Virtual Wellness Event For Adult Performers In The UK

Pineapple Support, the adult industry’s leading mental health non-profit, together with sponsors AdultWork and AWSummit, will be holding an online wellness event specifically aimed at the adult industry in the UK. The three-day event, which will be held from September 23-25, will include live workshops and interactive webinars from Pineapple Support therapists, as well activities such as breathwork, meditation and workouts.  

“We’re really excited to bring this event to the UK,” says Pineapple Support founder Leya Tanit. “We’ll be focusing on self-care, mental and physical well-being and education. There will be presentations from UK-based organizations NUM and Dean Street, as well as legal information from sex worker-postive law firm Gillen De Alwis Solicitors. To top it all off, the event will end with five hours of comedy and music to get  feet moving and faces smiling.” 

Tanit founded Pineapple Support in 2018 after a string of losses in the adult industry from depression and other mental illnesses. The organisation, which is a registered 501(c)3 tax-deductible qualifying charity in the US and a registered charity in the UK, has so far connected nearly nine hundred adult performers with mental health services, including free and low-cost, therapy, counseling and emotional support. 

The three-day Virtual Wellness Event will go live online at 10am BST on September 23rd. Those that wish to register for the event should visit https://pineapplesupport.org/wellness/ for more information. 

 

The following workshops and webinars will be hosted during the event (all times BST): 

September 23 

10am – 10:45am: The Power of Self Hypnosis (with Sinead Rochford) 

11.30pm -12.30pm: National Ugly Mugs (with Dr Raven Bowen, Hannah Wilcox and Rosie Hodsdon) 

12.45am – 1:45pm: Dean Street Sexual Health Clinic (with Rachel Ali) 

2pm – 2:45pm: Pilates Full Body Conditioning (with Ami Collins) 

3pm- 3:45pm: Mental Health in the Adult Industry (with Leya Tanit) 

4pm – 4:45pm: Breathwork and Yoga Nidra for Inner-Healing (with Jess Birks) 

 

September 24 

10am – 10:45 am: Managing Adversities Through Self-Compassion (with Silva Neves) 

11am – 11:45 am: Introduction to Yin Yoga (with Michele Karban) 

12pm- 12:45pm: The Use of Hypnotherapy in Overcoming, Stress, Depression and Anxiety (with George Lewis) 

2pm- 2:45pm: Mindful Eating (with Sofie Every) 

3pm – 3:45pm: EMDR – Treatment for PTSD (with Fulvio Maciaccia) 

4pm-4:45pm: What it Means to be a Pineapple Listener (with Areneae Mactans) 

 

September 25 

10 -10:45am: Navigating Relationship Conflicts — the Top Tips (with Silva Neves) 

11am- 11:45am: Vinyasa Flow Yoga Class to Awaken Your Inner Goddess (with Jess Birks) 

12pm- 12:45pm: Legal Review (with Gillen De Alwis Solicitors) 

2pm-2:45pm: How to Look After Yourself Emotionally in an Uncertain World (with Silva Neves) 

3pm- 3:45pm: Thank You from Pineapple Support 

4pm- 5pm: Live Acoustic Set (with Elijah Miller) 

5 pm – 5:15 pm: Comedy Set (with Dan Nightingale) 

5:15 pm – 5:45pm: Acoustic Set (with Ishod Black) 

5:45pm – 6pm: Comedy Set (with Dan Nightingale) 

6pm-7pm: DJ set (compiled by Sonic Emporium) 

7pm – 9pm: DJ set (compiled by Man Power) 

9pm-10pm: Journey Men DJ Mix 

Safety First

Unless you are one of the very few people in the adult industry to be known by your real name, ensuring the safety of your identity is a crucial part of your life. Trusting relative strangers can result in horrendous consequences for not just yourself but also your family!

It has been announced recently that ‘Revenge Porn’ has risen considerably during the first part of this year, with the number of cases already higher than the whole of last year. One government funded helpline has seen an increase of more than 22% from last year and a recent report by Refuge has found that 1 in 7 women have received threats that intimate photos will be shared without their consent.

This year, no doubt due to the coronavirus and the consequent lockdowns has also seen a rise in domestic abuse and whilst it is not only women that are suffering, they are in the majority.

So how do you maintain your job in the adult world and ensure you stay safe now and in the future?

Starting off as you mean to go on is an absolutely crucial part of starting out in the adult industry. Always expecting the worst, utilizing every piece of security available and ensuring you always think first is the best advice you can receive and utilize.

