Getting to Know HFC! - Ty Neely

Getting to Know HFC! -Ty Neely, M.S., LPC, CST, NCC

Lead Clinical Therapist and Creative Director, HFC

What made you want to be a therapist?

As a kid, I never really knew what I wanted to do. I grew up in a neighborhood and went to a school that was highly competitive and excellence was always the expectation. My parents raised me to be an oil & gas CEO, and since I didn’t really know what my skills were, I followed their plan until my junior year of college. Since higher-level empathy skills are some of the last skills that our brain develops towards the end of its development (around 25 years old), I started noticing during my time in college that I was really adept at sensing people’s emotions. I found myself connecting with people in deep ways and being able to make them feel safe and at ease quite naturally. Even though I was living in Miami, FL for college, I learned that my favorite and most meaningful experiences were not the parties or the South Beach clubs, but rather the individual, one-on-one experiences I had connecting to people and talking with them about the depth and intricacies of life. At the same time that I was recognizing that the CEO track was not the right fit for me, many friends, and even my own therapist, started suggesting I consider becoming a therapist. When I took a look at myself and recognized how counseling and caring for people brought out my truest, most authentic and joyful self, I knew that there was no other path for me.

 

What is your favorite part about your work?

Nothing brings me more existential joy than seeing people find happiness, pride in themselves, and peace in life after having to put in hard work to get out of painful and troubling spaces. It is such an honor to have a job where I get to be intimately involved in people’s lives and relationships and can hold their hands as they work to get to places they have only dreamed of before.

Shame is unfortunately a universal roadblock to happiness and success for most of us. Another one of my favorite parts of my work is when I am able to help my clients start to fight off the shame that keeps them from being their best and most authentic selves and I get to see the hope and self-acceptance start to inundate their inner-selves. Helping people stop hiding their awesome uniqueness and start to show their full selves with pride is one of my greatest personal life purposes.

 

What do you think people would find most surprising about your job?

When I meet new people socially and they find out I am a therapist, the first question I always get asked is, “What shocking stuff have you heard? I’m sure you hear so many interesting things.” Well first off, I cannot and do not share things my clients tell me as I honor their vulnerability and want them to feel safe opening up to me. Secondly, what may be surprising to people is how common so many struggles for humanity are. From anxiety, insecurity, and trauma to difficulty with emotional vulnerability/communication or relationship conflict, to even sexual issues and identity questions, so many of us deal with similar struggles in life. We so often focus on what is different between us as people, but if everyone had the opportunity to look behind the curtain of people’s self-protective masks, they would see just how similar we are.

 

What are some important themes that tend to come up in your sessions?

All of my clients who have been with me for a while become experts in recognizing their shame and how it works as an evil puppeteer controlling us from our subconscious and preventing us from living confidently and authentically. I truly cannot count the number of times clients have told me “Ty, it’s not that deep,” only to eventually connect their frustration to a deep and painful wound of shame around their self-worth.

Safety is also an extremely common theme I see with almost any client. When we don’t feel emotionally safe, we don’t feel comfortable opening up about our emotions or being honest with others, we can withdraw and self-isolate, and we can become hostile and violent as either self-protection or as a way to beg and plead a loved one to give us the safety and security we need.

Why did you become a Sex Therapist? What even is that?

Many people are confused by the idea of a sex therapist. “Do you have sex with your clients?! Are you a dominatrix? Do your clients have sex in front of you?” I have been asked many questions like these. To be very clear, no I do not have sex with clients, everyone always stays fully clothed and boundaries are very firm and important in sex therapy. But we will talk about any and every thing, and there is no such thing as “TMI” in the therapy room.

Sex is a facet of life that is often kept in the dark and marked as taboo for social discussion. Yet at the same time, it inundates our biggest blockbusters, tv shows, and even highway billboard ads for ice cream. Our culture places so much shame on sex and sexuality that many of us are too scared to talk about it and end up learning very harmful ideas about sex and then suffer alone and in silence without any hope of finding a more fulfilling or pleasurable sex life. With my purpose being connected to helping people normalize themselves and rid themselves of shame in order to life a free, happy, and authentic life, sex therapy made clear sense as a specialty for my career. I love getting to see people start to build confidence talking about their fantasies or sexual interests out loud for the first time. Helping the person who felt that they were broken due to difficulty achieving orgasms or maintaining erections, or even struggling to feel desire for sex with a partner that they love and adore finally begin to find excitement, pleasure, and sexual confidence is truly a special honor that comes with my daily work.

What is one thing you would tell someone who is about to start therapy for the first time?

 

Be persistent, be patient, be honest, and keep trying. So maybe that is 4 things and not 1… Therapy is not the same as going to the doctor and getting your meds after a 10-minute visit and moving on with your life. Therapy truly works, I see it daily. However, it takes time and it takes work. I always work hard for my clients and do everything in my power to help them grow and achieve their goals, yet what many people do not recognize is that the therapist is just the guide. You have to be the one to follow the path to get to your destination. The more you invest into your therapeutic work, the more you will get out of it. The more honest with yourself and with your therapist you are, the more progress you will see. Do not shame yourself if the process feels slow. Everyone moves at their own pace, and rewiring the human brain takes time.