I’m Jessa Zimmerman.
I’m an AASECT-certified sex therapist and a licensed couples counselor, working with couples throughout New Mexico by video. Fifteen-odd years have gone into this one corner of the field, and it’s where I’ve stayed.
I wrote Sex Without Stress. I host the Better Sex Podcast. And as an AASECT-certified supervisor I train other therapists working toward the certification themselves.
Sex counts for more than people let on — and unevenly.
When a couple is content with their sex life, it makes up a small share of how happy they are overall. When they’re not content with it, it swells to something like seventy percent.
That lopsidedness is the reason this job exists. Sex looks like one item on a long list, right up until it stops working — and then it spreads into everything. How you say good morning. Whether you feel safe. Whether either of you risks a hand on a shoulder. What you privately assume the other one thinks of you.
Which is why I’d rather go at it directly than wait for it to ease off. It doesn’t ease off. It accumulates.
I also happen to think there’s no faster way to grow up than being in a relationship. Nothing else asks quite as much of you, or shows you your own limits quite so precisely. Getting good at this makes people more substantial, and I’ve had a front-row seat to that happening.
I’m sex positive and LGBTQ affirming, and I mean those as descriptions of how I actually practice rather than badges. Couples of any orientation, gender or relationship structure are welcome, and you won’t be asked to justify the shape of your relationship before we can get started.
Respectfully confrontational.
It’s the phrase I’ve used about myself for years, and I haven’t found a more honest two words.
I’m warm, and I will almost certainly like you. I’m also going to say what I see, including the parts you were quietly hoping I’d have the manners to skip. Leaving the challenge out strikes me as a way of not really turning up — and if all I ever did was agree with you, you’d be paying a considerable amount for a sympathetic audience.
I take part rather than officiate. I’ll slow things down. I’ll interrupt, politely. And when your pattern starts running in front of me, I’ll say so out loud, because that’s the moment anything is available to change.
The pattern gets treated as the problem — not one of you. That isn’t tact. I’ve simply watched two entirely reasonable people build the same trap between them, neither of them meaning to, more times than I could count.
In practice people tend to be relieved by that rather than startled. If your previous experience of therapy was mostly being listened to sympathetically, this will feel like a different activity altogether.
Because I had to learn it myself.
My own marriage is a good one now. It didn’t start out that way — getting here took a lot of learning and a fair amount of growing on my part, and not much of that was comfortable at the time.
So I know from the inside what a strained relationship costs. The low constant drain of it. The worry that never entirely switches off. The way it seeps into the children, and the work, and the small hours when you’re lying there going round it again.
I also know what the other side looks like, because I’ve watched a great many couples get there. Not by luck. By being willing to be honest, to go at the thing itself rather than around it, and — the hardest part by a distance — to take on their own share of how it got this way.
That last part is the whole job. It’s also why I’m still interested after all this time.
Where this came from.
- Degree Master’s in Psychology LIOS College, Saybrook University
- Certification AASECT Certified Sex Therapist American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists
- Certification AASECT Certified Supervisor of Sex Therapy Qualified to provide the supervision hours other clinicians need toward certification of their own
- License Licensed to practice in New Mexico Also licensed in Washington State
- Training Crucible® Therapy Trained with Dr. David Schnarch, whose approach centers on differentiation in couples and sex therapy
- Training PACT Therapy Trained with Dr. Stan Tatkin, who brings the biology of attachment into work with couples
- Training Emotionally Focused Therapy Intensive externship in EFT for couples
Why the AASECT part is worth checking. Only Florida sets any legal standard for who may call themselves a sex therapist. In New Mexico, and in almost every other state, the title is unprotected — anyone can put it on a website tomorrow. Certification means over 160 hours of specialized coursework, 50 hours of supervision with a certified supervisor, a Sexual Attitude Reassessment, and hundreds of clinical hours spent on sexual concerns. It’s the only reliable way to tell trained from self-declared, and it’s worth checking on whoever you end up seeing — me or anybody else.
Writing, talking, teaching.
-
Sex Without Stress
My book — a couple’s guide to getting out from under disappointment, avoidance and pressure. It sets out the nine-phase process I use in session, so two people can work through it at home.
The book and everything else I recommend -
Better Sex Podcast
Weekly conversations with researchers, clinicians and educators about desire, bodies, communication, and the subjects couples find hardest to open.
Listen -
Supervising other therapists
I supervise clinicians working toward AASECT certification, and mentor therapists on the business side of running a private practice. It’s by video, so it isn’t tied to any state.
Clinical supervision -
Writing elsewhere
I write and comment regularly for Mind Body Green, Marriage.com, Refinery29 and Business Insider.
If that sounds like the help you want.
Tell me a bit about what’s going on between the two of you and we’ll find out whether I’m the right person for it. If I’m not, I’ll say so plainly and do my best to point you somewhere better.