My first therapy office was not an office. It was a room inside a jail. Though if you ask my childhood friends, they will tell you this was a long time coming. Apparently, I was organizing group check-ins at recess in fifth grade long before becoming a sex therapist in Beverly Hills.
My name is Kim Ronan. I am a licensed psychotherapist and sex therapist in Beverly Hills, and I work with men, individuals, and couples who want a place where they can finally be honest about desire, intimacy, identity, shame, and everything that usually stays unspoken.
Before I tell you what it is like to work together, I want to share how I got here. The long way.
The 22-Year-Old with a Plan (Sort Of)
AABT Annual Conference, New Orleans, 2004 presenting poster on anxiety research
When I was in college, I sat down with a counselor to talk about graduate school applications. He asked what I saw myself doing one day. Without hesitating, I said: private practice therapist.
Then I spent the next two decades doing almost everything else first.
I loved psychology from the beginning, but UCLA got its hooks into me. Ended up spending nearly a decade there, first as an undergraduate, then working as a research assistant, and then in graduate school completing dual master’s degrees in Social Welfare and Public Health.
I worked in the anxiety disorders research lab under Dr. Michelle Craske, a world-renowned clinical psychologist whose research on panic disorder has shaped the field.
I was conducting hundreds of diagnostic interviews, collecting data, reviewing clinical literature, attending the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy conference, and was genuinely captivated by it.
A thought came to mind that maybe I was a researcher after all. That little voice at 22 that wanted to be a therapist got a little quieter.
But let’s be honest. I cannot sit still long enough to study something for years without wanting to talk to the actual humans involved. The data was interesting. The people were irresistible. I was kidding myself.
Graduate school also brought me into a bereavement internship, working with people navigating grief and loss. I was one of the few students who actively wanted to be in that space, and I am glad I was. It taught me early that loss shows up everywhere: in our bodies, our relationships, and the places we least expect it. I still carry that into the room with me.
Then I graduated. Right into the 2008 financial crisis. With few research positions available and a license to pursue, I took a clinical job that would change everything.
The Job I Took for the Hours
Inside the jail: mental health at CRDF, 2009
The LA County Women’s Jail was not where I imagined starting. I came out of nearly a decade in the UCLA bubble and walked directly into one of the largest women’s correctional facilities in the world. It was a profound shift.
During that time, I worked alongside law enforcement for the first time, navigating a system shaped by courts, policy, substance use, and profound mental illness.
Each day brought me face-to-face with systemic inequalities, while also revealing forms of resilience I had never encountered in a research clinic, experiences that would later shape my work as a sex therapist in Beverly Hills.
I went to get my licensing hours and ended up staying five and a half years.
I stayed because the work mattered, because the women mattered, and because I found I was genuinely good at holding space in conditions most clinicians never encounter.
What the jail gave me clinically was immense (the darker side of the exposure of those years might be a story for another day). I learned to stay grounded when conversations got real.
I learned that people in the most difficult circumstances are still full people, with desires and fears and a need for connection that does not go away because of where they are. I supervised MSW interns, ran psychoeducation groups, and collaborated with the Sheriff’s Department, the Public Defender’s Office, and Probation.
I did not flinch then. I do not flinch now.
Coming Up for Air: Suicide Prevention and Policy Work
After five and a half years, I needed a change of pace. Not away from the work, just away from the intensity of correctional life.
I transitioned into suicide prevention with the LA County Department of Mental Health, which turned out to be a return to my public health roots in the best possible way.
I earned Trainer Status in two national suicide intervention programs. That meant I was not just completing trainings, I was teaching them to other clinicians across the county and also got to sit at policy tables, working on early intervention and perinatal mental health implementation countywide.
It was the kind of work where you could feel the scale of impact, even when the outcomes were slow. I loved it.
But clinical work kept calling me back.
A Six-Year Road Trip
Crisis response with Santa Monica Police Department
I joined the Santa Monica Police Department’s Mental Evaluation Team as an embedded mental health clinician. I want to be specific about what that means, because I think most people picture a ride-along. It was not that.
Most people have a general sense of how their workday will go. Therapists have their caseloads, their scheduled clients, their planned sessions. For six years, I had none of that. I had a 6 AM briefing, a bulletproof vest, and whatever the day decided to bring.
A shift might start with a quick coffee and an elderly woman who cannot find her car. Then a report from a crime victim from the night before. Then a community meeting about unhoused residents where I am asked to give a presentation on the mental health resources available.
Then a call comes in: active suicide in progress on the freeway. We shut it down. I am working with the crisis negotiation team to help keep someone alive. We get them to safety.
Maybe there is a window for lunch. On the way back, a call comes out for a suspect on the run and we happen to be the nearest patrol vehicle. Now I am in a high-speed chase through Los Angeles.
The next morning, a family has not heard from their loved one. We go to the house and find that they have passed away. I am on the scene consoling a family while officers make arrangements. Before the day is over, a school has flagged a student for a threatening essay and needs a threat assessment. I go.
I document everything. I make follow-up calls. I set up resources. I go home. I come back the next morning and do it again.
I always tell people it was like a six-year road trip with many different partners, most of them men. You learn an enormous amount about someone on a road trip.
Multiply that by hundreds of shifts, in boredom and danger and grief and absurdity, and you get something no clinical training program can give you.
The role itself was unusual. I was not a patrol officer. I had no weapon, no law enforcement authority.
What I had was a clinical skill set and the ability to make mental health assessments, de-escalate, and evaluate for care in real time, in conditions most therapists never encounter. Most people, thankfully, have never witnessed a true psychiatric emergency, the kind where a person is genuinely in danger of hurting themselves or someone else and no one around them can help.
