Areas of Focus/LGBTQIA+ Community
I offer affirming psychotherapy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual adults. Your identity is welcome here, and it will never be treated as the problem.
ON THE SURFACE · WHAT YOU MIGHT NOTICE
BENEATH · WHAT MAY BE AT WORK
Affirming therapy means that I take your identity as a given and as a source of meaning, not as a symptom or a phase. It also means I understand that being LGBTQIA+ in this culture carries specific pressures: minority stress, the labor of coming out repeatedly, the vigilance that comes from not knowing where you will be safe, and the particular grief of families and communities that could not fully accept you.
Some people come to see me for issues that have little to do with identity (anxiety, depression, work, relationships) and simply want a therapist who won’t require explanation. Others come specifically to work through questions of identity, coming out, transition, or the aftermath of rejection. Both are welcome.
Many LGBTQIA+ people learned, very early, that something essential about them needed to be hidden. That lesson doesn’t disappear when you come out. It tends to go underground, showing up as self-criticism, difficulty trusting closeness, a sense of being fundamentally too much or not enough, or a split between the self you present and the self you feel.
Psychodynamic work is well suited to this. It gives us a way to find those early lessons, understand where they came from, and loosen their hold, so that the acceptance you may already have intellectually can reach further down.
I pay attention to the relationship between us, including the question of whether this is a safe place to be fully yourself. That question is not an obstacle to the work; it is often where the work begins. I use the name and pronouns you ask me to use, and I will follow your lead in how much your identity is or is not the focus of our sessions. Sessions are 50 minutes, in my Burbank office or by telehealth.