
Friday, May 16, 2025
2025 ACSSW Series
Pleasure is Power: Reclaiming Sexual Wellness as Self-Care
Presented by Emily Hotz, Ed.D, LPCA
Webinar Description:
This program explores sexual wellness as a vital, often overlooked component of holistic self-care. This program invites participants to reimagine self-care through the often neglected lens of sexual wellness. Grounded in an intersectional, decolonial framework, the session begins by helping participants gain a foundational understanding of what self-care and sexual wellness truly mean—beyond commercialized or superficial interpretations. Drawing from the World Health Organization’s definition of sexual health and Audre Lorde’s radical framing of self-care as “an act of political warfare” (Lorde, 1988), this program emphasizes the intimate connection between autonomy, pleasure, and personal well-being. Participants will understand and identify the interdependence between self-care and sexual wellness, exploring how systems of power—especially White Supremacy culture—have historically shaped and constrained both. Through guided reflection and discussion, they will learn about the colonization of self-care practices and how dominant narratives have excluded or pathologized non-normative expressions of sexuality, gender, and embodiment (hooks, 1992; Ahmed, 2017). The session will conclude with practical tools and curated recommendations and resources designed to help participants enhance their self-care practices through affirming, inclusive, and liberatory approaches to sexual wellness. Interventions such as the Body Mapping Exercise, and the Wheel of Consent will be introduced as part of this holistic approach.
About the Speaker...

Dr. Emily Hotz is a 2025 doctoral graduate of the Counselor Education and Supervision program at Southern Connecticut State University. She earned her M.A. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the University of New Haven in 2022 and obtained her LPCA that same year. Emily currently works as a LPCA at Serenity Wellness Center, where she provides individual psychotherapy to adults, especially those in the LGBTQIA2S+ community. As a queer therapist herself, Emily brings a deep sense of empathy and understanding to her work. She specializes in grief and loss, trauma, and mood-related disorders such as depression and anxiety.
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In addition to her clinical work, Emily is an adjunct professor at both Southern Connecticut State University and the University of New Haven, where she teaches Master’s-level counseling students. She is a sex-positive and kink-affirming clinician who approaches her work through a humanistic lens—honoring each client’s unique worldview and encouraging authenticity both in and outside the therapy room.
Emily is committed to providing multiculturally competent care and actively works to understand and address issues related to systemic oppression, discrimination, and cultural identity in her clinical and academic work. Her dissertation research explored self-care practices within the counseling and counselor education professions, using decolonization and liberation frameworks to critically examine how self-care has been historically conceptualized and ‘packaged.”
Emily is the author of “Senior Sizzle: Embracing Intimacy in the Golden Years,” published in the ACSSW Newsletter.
This webinar is offered at $10 to ACSSW Members. Contact ACSSW@counselingsexology.com if you have trouble with registering for ACSSW webinars or need the coupon for reduced rate as ACSSW member.
This program has been approved for APA, CA BBS, IL IDFPR, NBCC, and AASECT.
The Office of Continuing Education at The Chicago School is now a Continuing Education Provider for the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT).
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The registration for this program can be found here:
https://tcsppofficeofce.com/may_16_2025-3/
Zoom link will be available on course page in “My Courses” upon event registration.
This program, when attended in its entirety, offers 2.0 CEs for Psychologists, 2.0 IL CEUS for Counselors and Social Workers, 2.0 BBS California CEUs for LPCCs, LPSWs, and LMFTs, or 2.0 AASECT CEs for Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists.