use that curiosity in your practice with pleasure-centered practice?

We are not given language or the tools to communicate safety about sex because it has been full of shame for so many of us. I make sure that my clients know how much goes into asking questions about sex. There are plenty of people who have language for sex and pleasure, but there are also people who don’t and want to talk about it, but are scared. For clients who are nervous and scared, I bring it back to square one. I ask: where did you learn about sex? What did you learn about pleasure? How does it show up in your life? We start there.

Q: What would you have to say to people who are scared to take medication and it impact Their sex life?

SSRIs can impact our sex lives, we know that. What most of us don't have are the tools to make accommodations so we can have safe, pleasurable sex, and access to meds that can be life saving. Instead of building up this massive stigma around brain meds, maybe we can instead empower folks with the tools to communicate about what they need to maintain access to pleasure. If SSRIs keep you alive, but make it difficult to get in the mood, then we can come up with tools and support that may require us to work harder to access pleasure.

Maybe that means we need to communicate a lot more or say things that feel clunky in our mouths. But we deserve to have conversations about sex and pleasure and it’s okay to ask what kind of accommodations we need to feel pleasurable. Medication can be harm reduction. In a perfect world, if you were to go in and get an evaluation with a psychiatrist, they would then refer you to someone who is a sex educator, who can give you some information about how this will impact your sex life and give you those tools. 

Q: What is some advice you would give someone who’s going on this pleasure path or being curious?

Read Emily Nogaski’s book, Come As You Are. There is a workbook and worksheets and guided discussions can be helpful to figure it all out. Conversations about sex and pleasure have been interwoven with shame and cultural “ick.” Having tools to take the pressure off can be helpful.

Consider making a Yes/No/Maybe list. Ask questions about what you like, what you don’t like, or what you would be willing to consider. It can feel strange, but we otherwise don’t have that language. The most important thing: use the tools that are available to you. Lots of sex education platforms have become more accessible, such as CHEEX. Try to give yourself permission to let it be fun. Be curious. Be playful. 

Q: What are other tools we can use to access that curiosity?

Tap into resources that normalize sex and pleasure vocabulary — podcasts, books, social media. Try practicing talking about pleasure with friends, and building familiarity with saying the words. By normalizing these conversations, we remove the barrier to talking about pleasure. The more we break down these barriers, the more sexual wellness can be a place of community care. We can support each other in accessing pleasure.

q: What does community care mean to you?

Because the world of mental health is so important and everyone is at capacity, it is hard to find a therapist that’s a good relational fit. It’s a good thing that people are seeking mental health support, but when you go through your health insurance, what you're going to get is somebody who fits your time slot; it may not always be a relational fit. The way our system is set up right now is setting people up for frustrating and unfulfilling therapy experiences. Part of that is the way that healthcare makes you jump through so many hoops to make mental health care accessible.

The healthcare system doesn't center community. It doesn’t make sense. I’m such a people person. Showing up in community is so important to me personally and professionally. The way that shows up in my day-to-day and client work is when we make maps of their communities.

Because I’m an abolitionist, all my clients have safety plans that don't involve calling the cops. It is especially important to me to learn about their communities. If someone is your emergency contact, I want to learn about that person and why they are important to that person.

At the end of the day, I hope my clients know there is no expectation from me, nor is it a valid expectation from anyone, to be ‘boot-strappy.’ I believe in interdependence and I believe in collective care. A lot of mental health care is about becoming self-sufficient and I don’t believe it is the right path for everyone. I don’t think it makes sense because we need people and need support. We need people to check in when we are having a hard time. 

As a clinician, I hope I can dispel this belief that we have to do things by ourselves. Why would we deny ourselves the pleasure of healing and connecting in community? Why would we force ourselves to do these things alone? When we know on so many levels we need people. When we have relationship harm, that needs to be healed in relationship. We can’t heal in a silo by ourselves. We can’t learn that relationships can be different if we’re not in different relationships. 

To find out more about Hannah, follow her on Instagram at @thepleasurecenteredtherapist and on her website. You can also find more of her work at @pleasure_collective.