Therapy for LGBTQ

The biggest difference: you don’t have to guess, worry, hope, or investigate if I’m going to honor your identity. Caring compassionately for this part of your lived experience is a commitment I take seriously. With that worry off the table, we can focus our energy on what brought you to therapy in the first place!

As someone who is also part of the LGBTQ+ community, we may have the added bonus of shared understanding through lived experience. I also know that no matter how similar/different our paths have been or how much I learn about diverse LGBTQ identities, I have to be curious about what your identity means specifically for you. I want to know about your unique experience, asking questions instead of making assumptions. It’s my job to earn your trust by demonstrating affirming behavior over time. I’m here to be non-defensively open to feedback if I miss the mark.

You betcha! Therapy is designed to support your overall well-being, whether that means managing anxiety, developing communication skills, or learning how to set healthy boundaries. Your LGBTQ identity is honored, but sessions are guided by your specific goals and current challenges, regardless of the topic. Additionally, belonging to an oppressed community can increase our baseline level of stress, impacting the way we experience other life challenges. We’ll work together to name the impact of oppressive systems while addressing your unique therapy goals.

Absolutely. It’s not uncommon to feel hesitant if you’ve had unhelpful or invalidating experiences with therapy before, especially when the pain was centered around your identity. As someone who has been through that hurt, it is so important to me to help others have a corrective experience. That means learning from you about what feels safe/unsafe, asking for your feedback often, and honoring your pace.

That’s completely okay! Therapy can be a great space to explore questions around gender, sexuality, and identity at your own pace, without pressure or expectations. Together, we can process your thoughts and help you make meaning of your experience. That might mean identifying a label that feels right for you. It might also mean deciding that labels are not necessary to live a full, aligned life. All of your uncertainty and curiosity is welcome here.

My perspective is that one of the primary roles of a therapist is to understand my clients’ lived experience with as much detail and care as possible. That process begins by affirming that your lived experience is real and your perception of it is valid. I’m not going to argue with you about whether or not it was “really discrimination.” My guess is that as a member of the LGBTQ community you are the best equipped to detect discrimination based on gender and sexuality. Certainly more accurate than those who are committed to not seeing their bias! So our work begins by honoring your lived reality, full stop.

 My efforts to hear and hold your experience are informed by both my own history of being on the receiving end of discrimination and my ongoing continuing education about how to serve historically oppressed communities. Even if my painful experiences are different from yours, I am fully committed to understanding what you have been through and how it has impacted you. We’ll work together to build resilience, coping strategies, self-compassion and undo self-invalidation. I’m also a strong proponent of healing through connection to community; our work may highlight ways to feel seen amongst those who most understand your experience.

Curiosity, respect, and cultural humility are at the center of my approach to making space for your intersectional identities. In session, that may mean naming when current/historical racism or cultural bias adds to emotional stress, pushing back against White idealization of perfectionism and hyperindividualism, and checking in with you about how a therapeutic suggestion may or may not fit with your cultural values.

I have a responsibility to proactively make space for your experiences of discrimination based on your race, culture, language, or heritage and an even greater responsibility to help you feel heard when you take the risk to name it. As mentioned before, it is my duty to earn your trust by behaving in a trustworthy way over time. That includes taking feedback nondefensively and putting that feedback into meaningful, observable action. I’m committed to the life-long process of decolonizing my therapy practice. It is my job to adapt therapeutic tools to align with your cultural frame, not put you in a one-size-fits-all box of White, colonial, Eurocentric therapy.