Professional Consultation
I provide consultation to therapists and other healthcare professionals working with complex clinical presentations, including sexual dysfunction, sexual pain, trauma and PTSD, childhood maltreatment, and relationship and intimacy concerns.
Kimberly Keiser
MA, LPC-MH, CST, CST-S
I am an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist Supervisor with advanced expertise in sexual health, trauma, relationships, and the intersection of psychological and physiological functioning.
My consultation work is informed by both my clinical practice and research. I draw from sex therapy, contemporary sexual medicine, trauma science, psychophysiology, and my research examining the relationships among childhood maltreatment, posttraumatic stress, somatic symptoms, and sexual functioning. I am particularly interested in helping clinicians think beyond symptoms toward the mechanisms that may be contributing to a client's distress—and how that understanding can inform treatment.
I also develop professional education, continuing education programs, workshops, and presentations that translate emerging research and clinical theory into thoughtful, research-informed practice.
Consultation Fees
Individual Clinical Consultation
50 minutes | $350
Consultation is available to psychotherapists and other healthcare professionals seeking an experienced perspective on complex cases involving sexual health, sexual dysfunction, trauma, relationships, and the integration of psychological, relational, and physiological factors.
Consultation may be scheduled on an occasional or ongoing basis depending on your needs. Clinical consultation is advisory and is not a substitute for clinical supervision. Consultation does not fulfill supervision requirements for professional licensure or certification.
Clinical Research & Consultation
My research begins with questions that emerge from clinical practice.
As a psychotherapist and Certified Sex Therapist working at the intersection of trauma, sexuality, relationships, and the body, I have spent years observing that sexual symptoms rarely exist in isolation. Difficulties with desire, arousal, orgasm, sexual pain, avoidance, intimacy, and sexual satisfaction often exist within a much larger system involving developmental experiences, trauma, posttraumatic stress, interpersonal functioning, and physiological processes.
I am interested in understanding that system.
Research Focus
My research examines how childhood maltreatment and other forms of interpersonal trauma contribute to sexual dysfunction in adulthood—and, increasingly, the psychological, interpersonal, and physiological mechanisms that may explain those relationships.
Rather than asking only whether trauma is associated with later sexual difficulties, I am interested in the pathways between the two: What happens between exposure and outcome? Why do individuals with similar histories develop different symptoms? Which processes confer risk or resilience? And which of those mechanisms might ultimately become meaningful targets for prevention, assessment, and treatment?
My current and developing research examines childhood maltreatment, sexual victimization, PTSD and its symptom clusters, somatization, and sexual functioning. This work has identified relationships between specific PTSD symptom patterns and different forms of sexual dysfunction, associations among sexual victimization, somatization, and sexual functioning, and the contribution of childhood maltreatment to sexual dysfunction.
An important thread across this work is heterogeneity. Trauma does not produce a single sexual outcome, and the pathways to dysfunction may not be the same across individuals or across sexes. I am particularly interested in identifying these distinct pathways rather than treating either trauma or sexual dysfunction as a unitary construct.
From Association to Mechanism
My long-term research program is focused on developing and testing mechanistic models of sexual dysfunction following childhood maltreatment.
I am particularly interested in the intersection of psychological and physiological processes: posttraumatic stress, autonomic regulation, somatic symptoms, affective and interpersonal processes, sexual response, and the ways adaptations to early environments may become embodied in adult sexual functioning.
This requires moving beyond traditional divisions between mind and body. Sexual functioning is simultaneously psychological, relational, behavioral, neurological, physiological, and contextual. I am interested in research capable of examining those systems together.
Ultimately, I want this work to help answer a clinically important question: How does what happened to someone become what they experience in their body, sexuality, and relationships years later?
Measurement and Sexual Function
A second area of my research interests is the measurement of sexual functioning.
Many widely used measures of sexual dysfunction were developed within models of sexual response that do not fully reflect contemporary understandings of sexuality, trauma, relational context, sexual diversity, and the variability of sexual experience.
I am interested in contributing to the development and validation of more contemporary measures of sexual functioning—tools that are psychometrically rigorous while better capturing how people actually experience sexual health and sexual difficulties.
Better measurement is not simply a methodological concern. What researchers choose to measure influences what we are able to discover, and what clinicians assess influences what we recognize and ultimately treat.
Bridging Research and Clinical Practice
One of the strengths I bring to research consultation is the ability to move in both directions: from the therapy room to the research question, and from research findings back into clinical practice.
I am interested in collaborations with psychologists, physicians, sexual-medicine specialists, researchers, universities, healthcare organizations, and interdisciplinary teams seeking a clinician-researcher perspective on trauma and sexual health.
My goal is not simply to document that trauma and sexual dysfunction are related. It is to help build a more precise understanding of how, for whom, and through which mechanisms those relationships develop—and to produce research that ultimately improves the way sexual health concerns are understood, measured, and treated.
Consultant Scope of Competence
My consultation practice is grounded in more than two decades of clinical, academic, and research experience in psychology, counseling, sexual health, trauma, and related areas of behavioral health.
I hold a bachelor's degree in psychology, a master's degree in general psychology, and a master's degree in counseling psychology. My graduate education included extensive study of psychodynamic theory, person-centered therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, family systems, psychological assessment, and clinical practice. I also completed postbaccalaureate premedical science coursework, which continues to inform my interest in the intersection of psychological and physiological functioning.
