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viewsBarbara LoFrisco | Counseling with Care
By Chris Kuhn, Thursday, February 17, 2011
When Barbara LoFrisco reflects on her decision to leave a 20-year career as a software engineer to become a mental health counselor, she says the move just felt right and that there were signs of her counseling talents long before she made a career transition.
“I was always the one that other people went to and shared their problems. I was the one walking around with all of the secrets, but it was never a burden. I found it satisfying for me to listen to others because I felt like I was helping and that I was making a connection,” she says.
And with that CounselorBarb™ (www.CounselorBarb.com) was born. Through her private practice, Barbara helps individuals, couples and families move toward greater understanding and healing with the help of, as she puts it “a caring, non-judgmental ear.”
Barbara is a licensed mental health counselor, marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapist and certified sexologist, and specializes in three specific areas of counseling: grief, sexual and marital. It’s no coincidence that she was selected as a She’s So skirt! woman for February given the enormous emphasis on romance and relationships in this month of sweethearts and Valentine’s Day, a cultural tradition that Barbara says can place enormous pressure on people.
“At the risk of sounding un-American, I’m going to go on record to say that I hate Valentine’s Day. It’s an artificially created holiday for what reason – to make people feel inadequate about their love life? To make people buy cards or go crazy running around to buy flowers?” she says with a small laugh. “You need to nurture your relationship every day, not just February 14. I believe that, and that’s how I live, too.”
Barbara says that couples can build connections daily in small ways like simply spending a little bit of time with each other, even for a few minutes each day and that these connections will mean more than just conversation and friendly interaction in the long run.
“It’s these connections that are going to nurture a sex life, feeling that closeness, because sexuality is not just physical. There’s an emotional component, and that’s what women need to understand about men – men have that emotional component, they just express it through physical means," she says.
Barbara is also a full-time doctoral student in the college of education at USF and helps teach a class in advanced counseling theories in addition to running her private practice for the past five years. She says that she’s identified several trends impacting the state of today’s relationships, whether they’re couples who are married, living together, gay, straight, young or old. One common thread is the negative impact of technology in some relationships.
“I don’t think we really saw the possible fallout of the growing role of technology but having access to the Internet and a wide variety of porn can become a real problem in a relationship. And also texting and Facebook to a lesser degree but especially because of the privacy and quickness of it,” she says. “They might text with somebody they met at work and start to have an emotional affair, and it can have the same effect on a relationship as a physical affair. Or they’ll contact an old flame or their ex who they’ve had a child with on the pretext of checking in but they’re really rekindling their relationship.”
Barbara also says that another common theme she’s hearing from clients is that often women simply don’t have the energy left to invest in their relationships or themselves.
“I am seeing some really exhausted women that are doing so much for so many people other than themselves, and when women are exhausted, they are not going to want to have sex, and men need to understand that. And they feel like the man going after them physically is just another demand on them,” she says. “That’s why it’s so important for them to have boundaries and take time to take care of themselves.”
She is an advocate of regular exercise tries to fit in physical fitness into her own schedule at least five days a week, and also notes the importance of healthy eating and taking time personally for one's self and for the couple, especially for those who are also raising a family.
“I have to explain to parents that by putting their children first, they’re really not putting them first. If you don’t nurture yourself and your relationship, then you are not going to have a good base for your children,” she says.
By being both a licensed marital therapist as well as a certified sexual therapist and sexologist, Barbara says it allows her to not only provide a non-judgmental sounding board to encourage individuals and couples to address and share their sexual issues but her counseling background enables her to also provide relationship counseling to help locate any underlying issues that may have led to their sexual difficulties.
“Sexual issues are usually a symptom of an underlying relationship issue, so when a couple comes to see me, the man doesn’t know when he’s coming in that he’s really coming in for relationship counseling, because there must be a mixture of relationship therapy and sexual therapy to be able to help someone,” she says.
Married for 21 years this April, Barbara notes that sometimes she hears about myths or false expectations that some people may carry into relationships or marriage that can get things off to a bad start.
“To say that sex gets worse after you get married is not a fair statement. The frequency of sex is going to decrease after you get married. Sometimes the quality can actually get better. But we cannot expect to experience the same kind of sex we have when we’re dating, but it doesn’t mean that sex can’t be wonderful or as wonderful as when you’re dating. It just means that it’s different,” she says.
She says that even the nature of her own profession as a certified sexologist can often be misunderstood or viewed as something sordid or profane, often due to what she has found as a pervading sense of fear in talking publicly about sex, something that she hopes to help eliminate by educating more and more people about her role and purpose.
“There’s a lot of shame about sexuality out in the community and there really shouldn’t be. Usually it stems from what you learned from your family of origin. So people aren’t very open and willing to hear a talk on sex which is too bad, because it might really help them,” she says. “When people come in to work with me, there’s nothing physical, no touching. I want to make sure that people understand that it’s all talk therapy. It’s about sexual education and helping people talk about it in a nonjudgmental way to address any underlying dynamics.”
Barbara, who lives in the Carrollwood area with her husband and cat Misha, hopes to ultimately serve as an assistant college professor while she continues to grow her private counseling practice.
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