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Helping you create relationships of deep connection where you can be fully yourself.
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Growth-focused: I don’t help relationships go “back to normal.” I support partners in evolving into something deeper, more honest, and more connected.
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Inclusive and affirming: I welcome LGBTQIA+ clients, am kink-community affirming, and work with both monogamous and non-monogamous relationships.
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Specialized in sexuality: Unlike many couples therapists, I have extensive sex therapy training, which means we can talk openly and skillfully about desire, eroticism, and embodiment.
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​Individuality honored: Authentic relationships don’t require shrinking to fit. I help each partner show up as their full self while building connection and trust.
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​Nervous-system informed: We work with physiology, emotion, attachment, and communication to build real repair—not just “agreements” that don’t stick.
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Katie Baptist / LCSW, CST
HeartStory Counseling is gender inclusive and sex positive. I am a kink affirming, poly friendly, cis gender female, heterosexual, LGBTQIA+ ally psychotherapist with the pronouns of she/her.
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HeartStory Counseling is anti-racist. I am a white person settled on the stolen land of the Nisenan and Miwok peoples, and I am working to educate myself and my family about white supremacy and take actions to undo systemic racism. I am choosing to not be silent, and I sometimes get it wrong. It’s not your job to teach me, and I strive to be teachable.
At Heart Story, Here is What We Love:
Pleasure
Can we please start prioritizing pleasure? In counseling sessions, I’ll listen carefully to what is currently getting in the way for you, and share resources related to pleasure. We’ll talk about how therapy can help you tune into your sensual pleasure for a lifetime of embodied joyful touch.
Sovereignty
Let’s talk about consent. It’s basic. But lets not stop there. Let’s frame our valuing consent within a larger context of sovereignty. Sovereignty means self-belonging. It means freedom to choose our most authentic Yes and our most authentic No, and respecting other people’s choices too.
Connection
True sovereignty and pleasure can’t exist or thrive without connected empathy, relational ethics, and good communication. And that helps everybody. We feel good when our partners feel good, and when we do our part to make sure everybody’s voices are considered and heard.True sovereignty and pleasure can’t exist or thrive without connected empathy, relational ethics, and good communication.
Find the pleasure path for your life and follow it.
Let it reverberate healing back into your ancestor’s wounds.
Let it open you up and remind you that you are already whole.
Let it shape a future where feeling good is the normal, primary experience of all beings.
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-adrienne maree brown