About Me
Jan Carey • LCSW-C, LCSW, CST • AASECT Certified Sex Therapist
I started out as a couples therapist. And I kept watching couples leave having worked on everything they were supposed to work on relationally. The communication improved, the fighting reduced, but something was still missing - both a lack of comfort and energy between them. It was later that I realized only half the relationship was in the room because we weren’t discussing their sexual connection.
There's something else that brought me here too. I've sat in the client's chair myself. I remember being in that room not knowing what to bring up, what I was entitled to ask for, whether I was enough, or how to be vulnerable — both with the therapist I barely knew and with my partner sitting next to me. That experience shaped everything about how I work and what I want to offer.
I’ve also experienced therapy that didn’t go deep enough —with two different couples therapists, where the real things stayed unspoken and the distance kept growing. I know what it costs when a therapist isn’t curious enough to ask the questions that unlock the missing conversation, or doesn’t push or hold both partner’s experiences evenly. That’s shaped everything about how I work. I want to give you the kind of therapy that allows you to be real with each other and to be comfortable to finally tell each other what’s been needed all along.
Training & Background
I trained at Temple University, where the program was rooted in social justice as much as clinical practice. That lens — seeing the systems around us, the biases we absorb, the resources we're given or denied — never left me.
Before focusing on couples and sexuality, I spent years supervising in-home family therapy teams, training extensively in Structural Family Therapy. That work taught me to see the pattern, not just the problem. What I kept seeing was a relationship therapy world that treated the emotional life of a relationship but left the sexual life untouched, as if the two weren't connected.
That led me to a certificate program in sex therapy and sexuality education, followed by fifty hours of specialized sex therapy supervision — where assuming nothing became not just a technique but a philosophy. I became an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist in 2017.
AASECT certification means I've been trained specifically to talk about sex, not just around it. It's a distinction that matters in a field where most therapists haven't been. My training has been both formal and experiential — classroom learning gave me the frameworks, supervised clinical work gave me the eyes and ears to actually use them. The learning doesn't stop.
Who I Work With
I work with couples and individuals, and I welcome people across the full spectrum of identities, orientations, and relationship structures. If you've wondered whether this is a space where you and your relationship will be understood without having to explain yourself first — it is. I genuinely like the people who find their way here. They’re usually hungry for truth, trying harder than anyone around them knows, and braver than they give themselves credit for.
The Values That Inform Everything
❋ How we relate to our partners is shaped by how we learned to connect long before we were in any relationship.
❋ Vulnerability isn't a weakness. It takes great courage and it's the only way through.
❋ You set the pace. I pay attention to what's actually happening, not what I expected to find.
❋ Therapy doesn't always have to be heavy. Sometimes humor and absurdity are part of the healing too.