Interview with Relationship Specialist and Executive Coach Dr. Susan Davis – Your Sexuality and Sexual Relationships. This interview is one in a series of expert interviews on the eDrugstore.com blog. We add new interviews on a regular basis. Please see our complete list of insightful interviews.
1. How prevalent is depression, irritability and mood shift behavior? Is this rate of incidence different from what it was as recently as 5 years ago?
Although social, political, and economic stressors ebb and flow— and have certainly been flowing in the past few years—most challenging problems of living and of relationship confront us regardless of life circumstances. These more difficult problems are rooted in deep, old learning, often from childhood and sometimes from trauma.
As a result, they manifest in our most intimate relationships with others and with ourselves. They can form a sort of lens through which we view the world and make meaning of what is happening to us. And they can limit or hamper our ability to cope with whatever is happening in our lives and our relationships. I find these sorts of problems underlie most symptoms of depression, anxiety, irritability and mood instability.
2. Can a person who has depression or other altered mood behaviors still enjoy a healthy and active sex life? Or do mood and 
medication side effects get in the way?
Our sexuality and sexual relationships represent our most intimate relationships with others and with ourselves. As a result, those deep, old learnings I was just describing powerfully influence us in these areas. The relationship between our sex lives and our moods is a complex one and it’s sometimes difficult to tell which is the chicken and which is the egg. Of course, psychiatric medication has physiological side effects on sexual functioning. But that does not mean, in and of itself, that patients cannot enjoy a satisfying sexual relationship. If sex is a problem, it is important to explore physiological, emotional, and relational contributors with a trained professional psychotherapist. He or she may wish to refer you to a physician to rule-out physical causes and/or to a psychiatrist to adjust medications.
3. What are some of the common reasons couples seek marriage counseling? Can any of these reasons be prevented and if so, how?
Couples seek help for so many reasons: communication problems, loneliness in the relationship, the problems of a child, anger or sexual problems, infidelity or pornography addiction, problems with in-laws and extended families, alcoholism or substance abuse in a spouse. Sometimes they are wise enough to seek help early to enrich their marriage or to work on problems before they become deal-breakers. Often they seek help very late, sometimes too late. How to prevent these problems? It helps to do your own psychological work and to choose a partner who is willing to do theirs. Then, it is wise to seek out a counselor early in your relationship and to consult with them periodically as challenges arise. There is much to learn and much benefit to be had from this sort of wellness check in relationship.
4. You specialize in working with the unconscious using dreams and the therapeutic relationship. How is this of benefit to a client and how might this information translate into treatment?
The roots of our problematic, old learnings lie deep within us. We began to learn coping styles and patterns of assumptions very early, sometimes even pre-verbally. It seems to us that this is simply the-way-it-is. A good depth psychotherapy is one in which we begin to open ourselves to the possibility of a larger view, a different reality. To do this, we must access the wells of knowing that lie within us, what depth therapists mean when they speak of the unconscious. Dreams and the automatic patterns and roles projected onto the therapy relationship give us a chance to do just that, to make the unconscious conscious. Our new awareness can be practiced in therapy first and then outside as we create new and more successful and rewarding experiences. What is unconscious drives us on autopilot—but when we are conscious, we can choose.
5. You are developing a new specialty area in Executive Coaching. In your opinion, does the high stress lifestyle of an executive contribute to higher levels of anxiety, depression, chemical dependence and sexual dysfunction? Why or why not?
Executives operate in the center of a web of important relationships with their executive teams and their Boards. As with intimate relationships, our learned patterns and coping strategies fundamentally influence these professional relationships. Often executives come to their positions because of excellent skills in some critical area: finance, marketing, operations, or research. But the role of CEO, for example, requires a great deal of interpersonal skillfulness in addition to an appreciation of the various areas necessary to the success of the organization. So, yes, the executive may find him or herself challenged and stressed in new and frustrating ways, challenges often compounded by family and intimate relationship stressors. I may come from a particularly unusual area of the country, one quite rich in entrepreneurial spirit, but my experience is that executives do not suffer from higher levels of anxiety, depression, addiction, or sexual dysfunction than others. I think the reason for this is that in addition to the pressures and challenges inherent in the job, executives have a rich array of resources, both personal and professional, to draw on. They can make excellent use of executive coaching and/or psychotherapy and rapid progress in developing the skills they need to be effective in all areas of their lives.
About Susan Davis, Ph.D: SusanDavisPhD.com
Susan is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Redwood City, California, since 1997. She specializes in helping individuals, couples, families, and institutions to resolve problematic relationship patterns. An adjunct assistant professor of pastoral counseling at Fuller Seminary, she is developing a book on the Biblical story of the Exodus as a model of psychological transformation. And she is bringing her relationship expertise to the role of executive coach.
Read more of our expert interviews:
Betty Dodson, Renowned Sexologist, Author, Feminist, Educator
Dean Osborne, Human Nature of Cheating
Dr. MP Wylie, Relationship Advisor
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