Those calls exist. I was the person who showed up for them. It was my job to take some of that weight off the officers, to be the clinical presence in circumstances where clinical presence is the thing that changes outcomes.
It was intense. It was meaningful. And it was, in retrospect, an extraordinary education in what human beings look like when they have run out of road.
Most of my partners were men. It was a predominantly male organization. What I saw, over and over, was how much men wanted to be understood, how much they were carrying, and how rarely they had a real outlet for any of it. I saw their humor, their loyalty, their exhaustion, and their genuine desire for connection, even when every message they had received told them to keep moving and not talk about it.
That changed the way I listen to every man who sits across from me now.
Trading the Patrol Car for a Private Office
After years in settings where survival was the presenting concern, I became increasingly drawn to a different kind of question.
Not ‘how do I keep this person safe’ but ‘what does this person actually want from their life, their relationships, their body?’
Eventually I knew it was time. I had spent nearly two decades learning how people unravel: in jail cells, in crisis, on the side of a freeway, in emergency rooms at midnight. I had absorbed more about human beings under pressure than most clinicians encounter in an entire career. What I had not yet done was get to sit with someone long enough to watch them actually change.
That was what private practice promised. A slower pace. Ongoing relationships. The chance to do the kind of deep, sustained clinical work where you get to see what happens after the crisis resolves.
I entered private practice in 2021, and it felt like coming home to something I had always known I wanted.
In the therapy room, sex and intimacy kept coming up. Not just as clinical concerns but as the thing people were most reluctant to name and most desperate to address. Desire, shame, disconnection, identity, the pressure to perform, the grief of a relationship that had gone quiet.
These were not peripheral issues. For most of the people sitting across from me, they were central ones.
After a couple of years in private practice, I pursued formal advanced training in sexual health and became a sex therapist. I completed the Sex Therapy Certificate Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, trained in the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy through The Couples Institute and other experts in the DM model, and have continued deepening my clinical work through ongoing consultation and training. I am an active member of AASECT, the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists.
The clinical groundwork had been building for years without me fully naming it. Shame in the jail. Trauma and its grip on the body. Men disconnected from their own emotional lives. People uncertain about who they are and what they want. Identities being quietly formed or suppressed under enormous pressure. Gender expectations doing real damage in silence.
None of that stops at the therapy room door. It shows up in desire, in the body, in how people relate to pleasure and closeness and themselves. The CIIS training and AASECT membership gave formal language and framework to something that had already been at the center of my clinical work for a long time.
What It’s Like to Sit in My Office
Where the work lives now: my office in Beverly Hills, CA
People often ask if sex therapy feels awkward. The truth is, what feels awkward is carrying things alone for years.
In my office, you do not have to perform. You do not have to impress me. You do not have to explain yourself perfectly. You can show up frustrated, guarded, curious, skeptical, or unsure. That is all welcome.
I work with men who feel disconnected from their partners, men navigating desire, performance anxiety, porn use, or shame, and men who have never had a space where emotional honesty felt safe. I also work with couples who love each other but feel stuck in the same arguments or distant routines, and women who want a better relationship with their own desires and sense of self.
We talk about sex openly and directly. We also talk about grief, anger, identity, and the pressure to get it right. Humor is allowed here. So is silence. Therapy does not have to be stiff or clinical to be effective.
Who I Work With
I work with:
- Men navigating desire, performance anxiety, porn use, or identity questions
- Individuals wanting a better relationship with sex and emotional closeness
- Couples rebuilding trust, connection, and communication
- People healing after trauma or major life changes
You do not need to be in crisis to start therapy. Many clients come in because something feels off, even if they cannot name it yet.
A Note on the Voyage LA Feature
I was recently invited to share more of this story with Voyage LA, a publication that spotlights Los Angeles professionals making an impact in their communities. If you want to read the longer version of how I ended up here, the full interview is worth a look.
Read the full Voyage LA interview here: https://voyagela.com/interview/meet-kim-ronan-of-beverly-hills/
FAQs
What is a sex therapist, and what do they do?
A sex therapist is a licensed mental health professional with advanced training in sexual health. We help individuals and couples address concerns related to sex, desire, performance anxiety, intimacy, communication, identity, and relationship patterns. Sex therapy is talk therapy. There is no physical contact involved.
What advice do sex therapists give?
Sex therapists do not give one-size-fits-all advice. Instead, we help clients understand their own experiences, beliefs, and patterns around sex and relationships. This often includes learning how to communicate needs, reduce shame, manage anxiety, and build emotional and physical closeness in ways that feel authentic.
What is a female sex therapist?
A female sex therapist is a licensed therapist who is a woman and holds advanced training in sexual health. Many men and couples choose to work with a female sex therapist because it creates a specific dynamic for exploring vulnerability, communication, and desire. What matters most is feeling safe, seen, and understood from the very first session.
What happens during sex therapy sessions?
Sex therapy sessions look much like other forms of psychotherapy. We talk. We explore patterns, emotions, and experiences related to sex and relationships. Sessions may involve individual work or couples work, depending on your goals. Everything discussed stays confidential, and the pace is guided by your comfort level.
What should I expect from therapy with Kim Ronan?
You can expect honesty, warmth, and depth. Questions that help you slow down and notice what is happening inside you and between you and others. Challenge when it is useful and support when things feel raw. This work is not about quick fixes. It is about building a stronger relationship with yourself so your relationships with others can change too.
Ready to Connect?
If you are looking for a sex therapist in Beverly Hills or Los Angeles who has seen a lot and is not easily rattled, I would be glad to connect. You do not need to know exactly what you want to work on yet. That is what the first conversation is for.Reach out to schedule a free 15-minute consultation.
