California Jake Ryan Therapy

I'm a Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist with an eclectic working style. I've been working primarily with men for the past 4 years, many of whom have been sexually victimized, and I've learned a lot from this work. I create a space for men to name and sit with their pain, learn to regulate difficult emotions, and make small steps toward healing, recognizing it as a marathon, not a sprint. I bring warmth, humor, and resources to my work with clients as I help them make sense of what happened and learn to grow beyond their past.

Because I knew that being gay didn't automatically make me an expert in all things LGBTQ, I pursued a PhD in human sexuality at CIIS (California Institute of Integral Studies). Now at the tail end of my PhD, I'm beginning work on my dissertation, "Understanding Men's Experiences with Help-Seeking Following Male Sexual Assault," a qualitative study focused on adding the voices of victimized men to the research literature. When victimized men have been studied, which is itself rare, research usually only uses police officers or therapists who have worked with these men, and I want to change that. Men get hurt and their pain matters.