How LGBTQ Affirmative Therapy can help
LGBTQ Affirmative Therapy offers a space to explore and better understand your own sexual and gender identities in an affirming, supportive setting. LGBTQ therapy also provides a confidential venue for those who are friends, family members or allies of LGBTQ communities to navigate the complexities of your own experience.
LGBTQ therapy provides a corrective lens through which gender and sexual variance is seen as a normal expression of being human. This approach is fully in line with the American Psychological Association guidelines for working with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender/gender non-conforming persons. Most importantly, evidence of same gender love, gender variance, and transgenderism, while present in contemporary society is hardly new. These ways of being can be seen in cultures around the world and throughout recorded history, however, attitudes can vary enormously between cultures
Resisting erasure and misinformation
In the U.S. we have seen an era of relatively greater tolerance and legal protections have improved the quality of life for many LGBTQ folks. This is a hard won victory for the generations of LGBTQ advocates. From marches on Washington to solid scientific research LGBTQ lives are generally better protected and understood.
Even so, there is ongoing (and in some areas a palpable escalation of) dominant cultural hostility. We still see widespread misinformation and censorship of LGBTQ histories and cultures. And in this climate the important social value of LGBTQ individuals and ways of being are at risk of being erased. This leaves many to feel ashamed, defective, or lost. Or others work very hard to fit in, pass as Significantly, these conditions lead to a climate of chronic stress and anxiety that particularly impact trans and queer youth both through acts of hate as well as alarmingly high suicide rates.
Generations’ long oppression of the LGBTQ persons and communities has led to greater vulnerability to addiction, depression, suicidality, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress related disorders.
LGBTQ Affirmative Therapy as an act of intervention
LGBTQ Affirmative Therapy, as an approach, turns the tables on the question of the normalcy of sexual and gender variance. We can ask, “What is the basis for societal hostility that has come to produce toxic false belief systems, lack of legal protections, and continued high rates of hate crimes that leave LGBTQ individuals and communities feeling threatened, stressed out, and devalued members of society?”
The societal dysfunction that has traumatized LGBTQ individuals can be named, resisted, and its damaging effects reversed.
Define yourself
There are many ways to gain a more wholesome view of the social significance of LGBTQ people and perspectives, such as through community advocacy and learning our real history. Additionally, affirming LGBTQ therapy offers a highly effective method for dismantling the impact of oppressive belief systems including those that have been internalized (e.g. internalized trans/bi/homophobia). In this light you can gain an appreciation of your sexuality and gender on your own terms, and then consider how this may inform and help to guide your life including your most intimate relationships.
I use the term “LGBTQ” as a statement of solidarity and recognition of a shared culture and political alliance. I also know that what it means to be in this rainbow spectrum–lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, two-spirit, intersex, fluid, gender non-conforming, non-binary, third gender, genderqueer, or an ally– is highly personal, historically and culturally layered, and for many a continuously evolving way of being and saying.