Lee Kinsey

My clients experience the complex intersections of love, eroticism, and loss. Many of them are men who, like me, have struggled to understand their emotional world, particularly as it relates to sexuality. Many of my clients are couples who long for vibrancy and connection but struggle to consider their inner world. A growing percentage of my clients are ex-evangelicals and/or spiritual seekers who want to consider that the erotic and the spiritual are not separate domains but two lines of the same prayer for openness to connection.

My work is influenced by humanistic, relational, psychodynamic, and emotionally focused approaches, as well as by my longstanding engagement with philosophy, spirituality, and the search for meaning. I am especially drawn to the intersections of love, sex, and spirituality where desire, attachment, fear, and exaltation meet. I help clients explore these layers with compassion and seriousness, not to hand them answers (I don’t have any), but to help them think more clearly, feel more deeply, and live with more openness to real connection.

I was born in Louisiana into a family of evangelical pastors. As a gay child, early on, I turned against myself, using the flagellations of shame and guilt. Like every child, I wanted to be what my family needed me to be. But I experienced sexuality as a source of trouble, a struggle, a burden, a disconnection from the divine. The darkness of this self-hate drove me to the edges of destruction. But something in me knew that I was drafted into the internal war against my nature, so I fled my home in search of hope.

I have dedicated my life to the pursuit of understanding how sexuality and connection meet to either create joy and love or shame and hate. It has taken me a long time, and I still have too few answers, but I have learned to sit, to question, to grieve, and, perhaps most importantly, to listen.

My approach to counseling is grounded in the belief that healing often happens in the context of safe, trustworthy relationships. The counseling relationship can serve this function: a place where pain can be spoken, shame can loosen its grip, and a new mind and new connections can emerge.

My style is engaged, thoughtful, and direct. I bring warmth, insight, humor, and a deep respect for the complexity of being human. I think philosophically, but I strive for emotional expression and experience. For this reason, I work particularly well with men who struggle to find and experience their emotional world. But I work well with all questioners and seekers, especially those with high-demand, high-control childhood family dynamics.

It is the greatest privilege of my life to be able to sit with people who are hurting and lost. I do not know the way forward for you, but I do know what it is like to feel alone. And, thankfully, I know what it is like to truly connect with others in spite of the pain and often because of it. We can laugh and cry together, and, maybe, we will find a way where there seems to be no way.

Background

I hold a PhD in Counseling from the University of North Texas, a top rated counseling program. And I have over 16 years of clinical experience working with individuals and couples from over 50 different countries. I have extensive training, experience, and supervision in relationship counseling and sex therapy, and my work has focused on the emotional, relational, and developmental complexities of intimacy and sexual life.

I currently serve as an Adjunct Professor at Boston University, where I teach and mentor graduate students preparing to become counselors and sex therapists. In my research, I have explored the sexual stories of adults in order to contribute to a more holistic understanding of sexual development.

Across my clinical work, teaching, and writing, I aim to help people understand their struggles within the larger complexity of their lives: their relationships, their psychodynamics, their social systems, and their values, hopes, and dreams.

Thanks for listening.