I've started identifying as a little and I'm not sure whether to tell my therapist. Will they pathologise it or refer me somewhere?

The therapeutic community's relationship with kink and BDSM has improved substantially over the past two decades. Current mainstream psychological frameworks, including the DSM-5, distinguish between kink practices that are distressing or harmful and those that are ego-syntonic and part of a person's healthy identity. Simply being a little does not constitute a disorder.

However, individual therapists vary enormously. A therapist who has not engaged with kink-aware training may bring assumptions to the conversation that feel pathologising even when not intended. They may interpret little space as unresolved trauma, as avoidance, or as something needing intervention rather than as an identity and kink practice that you have integrated into your life.

If your current therapist relationship is strong and you want to disclose, you can approach it by testing the water first: something like asking how they approach questions of sexual identity and kink in their practice gives you a sense of their framework before you commit to full disclosure.

Alternatively, if this aspect of your identity is significant to your wellbeing and you want genuine therapeutic support for it, finding a kink-aware therapist before disclosing makes more sense. Kink-aware therapist directories exist specifically for this purpose.

If your reasons for telling your therapist are unrelated to the little identity itself, such as disclosing it as context for a separate issue, you have more flexibility about how much detail you provide.

You are not obligated to tell your therapist anything about your identity or kink life that you do not want to.