LGBTQ+ AFFIRMING THERAPY

You shouldn't have to translate your life to be understood in therapy

You've spent enough time explaining, softening, or performing a version of yourself that makes others comfortable.

Therapy shouldn't be another place where you do that.

This is a space where:

  • Your pronouns are respected without fanfare

  • Your relationships aren't questioned or pathologized

  • You don't have to educate me about what it means to be queer, trans, or navigating identity

  • Coming out trauma is recognized as actual trauma—not just a "phase" or "struggle"

  • Your sexuality, gender, and desire are honored as complex and evolving—not fixed or binary

  • The shame you carry isn't treated as your fault

Whether you came out last month or twenty years ago, whether you're certain of your identity or still exploring it, whether you're thriving or barely holding on—you belong here.

You're not alone in this. And there is nothing wrong with you.

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.

— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

WHAT LGBTQ+ CLIENTS TELL ME THEY ACTUALLY NEED FROM THERAPY

Not just acceptance—depth.

Most queer clients don't want a therapist who's just "cool with it." They want someone who understands that:

Identity isn't the problem—what happened because of your identity might be

  • Family rejection leaves attachment wounds

  • Religious trauma creates shame that doesn't disappear when you leave the church

  • Minority stress is cumulative and physiological

  • Coming out isn't a single event—it's a recurring negotiation across contexts

  • Being closeted for years creates relational patterns that persist after coming out

Your queerness intersects with everything else you are

  • Trauma doesn't pause because you're LGBTQ+

  • Mental health struggles aren't "because you're gay"—but navigating them while queer adds layers

  • Relationship issues are relationship issues—not inherently "queer problems"

  • Your identity is part of the context, not the entire story

You need a therapist who won't:

  • Treat every issue as an identity issue

  • Ignore identity when it's clearly relevant

  • Overcorrect and erase the real impact of minority stress

  • Make you the queer educator in your own therapy

  • Assume your gender/sexuality is figured out because you're "out"

COMMON THEMES LGBTQ+ CLIENTS BRING TO THERAPY

Shame that moves faster than thought

Not intellectual shame you can rationalize away—the kind that floods your body before you can name it. The kind that makes you shrink in rooms where you should feel safe.

The exhaustion of chronic self-editing

Calculating pronouns, monitoring tone, gauging safety, code-switching between worlds. You've done it so long you don't know who you are when you're not performing safety.

Relationship patterns shaped by scarcity

When you spent years believing love wasn't available to you, early relationships can feel desperate, consuming, or terrifying. Or you avoid them entirely because intimacy feels like exposure.

"Am I too much or not enough?"

This question runs under everything. Too gay, not gay enough. Too feminine, not feminine enough. Too angry about discrimination, not activist enough. The constant recalibration is exhausting.

Coming out trauma that never got processed

Maybe your family eventually "came around." Maybe they didn't. Either way, the moment they rejected you—or the years you spent hiding—left marks your nervous system still carries.

Not knowing what you want because you've never felt safe enough to want

Desire—sexual, relational, vocational—requires safety. If you spent your developmental years in survival mode, you might be 35 and still figuring out what you actually want vs. what felt safest to want.

Hypervigilance that doesn't turn off

Scanning for threat. Reading microexpressions. Assessing every new person, place, interaction. Your nervous system learned this was necessary—and now it won't stop even in safe spaces.

WHY MANY LGBTQ+ CLIENTS NEED TRAUMA THERAPY—NOT JUST AFFIRMING TALK THERAPY

Being LGBTQ+ doesn't cause trauma. But growing up or living in environments that reject, invisibilize, or threaten you does.

Minority stress isn't just psychological—it's physiological:

  • Chronic hypervigilance activates the same nervous system patterns as PTSD

  • Developmental trauma from family rejection creates attachment wounds

  • Religious trauma from purity culture, conversion attempts, or spiritual abuse leaves lasting shame

  • Discrimination, harassment, or violence create body-based trauma responses

  • Years of hiding or code-switching disconnect you from your own emotions and desires

Many queer clients come to therapy thinking they need "support" or "someone to talk to."

What they actually need is trauma processing:

  • EMDR to release the emotional charge of rejection, shaming, or violence

  • Brainspotting to access shutdown, numbness, or frozen states

  • Flash Technique when trauma feels too overwhelming to approach directly

  • Somatic work to reconnect with a body you've learned to distrust or disconnect from

  • Relational repair for attachment wounds from early rejection

Affirmation is the baseline. Healing is what happens after.

