A Letter from Ty
Ty Neely, LPC, CST, NCC
Therapy doesn’t have to feel like a doctor’s office. It doesn’t have to come with a diagnosis, a workbook, or a wall of diplomas that makes you feel like you should already have your life together before you walked in. With me, it doesn’t.
I’m Ty, a Licensed Professional Counselor, Certified Sex Therapist, and National Certified Counselor who believes that most of what holds people back isn’t a disorder, it’s disconnection. Disconnection from themselves, their bodies, their relationships, their sense of what’s actually true for them versus what they were told to believe.
I work with individuals, couples, and non-monogamous relationships on the stuff people don’t always feel safe saying out loud. The sexual concerns you’ve never quite been able to articulate to a partner. The shame that shows up around desire, identity, or the way you love. The relationship dynamic that keeps cycling through the same fight no matter how many times you resolve it. The version of yourself you keep performing for other people, the one that looks fine, acts fine, and is quietly exhausted from it. There is a way forward, and helping you navigate that path is where I come in.
I specialize in Sex Therapy, LGBTQ+ Affirming Therapy, and Relationship Counseling for people whose lives don’t fit a conventional mold — including polyamorous relationships, open relationships, and other forms of ethical non-monogamy. These aren’t niche interests I’ve tacked on. They’re the work I was built for, and the spaces where I think I do my best.
I also have a particular love for working with men who are ready to stop white-knuckling their emotional lives and actually feel them. Not as a project, not as a deficit to correct, but as an unlocking of something most men were never given permission to access. Emotional intelligence isn’t soft, it’s the thing that quietly determines the quality of every relationship and decision in your life.
If I had to name the single thing I care most about in this work, it’s shame. Shame is one of the most corrosive forces in human life, while also one of the quietest. It doesn’t announce itself; it just slowly convinces you that who you are, what you want, and how you love are fundamentally wrong. It hides in the way you edit yourself before speaking, lives in the things you’ve never told anyone. It masquerades as morality, as self-awareness, as just being realistic about yourself. But shame isn’t a compass. It’s a cage. Nothing makes me more joyful as a therapist than watching someone step out of shame and into real freedom, real peace, and a life that actually feels like theirs.
My approach pulls from Neuroscience, Polyvagal Theory, Attachment Theory, The Gottman Method, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Narrative Therapy — but you won’t hear me use those words much in session. What you’ll get instead is a real conversation. I use the science because it works, and I translate it into language that actually lands.
Here’s a rough sketch of how I think about change:
Your nervous system learned to protect you. The anxiety, the emotional shutdown, the compulsive reassurance-seeking, the avoidance of intimacy — these aren’t character flaws. They’re adaptations. Polyvagal Theory helps us understand why your body responds the way it does before your mind has even caught up. From there, we can start to build real safety — not just the appearance of it.
Attachment Theory helps us make sense of how you connect and why it sometimes goes sideways. Whether you’re anxiously attached and terrified of abandonment, avoidant and suffocated by closeness, or somewhere in between — understanding your attachment style isn’t a life sentence. It’s a starting point.
Narrative Therapy is where we look at the stories. The ones you inherited about sex, about your body, about what love is supposed to look like, about what kind of person you are. Shame is almost always a story — one that was handed to you before you were old enough to question it. And stories can be rewritten. Not into toxic positivity, but into something more honest, more spacious, and that actually helps you move forward.
Some of the specific things people come to me for:
- Coming Out
- Compulsive Sexual Behavior
- Gender and Sexual Identity
- Identity Exploration
- Intimacy Issues
- Kink-Affirming Therapy
- Low Libido/Desire
- Navigating Open or Polyamorous Relationships
- Processing Infidelity
- Relationship Communication & Conflict
- Religious Trauma
- Sexual Dysfunction
- Sexual Shame
>I love helping people simply figure out what they actually want in relationships, in their bodies, and in their lives.
What ties all of it together is this: I’m an existential humanistic therapist at my core. That means I believe the most powerful thing therapy can do is help you find out who you actually are, beneath the noise. Not who you were told to be. Not who you’ve been performing. You. When shame loses its grip on that process, something opens up — a kind of freedom and clarity that most people didn’t know was available to them. From that place, change isn’t just possible. It becomes hard to stop. If any of this sounds like the conversation you’ve been needing to have, I’d love to be the person you have it with.
A Houston native, Ty earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing and Human Resources Management from the University of Miami before returning home to complete his Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of St. Thomas. His clinical training is extensive and intentional: he has completed all three levels of the Gottman Method for Couples Therapy and earned his sex therapy certification through the Modern Sex Therapy Institutes (MSTI). His background in business shapes the way he thinks about people: analytically, systemically, and always with an eye toward what actually moves the needle.
Ty Neely, LPC, CST, NCC | Licensed Professional Counselor | Certified Sex Therapist | National Certified Counselor | LGBTQ+ Specialized Specialties: Sex Therapy · LGBTQ+ Affirming Therapy · Couples Counseling · Polyamory & Ethical Non-Monogamy · Gottman Method (Trained in Levels 1, 2 & 3) · Attachment Therapy · Relationship Trauma · Men’s Emotional Health · Shame & Identity · Polyvagal Therapy · Narrative Therapy · Sexual Shame & Religious Trauma · Gender Identity · Kink-Affirming Therapy
