Our younger service users seem increasingly at ease with experiencing their romantic and/or sexual attractions beyond the binary of gay or straight. Whether they make use of identity labels like bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, queer, sexually fluid, or prefer to be free of any categorisation, what is being referred to is someone’s capacity to be attracted to more than one gender. (bi+)
Despite this seeming freedom of being attracted to people of different genders, bi+ people encounter significant restrictions and problems with social ‘monosexism.’ (the normative belief that exclusive attraction to one gender is superior and more legitimate than bisexual+ orientations).
This can be echoed not only in the relationships bisexual service users have with monosexual partners but also with their therapists. If their therapist lacks an understanding of biphobia and bisexual+ identity, they risk reinforcing a bisexual client’s experience of invisibility and marginalisation.
In this CPD, you will learn:
- What is needed to hold a bisexual+-aware stance?
- The six categories of biphobia—stereotyping, erasure, denial, marginalisation, double discrimination, and internalised biphobia—and how to notice it in yourself, your clients, or in their experiences.
- Common dilemmas facing bi+ service users in relationships with monosexual people.
- The different experiences that are present for bi+, cisgender men and women, and trans and non-binary service users
- An ethical therapist’s self-disclosure of sexual identity
About the Trainer
Niki D works as an existential psychotherapist and supervisor in London, with over thirty years of experience in private practice, statutory and voluntary sectors. As a relationship therapist, Niki works exclusively with GSRD clients (gender, sexual, and relationship diverse). She is a Pink Therapy clinical associate and teaches on the GSRD relationships module. Niki holds supervision groups an in-person GSRD therapy group for therapists and groups for GSRD clients.
Niki has an MA in Existential Psychotherapy and additional training in GSRD therapy and somatic body therapy. She has been a visiting lecturer at Regents University, the Existential Academy, and the University of Milano-Bicocca’s clinical sexology programme.
Niki is a co-director of an in-depth CPD training on open and polyamorous relationship therapy now in its second year. www.rainbowrelationships.co.uk
Her writing includes chapters on:
• Now you see me, now you don’t: addressing bisexual invisibility in relationship therapy. COSRT journal (2017)
• Beyond monogamy – opening up a dyad. Pink Therapy – Relationally Queer (2023)
• Compulsive Sexual Behaviour from an Existential Approach – Avoiding Existential Truths. Routledge International Handbook of Sexual Compulsivity and Clinical Sexology (2025)
• GSRD Group Therapy. Gender Sex and Relationship Diversity Therapy: Theory and Practice – Pink Therapy (2026)