I am a Licensed Professional Counselor–Mental Health (LPC-MH) in South Dakota (License #LPC-MH2246) and I am a licensed Mental Health Counselor in New York State (License #17837). I am an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist Supervisor and an EMDRIA Certified EMDR Therapist. My advanced clinical education has included training in trauma treatment, EMDR, sex therapy, couples and relationship therapy, Gottman Method Couples Therapy, Internal Family Systems, and other approaches that inform my work with complex clinical presentations.
I have worked in behavioral health and supportive clinical roles since 1999 and have practiced across private practice, outpatient mental health, and employee-assistance settings. My clinical practice is now focused primarily on sexual health and sexual dysfunction, trauma and posttraumatic stress, childhood maltreatment, relationships and intimacy, couples therapy, interpersonal group psychotherapy, and the psychological and somatic processes that influence sexual functioning.
My scope of competence is also informed by my experience as a clinical researcher. My research examines the relationships among childhood maltreatment and sexual victimization, posttraumatic stress, interpersonal and somatic processes, and adult sexual functioning. My broader research program is concerned with identifying mechanisms through which early adversity and trauma may contribute to later sexual dysfunction and with improving the ways sexual functioning is conceptualized and measured.
This combination of clinical practice and research informs the consultation I provide to psychotherapists and other healthcare professionals. I am particularly well suited to consultation involving complex sexual-health presentations; trauma and PTSD; sexual pain and dysfunction; childhood maltreatment; relational and interpersonal dynamics; differential case conceptualization; integration of trauma and sex therapy; and cases requiring thoughtful consideration of psychological, relational, somatic, and medical factors.
My clinical orientation is integrative rather than organized around a single treatment model. Psychodynamic and developmental thinking remain important to how I conceptualize cases, while interpersonal, trauma-informed, cognitive-behavioral, systemic, somatic, and evidence-informed interventions contribute to treatment planning and clinical decision-making. I approach consultation similarly: the goal is not to impose a particular model, but to help clinicians think more deeply and precisely about the person, the presenting problem, the mechanisms that may be maintaining it, and the range of clinically appropriate interventions.
Consistent with professional ethical standards, I provide consultation only within the areas in which my education, training, professional experience, and ongoing study support competence. Consultation is collaborative and does not replace the independent clinical judgment, professional responsibilities, or applicable legal and ethical obligations of the treating professional.
My Approach to Clinical Consultation
I approach clinical consultation as a collaborative process between professionals. My role is not to evaluate your competence or tell you how to practice. It is to bring another experienced clinical perspective to the work—to help you think more deeply about a case, consider what may be happening beneath the presenting symptoms, identify places where treatment has become stuck, and expand the possibilities for intervention.
I respect the theoretical orientation and clinical judgment of the clinicians who consult with me. Rather than asking you to adopt my way of working, I am interested in understanding how you conceptualize the client and then bringing relevant perspectives from sex therapy, trauma treatment, interpersonal and relational theory, psychodynamic thinking, somatic and psychophysiological processes, and sexual medicine into the conversation.
Looking at What Is Happening in the Room
One of the most useful concepts I carry forward from my background in clinical supervision is parallel process. What happens in a client's relationships can begin to appear in the therapeutic relationship—and sometimes in the consultation itself. For example, a client who leaves important things unspoken in intimate relationships may also leave important things unspoken with the therapist. A therapist who feels unusually responsible for a particular client's progress may be experiencing something clinically meaningful about the relational system rather than simply having difficulty finding the right intervention.
These responses are not problems to eliminate. They are information. Consultation gives us a place to become curious about the therapeutic relationship: what the client evokes in you, what you find yourself doing differently with this client, what feels unusually difficult or compelling, and whether those experiences tell us something important about the client's broader relational world.
Meeting the Case Where It Is
I do not believe every clinician—or every case—needs the same kind of consultation. Sometimes the need is highly specific: understanding a sexual dysfunction, considering a differential diagnosis, identifying an appropriate assessment, thinking through sexual pain, integrating trauma treatment with sex therapy, or determining whether another healthcare discipline should become involved. Other cases require us to pull the lens back.
We may need to reconsider the original formulation, examine developmental and relational history, distinguish symptoms from mechanisms, consider what is happening physiologically as well as psychologically, or ask whether the treatment is addressing the processes actually maintaining the client's distress. My goal is to help you leave consultation with more than another technique to try. I want you to have a clearer understanding of the case, a more coherent rationale for what you are doing, and useful questions to carry back into the therapy room.
Consultation Should Expand Clinical Thinking
Good consultation does not always provide an immediate answer. Sometimes its value is in disrupting a formulation that has become too narrow, identifying an assumption neither therapist nor client has questioned, or recognizing an important piece of the case that has been hiding in plain sight. That process can occasionally be challenging. I value consultation relationships in which clinicians can bring uncertainty, complexity, mistakes, strong reactions, and cases that simply do not make sense yet. Those are often the cases from which the most interesting clinical thinking emerges.
I see consultation as a place for curiosity rather than performance. The goal is not to demonstrate that you already know the answer. It is to think well together about the person you are trying to help. Clinical consultation is advisory and collaborative, not supervisory or evaluative. The treating clinician remains responsible for independent clinical judgment, treatment decisions, documentation, and compliance with applicable professional, ethical, and legal requirements.