Today we’d like to introduce you to Vanessa Cushing.
Hi Vanessa, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My story doesn’t start with a business plan. It starts with survival.
At 19, I was sexually assaulted at college. I reported it. The institution didn’t believe me. That experience both the assault and the institutional betrayal sent me into one of the darkest periods of my life. But it also lit something in me that has never gone out.
I made a decision: I was going to turn what happened to me into something that helped other people. I transferred schools, earned a 4.0, and threw myself into research and clinical training. I completed my Bachelor’s degrees at the University of Virginia, my Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Johns Hopkins graduating Summa Cum Laude and later earned my Certificate in Sex Therapy through the University of Michigan, becoming an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist.
What I kept noticing throughout my training was how many people were suffering in silence around sexual health. The shame, the misinformation, the lack of access to qualified, trauma-informed care it was everywhere. Sex therapy in particular is a specialty that most therapists receive almost no training in, yet the need is enormous.
In 2023, I founded Cushing Counseling in Miami. My practice specializes in sex therapy and mental health working with individuals and couples navigating sexual dysfunction, trauma, intimacy issues, desire discrepancies, and identity. I also consult with other clinicians who want to integrate sex therapy into their own work.
More recently, I’ve been building Sex Therapy Pro, an AI-driven platform designed to make expert sexual health guidance more accessible and affordable because the people who need this most are often the people who can least afford private therapy rates.
I didn’t get here despite what happened to me. I got here because of what I did with it.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Smooth? Not even close. And I think anyone who tells you entrepreneurship has been smooth is either lying or hasn’t built anything real yet.
The honest answer is that the road was hard long before the business existed. I came into this field carrying my own trauma, my own experiences with a system that failed me, and a deep hunger to do it differently. That’s powerful fuel but it doesn’t make the path easier. It just makes you more certain you have to walk it.
Building a private practice from scratch is genuinely humbling. There’s no roadmap. You are simultaneously the clinician, the administrator, the marketer, and the accountant. In the beginning, you’re sitting with an empty calendar wondering if anyone is going to trust you with the most intimate parts of their lives and you have to believe the answer is yes before the evidence says so.
Sex therapy specifically comes with its own layer of challenge. There is still enormous stigma around this work. People assume it’s something other than what it is rigorous, clinical, deeply therapeutic. I’ve had to work harder to be taken seriously in spaces that don’t yet understand why sexual health is health. I’ve had to educate colleagues, push back against assumptions, and advocate for a specialty that too many people still treat as a punchline.
And I’ll be honest building while healing is its own kind of hard. I became a therapist in part because of what happened to me, but that means I’m also doing the work in the same space where my own wounds live. Good supervision, my own therapy, and relentless self-reflection aren’t optional for me. They’re non-negotiable.
But here’s what I know: the struggles didn’t detour me. They informed everything I’ve built. The empathy I bring to my clients, the reason I care so deeply about accessibility, the reason I started developing technology to reach more people it all comes from having been in hard places myself.
As you know, we’re big fans of Cushing Counseling. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Cushing Counseling is a nationally recognized leader in sex and couples therapy, based in Fairfax, Virginia and serving clients across Virginia, Maryland, DC, and Florida through secure telehealth sessions.
What we do, at the core, is create a space where people can finally say the things they’ve never been able to say out loud. Our specialties are sex therapy, couples therapy, trauma therapy, sexual trauma therapy, and LGBTQ+ affirming care. These aren’t just categories on a website they represent the areas where people suffer the most in silence, and where the right clinical support can genuinely change lives.
What sets us apart starts with specialization. Sex therapy is a distinct clinical discipline that requires advanced certification through AASECT — the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists. Very few practitioners actually hold that credential. I do, and I’ve built a practice around it with a team of clinicians who share that same commitment to clinical rigor and trauma-informed care. Our approach is evidence-based across the board we draw on CBT, EFT, the Gottman Method, IFS, and Mindfulness-Based Therapy but we never let methodology get in the way of actually meeting the person in front of us.
What I’m most proud of, if I’m being honest, isn’t a brand milestone. It’s the direct work watching clients come in carrying years of shame or pain or silence, and watching them transform. And now it’s extended to the clinicians on my team. Watching my therapists grow, deepen their skills, and find their footing in this specialty is something I don’t take lightly. In fact its the greatest honor of my life. That culture of growth and excellence is something we’ve built intentionally, and it’s what I’m most protective of.
We’ve also been building Sex Therapy Pro™, an AI-driven platform designed to extend access to expert, trauma-informed sexual health guidance beyond the walls of a traditional therapy office — because quality care should never be a privilege.
What I want readers to know is simple: if you’ve been sitting with something you didn’t know how to bring to a therapist, or you assumed no one would really understand it this practice was built for exactly that. You deserve care that takes you seriously. That’s the standard we hold ourselves to, every single session.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success is one of those words that means something different to everyone, and I think the most important work any of us can do is decide what it means to us before the world decides for us.
Professionally, success looks like building something that outlasts any single session, any single client, any single year. It looks like Cushing Counseling becoming a national brand that sets the standard for ethical, rigorous, trauma-informed sex therapy. It looks like the clinicians on my team thriving developing their skills, finding their voice, and watching their clients transform. It looks like changing the culture around sex therapy: dismantling the stigma, normalizing the conversation, and making it possible for more people to access care they deserve but never knew they could ask for. The more people I can serve – directly and through the clinicians I train and support the closer I am to that version of success.
But personally? Success looks completely different. And if I’m being honest, it’s the harder one to define and the more important one.
I’ve spent a lot of time sitting with the idea that happiness isn’t something you achieve. Naval Ravikant puts it in a way that has stuck with me: desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. When you’re always chasing the next milestone, the next version of your life, the next thing that’s going to finally make you feel enough you’ve basically opted out of being present for the life you already have.
Personal success, for me, is freedom from that. It’s waking up without needing anything to be different than it is. It’s being fully present in a conversation, in a session with a client, in a quiet moment alone without my mind already somewhere else. It’s the kind of peace that doesn’t depend on external conditions being right.I’ve worked hard. I’ve built things I’m proud of. But I’ve learned that none of it means much if I’m not actually here for it.
Success is presence. Everything else is a bonus.
Pricing:
- Individual Therapy Varies (175-350)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cushingcounseling.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cushingcounseling/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578982936946
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-cushing-477051156