For some though, it’s too late to act as the division between your public and private life has already become compromised. For those people, it seems that their whole world has crashed around them. This is especially pertinent for those working in the adult industry as it still causes upset to family and friends and the level of contempt is disturbingly high.

This can produce an enormous amount of distress to the person concerned and being ostracised for simply earning a living in the adult industry, can be the trigger for depression, melancholy and for some, alarmingly, suicidal thoughts ensue.

Not having any confidential routes to relay and discuss your concerns has been a huge issue for all adult workers, whether or not they work in sex or glamour. This is one of the main reasons that Leya Tanit set up Pineapple Support. Anyone in the adult industry can access their services for support, advice and counselling if required.

They have already provided help and support to lots of people and rely on donations to carry out this amazing work. If you have any interest in helping Pineapple Support, whether it’s with a much needed donation or if you are able to provide time, support or any kind of help, however small, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

https://pineapplesupport.org/

Carla Sez will back soon with more guidance on how to keep your work life safe and your private life secure and protected.

For now, think before you post!

Love All

Carla Sez x

Should you share your Life on Social Media?

Reaching out and providing support at anytime is important but even more so now.

Working from home has never felt so isolating and for most of us, admitting we are lonely and perhaps need help is one of the last things on our mind. For some unknown reason, that feeling of self-worth gets all screwed up in our head and finds its way out somewhat bitter and twisted. Sometimes we believe that everyone else should know how we are feeling, even though they don’t actually live inside our head!

Social media has a big part to play in todays world as we assume that once we have pressed ‘Enter’, all of our friends and all of the friends of those friends will see our post and come rushing to the rescue. The truth is that very few people actually see your latest ‘out-pouring’, and those that do find it hard to accept and respond to such an open form of counselling.

It is also increasingly difficult as you get older to accept help, we seem to revert back to those teenage years where we believed that nobody understood us and everyone was in fact out to make our lives difficult. Being independent is fine (up to a point) but at some time in our lives we all need a little bit of help, or a shoulder to cry on.

Knowing who you can trust and speak to about such personal matters is the first key to being able to cope with any kind of pressure. You shouldn’t wait until you need the help either. Find out who your real friends are by really thinking about your relationship with them.

You may share all the positive things in your life with a group of people or one person in particular and all the negative issues with another. You may even be the type of person who doesn’t ever share anything about their private life with friends ever.

Whichever group you belong to and especially if you are on your own, you do need support from time to time.

Pineapple Support have made it their mission to provide free support and therapy for all persons working in the online adult industry. It doesn’t matter about your gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, social status or age. They provide support 24/7 and their team of sex-worker friendly therapists offer face to face, or online therapy to anyone who needs it.

Their ever-growing team are always looking for ways to raise extra funds so that they can provide even more help for professional coaching, therapy and counselling for those who require help and support.

Do what you can to help this amazing cause.

Love to you ALL

Carla Sez x

Pineapple Support To Provide Suicide Prevention Training Presentation

Pineapple Support, the adult industry’s leading mental health resource, will host a free Suicide Prevention training presentation to help those in the adult industry to better understand the mental health issues that lead to suicide, including how to identify potential signs and the steps that can be taken to prevent suicide.

The sex-positive training presentation, hosted by ​certified crisis counselor ​Amanda TR-Clemens, is designed to help those in the adult industry provide direct support to those struggling. In addition to resources and tools for suicide prevention, the presentation will also provide tools and strategies for mental health challenges individuals might be facing personally.

“This webinar will be a ‘user-friendly’, sex-informed approach to suicide prevention and crisis support that’s meant to be specifically ‘performed’ by adult film industry people for adult film industry people who may be struggling with suicide or other mental health-related issues,” says Clemens. “The more honest discussions we can have about mental health in adult, the less stigma those who want to come forward face, and the more who can be saved.”

Pineapple Support was founded in 2018, by British performer Leya Tanit, in response to a string of losses in the adult industry from depression and other mental illnesses. The organisation, which is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit in the United States and a registered charity in the UK, has so far connected over a thousand adult performers to mental health services, including free and low-cost, therapy, counseling and emotional support.

“This training presentation will be held on World Suicide Prevention Day,” says Tanit. “We’re hosting this in memory of those in our industry we’ve lost, and to honor their memory by building a more informed and supportive community. Amanda’s experience working for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, as well as her work coordinating emergency and volunteer rescues and speaking at schools and events on the topic of suicide prevention makes her the perfect host for this training presentation.”

The Suicide Prevention Training presentation will go live on September 10th at 1 pm ES and is scheduled to last one hour but may extend. Please visit https://pineapplesupport.org/webinars/ for more information and to access the webinar link.