pickmez

Really happy for you that's awesome work:) I think anyone being able to turn things around is great and you deserve every bit of success you worked on

I had two questions.

1) do you feel that it's easier to commercially market services in terms of dating profile ratings and other things in terms of sex dating and relationships as a women instead of a man? Are there any workarounds for this or people you know that are men that have been able to do similar to what you did starting from nothing?

Im mentioning this because I'm a bdsm writer and dominant and noticed a lot of my readers play partners and submissives were people who ended up mostly wanting reassurance to speak out their kinks and counselling and support to vent and feel validated in whatever achievements they made.

I could see there's this burning need for something between no help and professional help where someone to vent too bounce ideas off of and reassure them was needed.

While I don't offer nor claim to offer professional services (professional therapy and support always favoured ) I do basically let people vent for free and give my mind and time for things they're dealing with.

I draw upon my experiences as a long term carer, my own issues and situations I've dealt with or situations related to me and have developed a fairly broad understanding of the kind of issues a lot of people have shame and guilt around and want reassurance in. I've been doing this for free for coming up to 2 years now. I enjoy helping people feel good and giving them someone to be confident in them that I never really got myself.

I want to keep this separate to my Dom sub play but I want to offer some kind of low pressure kink friendly counselling so people can come to me and bounce ideas off of what they want to do. Or what they're dealing with.

Marketing the counselling aspects has been hard. Trust is vital. I know the impact I have on the readers, friends and people I play and work with but part of the trust and authenticity is I do the job for free. Or makes me happy giving others that space to be their inside selves and not feel shame or guilt.

I have less than 500 readers and i was thinking to expand more in terms of voice call and message counselljng listening and so on to help people feel more comfortable in themselves. And to get the confidence for professional therapy if the need it.

Promoting this has been super difficult. I don't know where to start. A lot of people even amongst my readers a lot of them have been let down by males in their life. Trust authenticity discretion comfort integrity and so on is important.

Which leads to my second question

2) how can I market and promote kink friendly counselling while knowing that privacy and discretion is a must and that anonymity often makes it hard to develop authenticity and trust?

It would be sensible to be wary, if someone has a background in kinks where there's psychological aspects in play you would have to establish that you're acting in good faith. I just don't know how to help people while maintaining my privacy and there's except to the extent that they are able to confirm and verify that they're an adult and are the kind of client I can be supportive to without getting over invested into or creating an unhealthy or toxic dependency.

I'm not in work I am just a carer I have anxieties and stresses I would love to be able help counsel people while I'm at home because I do it for free anyway. But I feel super anxious about turning it commercial.

Any advice support feedback would be super welcome. :)

For people outside of bdsm everything comes down to safe sane consensual and risk aware consensual kink. I have criteria I get play partners with. But what I'm more focusing on is like a counsellor online role which is to help get people from that awkward time of not being able to articulate what causes them shame and guilt to being support in the positive efforts they imbue to being able to seek out professional therapy if they want it.

Thanks again, this is all asked in good faith. I will warn people that my profile writing is very kink oriented so it's nsfw.

I just wanted advice on this. Thanks Chloe

I wouldn't go into my own Griefs there's been a lot. Sudden and unexpected or awful Deaths, loves, sick people, a lot of things

I just wanted to say its really good you're making strides with how to process grief.

In my case I poured it into my work and extracurriculars (I write emotionally heavy bdsm erotica)

But I was just wondering how do you deal with living grief?

This is something I have very difficult time with.

Agony basically.

How do you deal with emotional grief that just lingers and lingers and festers and makes your anxiety and stress so intense you can hear your own heartbeat in your ears and neck sometimes?

How do you deal with feelings of responsibility to be sensible to be good to somehow be functional when you're awash with the emotion of despair ?

Hopelessness

A feeling like you weren't the right person or the best person but you're the person here.

How do you move from feeling like you cant move backwards or forwards or left or right and time is passing and you're letting people down by not being "ok"?

How do you move from grieving for someone that's still living but that person also having been so emotionally abusive to you that makes it even harder to emotionally reconcile ?

How do you hurt less and focus on yourself instead of just sitting in that sea of just feeling like there is no time there is no space there is no future there's just existing and waiting ?

Ive had nearly a decade of this and by far the last year has been the worst even prior to the global stuff going on now.

So I'm just thankful to guys like you existing and I'm also not sure what to do to move on from this emotion.

I express through my writing but I'm more anxious and more in the throes of it this year than ever.