HOW WE WORK TOGETHER

I don't treat your queerness as the central "issue"—but I also don't ignore it when it matters

Your identity is part of your lived experience. Sometimes it's central to what we're working on. Sometimes it's just context. I track both.

We move at your pace—whether you're just coming out or integrating decades of being out

Early coming out and long-term identity integration require different approaches. Both deserve depth and attunement.

We work with what's happening in your body, not just your thoughts

Shame, fear, and hypervigilance live in your nervous system. We don't just talk about them—we process them somatically through EMDR, Brainspotting, and relational presence.

We address minority stress as actual stress—not a buzzword

Chronic minority stress creates measurable physiological changes. We treat it as the real, cumulative burden it is.

We explore identity without forcing resolution

Gender, sexuality, desire, and expression can be fluid, evolving, or still unclear. You don't need to have everything figured out to do this work.

We work with religious trauma directly

If you grew up in purity culture, conversion theology, or environments that taught you that your identity was sinful—that's trauma. We process it as such.

METHODS I INTEGRATE

EMDR – To process trauma, shame, and internalized narratives that no longer fit who you are.

Brainspotting – For deeper emotional layers—especially for clients who feel shut down, numb, or disconnected.

Flash Technique – A low-distress way to reduce emotional intensity before deeper trauma work.

KAP Preparation & Integration – For clients approved by a medical prescriber, this work can help soften defenses and support deeper emotional access.

Existential–Phenomenological Therapy – For meaning-making, identity exploration, embodiment, and reclaiming lived experience.

YOU MIGHT BE NAVIGATING

Just coming out

  • Family rejection or conditional acceptance

  • Rebuilding your sense of self after years of hiding

  • First relationships and not knowing what healthy looks like

  • Grief for the childhood you didn't get to have

Been out for years but...

  • Still carrying shame you thought you'd processed

  • Relationship patterns you don't want to repeat

  • Hypervigilance that won't turn off

  • Disconnect between being "fine" with your identity and still feeling wrong inside

Trans or gender-expansive experiences

  • Gender dysphoria, social transition, medical transition

  • Navigating systems (healthcare, legal, family) that weren't built for you

  • Body image, embodiment, dissociation

  • Grief, relief, confusion, or all of the above

Religious trauma

  • Purity culture, conversion attempts, spiritual abuse

  • Shame that still activates even though you've "left"

  • Complicated relationships with family still in faith communities

  • Rebuilding meaning and belonging outside religion

Relationship complexity

  • Non-monogamy, polyamory, or non-traditional relationship structures

  • Fear of intimacy after years of hiding or rejection

  • Anxious attachment from early instability

  • Not knowing what you want because you never felt safe enough to want

Intersectional identity

  • Navigating multiple marginalized identities (race, disability, class, immigration status)

  • Cultural contexts where queerness is differently stigmatized or invisible

  • Chosen family dynamics

WHAT BEGINS TO SHIFT

With attuned, affirming, depth-oriented work, LGBTQ+ clients often begin to:

  • Feel more grounded and present

  • Trust their emotions and intuition

  • Soften old shame

  • Reconnect with their body and desire

  • Feel safer in relationships

  • Articulate needs without fear

  • Build clearer boundaries

  • Understand their identity more deeply

  • Stop shrinking or editing themselves

  • Feel more congruent and whole

Clients often say:

"I finally feel like all the parts of me are in the same room."

"I'm not hiding."

"I feel more like myself."

FAQ

  • Both—and the distinction often doesn't make sense for queer clients. Identity, shame, trauma, and relationship patterns are deeply intertwined.

  • Not at all. This is a place where exploration is welcome.

  • Many LGBTQ+ clients have. We go slowly and build trust at your pace.

  • Only if it's relevant that day. Your identity is part of you, not the whole of you.

  • Yes. You don't need to have everything figured out. Therapy is a place to explore without pressure to land on labels or certainty.

  • Many clients describe feeling disconnected, numb, or like they're performing even in safe spaces. That's often the aftermath of years spent in hypervigilance or hiding. We work with that directly.

  • Yes. Many of my LGBTQ+ clients are healing from purity culture, conversion theology, church rejection, or spiritual abuse. This is trauma work, not just processing grief.

  • Even when families eventually accept you, the initial rejection often leaves attachment wounds. Late acceptance doesn't erase early harm. We work with what your nervous system actually experienced.

You deserve therapy where you don't have to perform, translate, or shrink

Where your full complexity is welcome—not simplified, not pathologized, not treated as a "specialty topic."

Where your queerness is seen as part of your wholeness, not the problem to be solved.

If that's what you're looking for, I'm here.

Schedule a Consultation