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Jessica Childs

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I help people get out of their heads, into their bodies so they can really enjoy the intimate company of others. Whether you are meeting and dating, in a long-term partnership or enjoy other adult lifestyles, I can help you have more joy, ease and pleasure in intimate relationships. Yummy intimacy with one another is like a blueprint that we are all born with that gets overshadowed by socialization, conditioning, developmental trauma, dogma and other life experiences. I love to help people shed the garbage and arrive as the beautiful, empowered, social and sexual beings that we are! 

Hi. I'm Jessica. And I would have made a terrible intimacy coach in my thirties. I was disembodied and desperate for affirmation. Those first decades of life, I was living under the weight of my own social conditioning and attachment wounds. This is what that looked like:

 

  • I fell hard over and over again for "exciting" people who kept my threat-level at a solid 5 or above. 

 

  • I had a period of about a decade where sex was absolutely off the table unless I was pretty heavily inebriated, which I often was.

 

  • I adopted all sorts of weird behaviors to try to entice people into meeting my relational needs including manipulation, flat-out dishonesty, neediness, threat-escalation and 1001 other unsavory flavors.

 

  • Sex with me might have been a bunch of fun, but you probably left feeling a little confused and with your connection needs totally unmet. Back then, I was nowhere to be found in sex. It was all a mish-mash of images and what I thought someone else wanted me to be. 

So...with all of that history, how did I become an intimacy and relationship coach? 

Well, the short version goes like this. I was buzzing along this way for a long time. Struggling, really. I knew deep down that things were out of place in my relationships and I blamed myself for not being "happier" and more "authentic". I blamed THIS part of my childhood and THAT part of my body until life got REAL. I got married to one of my thrilling beasts and then I spawned some more thrilling beasts. The relational drama got more thick and more intense. I daily felt like a desperate and angry train wreck. I was at once living in a constant state of anxiety and failure and also trying desperately to "perform", to hold onto the people I loved. The sex was good, but there were clearly some big gaps and whenever we tried to talk about them, we wound up sprialing into a disjointed and angry debate. 

 

Fast forward a bit and do you know where that landed me? After enduring relational devastation in ever increasing doses over decades of my life, my body finally collapsed and what had been emotional became physical became medical. I won't spend too much time here, but I will elucidate a few of the characteristics of my time spent ill.

 

The disease I had only wreaks havoc in a small number of people; most people pop back up in a matter of weeks but I was in bed or close to it for years. My unscientific research has concluded that this disease only becomes chronic in people who have pre-existing garbage, including great relational trauma. So after spending $$$$ galore on doctors and naturopaths and acupuncture, rife machines, magnets, weird baths, etc., I was exactly where I began with no decrease in symptoms or pain. I thought I was going to die. 

 

With what I thought could very well be the last few years of my life, I started looking at what was left of my life and what really stood out was my deep despair over my inability to have relationships that felt worth having. I read and listened and watched everything I could about the nature and mechanics of human relationships. It was there I discovered that for most of my life I had been running a misinformed narrative about the proper care and maintenance of a human being, both myself and others. That discovery led me to feel confident that I could unwind my troubling pattern and get to the heart of connection...and I figured I'd dive head firtst into sex and intimate relations because, of course, I'm hard core like that.

 

The decision to look at my life force through the lens of my intimate relationships CHANGED MY LIFE. It not only gave me the framework through which I could finally feel joy, ease and pleasure in intimacy, but it also wound up transforming my health, my career, my parenting, my relations with my birth family and strangers alike!  It turns out that following joy, ease and pleasure in connection with other humans was the catalyst to creating the life that I had always dreamed of, filled with connection and safety and creativity and understanding and intimate bliss. 

For balance, this is what like looks like now :

  • I know what actually transpires during sex and it's not all positions, tips, tricks and whether or not I look good or sound sexy doing it. I know that whether it is a one night lust fest or the familiar feeling of a long-term partner, what we are primarily doing in sex is connecting with other humans and allowing ourselves to flow physically in time and space together. That can look 1001 different ways and it is not limited to the very narrow sliver of narrative we were fed from our culture and socialization. 

 

  • I know what rocks my world mind, body and soul. I am able to get what I deeply desire in sex and intimacy because I have no problem having that conversation. This actually applies not only to sexy ones, but other kinds of relationships too!

 

  • I know definitively what my boundaries are. I know when they are crossed. I know how to set my boundaries with love and connection and how infinitely important they are to respect in both myself and others! 

 

  • I feel when I am triggered. I know what it feels like. I know what thoughts come along with it. I know where these triggers come from and I give myself grace around them. I have a solid personal trigger map to work with so that when they get tripped (and they inevitably do), I'm not awash in hormones, rage and self-protection but instead, I can ask for or even give myself the nourishment I need to come back down and connect again. Bonus! I can also track trigger charge in others! So their triggers don't collide with mine and become a trigger vortex. 

 

  • Now I know that when we have sex, IT IS PEOPLE THAT WE WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH, NOT A PERSON'S IDEA OF WHAT GOOD SEX LOOKS LIKE OR WHAT THEY THINK WE WANT TO SEE. Bring me you. Raw and unique and delicious you.

 

  • I have an amazing long-term partnership full of adventure and understanding. We have learned to care for ourselves and one another in our own unique way. It is a delightful work in progress. And our sex life has expanded exponentially to include more and more of what we both desire. We co-create based on a foundation of vulnerability and safety and it's more delicious than I even knew possible.

 

  • My birth family is coming back into my life as a joyous and in-synch community! None of us get out of childhood unscathed. I feel blessed to have the capacity to re-form bonds with the people I came from, despite the hard stuff. 

 

  • My children are growing up with attuned and empathizing parents that do not seek to control them or make them "behave", but instead we have faith that they are good and whole people who can navigate the world from their own internal compass with connection and enthusiasm!


My studies:

 

When I met Danielle and Celeste of the Somatica Institute, it was like a perfect branch that fit precisely into my budding worldview. Attuning my senses to the connection, vulnerability and acceptance they embody has been truly a remarkable awakening and I have been a student of their unique program at the Somatica Institute since. 

My teachers are many. Here are a few: 
  • Celeste Hirschman, M.A.

  • Danielle Harel, Ph.D.

  • Peter Levine, Ph.D.

  • Maureen Gallagher, Ph.D.

  • Kimberly Johnson, Sexological Bodyworker, SEP

  • Dave Berger, LCWS, SEP

Professional and Academic Studies:
  •  Somatica Institute  

  •  Academy of Creative Coaching

  •  Natural Gourmet Institute of Health and Wellness

  •  Bachelor Of Science, Neuroscience, Bard College

  •  Somatic Experiencing - In Training

Personal areas of interest and study:
  • Yoga

  • Attachment Theory

  • Polyvagal Theory

  • Developmental Movement and Bio-Mechanics

  • Sci-Fi Anything

  • Dharma Studies

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