LGBTQ+ Affirming Therapy
Affirming therapy is not the same as friendly therapy. Affirming care means that your identity is not the problem, your relationships are not the problem, and your therapist has done the actual work of understanding queer and trans lives, not just attended a workshop on it once.
At MLC, we offer therapy that is affirming across the full range of queer and trans experience. That includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, aromantic, demisexual, queer, questioning, two-spirit, trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, gender-nonconforming, intersex, and every other way our communities describe ourselves, including the ways that do not have widely shared language yet. We are also affirming of non-traditional relationship structures and sexual lives, including non-monogamy and kink, which we hold as their own areas of focus as well.
What affirming care actually requires
Affirming care is a stance. It involves:
- Treating queer and trans identities as valid configurations of being human.
- Having enough knowledge of queer and trans communities, histories, and contexts that you do not have to do the educating
- Working with relationship structures that do not fit the heteronormative monogamous template, including chosen family and consensually non-monogamous relationships
- Understanding the particular ways family of origin, religious community, school, healthcare, employment, and the legal system shape queer and trans lives differently
- Doing the ongoing personal work required as therapists
- Naming the political moment honestly rather than pretending it is irrelevant to mental health
The political moment matters
Queer and trans communities are living through a sustained political assault on the right to exist openly. The fear, exhaustion, grief, and rage that come with this are not pathology. They are appropriate responses to what is being done. At MLC, we make space for all of it.
What folks bring to this work
The reasons LGBTQ+ folks come to therapy are as varied as the reasons anyone does. Some of what comes up often:
- Coming out, or choosing not to come out, with specific people in specific contexts
- Family-of-origin grief. The family that did not show up, the family that is still in process, the family that cut off contact
- Religious trauma related to sexuality or gender, including ongoing work with the tradition of origin
- Relationships and intimacy in all their forms. Partnered, unpartnered, casual, non-monogamous, kinky, sexual, asexual, and complicated in any of the ways relationships get complicated, with non-monogamy and kink which we also work with as dedicated areas of focus, each with its own specialty page on our website.
- Mental health concerns that show up alongside identity, including depression, anxiety, trauma, OCD, ADHD, eating concerns
- Gender exploration, transition, and the long arc of becoming
- Chosen family, community, and the labor of building family structures that mainstream culture does not always recognize
- Grief about queer and trans elders lost to AIDS, to violence, to suicide, and the particular kind of mourning that comes with knowing how many were lost
- Joy, pleasure, gender euphoria, and the experience of becoming more fully yourself
What this work can look like at MLC
In affirming care here:
- We work with folks across the full range of queer and trans experience and across all relationship configurations
- We hold the intersections seriously. Being queer in a Black family is not the same as being queer in a white family. Being trans and undocumented is not the same as being trans and a U.S. citizen. We pay attention to the intersections in your life
- We hold the political moment honestly. The exhaustion, fear, grief, and rage that come from living through what is happening are part of the work, not a side topic.
- We provide letters for gender-affirming medical care
- We treat your sexuality and sexual life as legitimate sites of therapeutic work
- We hold joy alongside difficulty. Pleasure, gender euphoria, chosen family, queer community, and the long lineage that made the conditions for your life possible are part of what we honor
The therapists at MLC do this work because we know what affirming care has cost not to receive. Some of our clinicians are queer and trans ourselves. All of our clinicians continue to do the work required to meet clients where they are.
