LGBTQIA+ Affirming Therapy

Compassionate, Respectful Support for LGBTQIA+ Individuals & Couples / Partners

Finding a therapist who actually understands your identity can be hard. Many LGBTQIA+ clients come to therapy feeling unseen, exhausted from explaining themselves, or worn down by past experiences where their identities were minimized, misunderstood, or judged.


You deserve a space where your sexual orientation, gender identity, and relational experiences are understood, affirmed, and deeply respected.

I provide LGBTQIA+ affirming therapy for adults and couples / partners in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island through secure telehealth.

What Does LGBTQIA+ Affirming Therapy Look Like?

Affirming therapy means seeing you as you truly are — not reducing you to a label, symptom, or checklist. It means:

  • Recognizing the real impact of minority stress and systemic oppression

  • Listening deeply without assumptions or agenda

  • Respecting your language for your identity and relationships

  • Supporting you around issues like coming out, identity exploration, and relational dynamics

  • Working collaboratively, not prescriptively

Therapy should help you feel safer in your body, your identity, and your relationships, not more anxious or defensive.

This aligns with community-based affirming principles that emphasize dignity and agency over judgment or pathologizing language.

Safety, Identity, and Naming Your Experiences

Your identity matters, and how it shapes your experience matters too. Many LGBTQIA+ folks navigate:

  • Family rejection or conditional acceptance

  • Religious or cultural shame

  • Internalized stigma

  • Fear of vulnerability

  • Fear of expressing desire or needs

These experiences are not “just stress”, they are responses to environments that may not have felt safe, supportive, or validating.

Good therapy does not minimize that pain. It helps you understand it without letting it define you.

Gender Identity & Trans-Affirming Support

For trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive clients, therapy can support:

  • Exploring gender identity privately and at your pace

  • Navigating social or medical transition questions

  • Healing from past misattunement or invalidation

  • Supporting relational shifts with partners, family, or community

Affirming care respects your autonomy and supports your goals, not someone else’s idea of who you “should” be.

LGBTQIA+ Couples Work

I also support LGBTQIA+ couples and partners navigating:

  • Communication struggles

  • Attachment injuries

  • Intimacy differences

  • Impacts of minority stress on connection

  • Relationship transitions

  • Conflict influenced by past rejection or identity stress

Couples work focuses on the emotions beneath the conflict, the fear, longing, and hurt that sit just under the surface.

It’s not about fixing a partner.
It’s about deepening safety, attunement, and understanding together.

Coming Out, Shame, and Story Integration

Coming out, or even thinking about it, can be emotional and complex. Some people have never had a space where they felt safe to say out loud what feels true without fear of dismissal or correction.

Here, your story matters.

Therapy can help you:

  • Separate who you are from what others taught you about yourself

  • Understand how your history shaped your emotional responses

  • Find language for your identity that feels coherent and true

That’s far more powerful than just “accepting” who you are, it’s about knowing and owning it from the inside out.

Trauma, Loneliness, and Connection

Many LGBTQIA+ clients have experienced:

  • Microaggressions

  • Rejection or abandonment

  • Internalized shame

  • Community violence

  • Historical stigma

These experiences shape your nervous system, not in isolation, but as a lived history of relational and social responses.

Therapy here is not about “fixing pathology.”
It’s about tending the parts of you that learned to survive and helping you learn how to live with more ease, trust, and emotional regulation.

My Approach: Collaborative & Compassionate

My work is trauma-informed, relational, and in your corner, not above or outside your experience. I integrate:

  • Attachment-focused therapy

  • Emotion-oriented processing

  • Internal Family Systems perspectives

  • Nervous system–sensitive pacing

  • Relational clarity and communication tools

Together we explore not just symptoms or behaviors, but the emotional patterns and relational needs underneath.

Who This Is For

You might benefit from LGBTQIA+ affirming therapy if you:

  • Are exploring or clarifying your sexual or gender identity

  • Have experienced invalidation or stigma

  • Feel unseen in previous therapy or relationships

  • Are navigating relationship stress influenced by identity challenges

  • Seek space where your whole experience — identity + emotion + humanity — is honored

You do not have to fix yourself to deserve care.

Telehealth Affirming Therapy in MA, NH, ME & RI

I provide secure online therapy across:

  • Massachusetts

  • New Hampshire

  • Maine

  • Rhode Island

Whether you live in a city or a more rural area, you can access affirming care that understands your identity and your emotional life.

If you are seeking:

  • LGBTQIA+ affirming mental health support

  • Trauma-informed care for sexual and gender minorities

  • Couples therapy that understands queer relational dynamics

  • A therapist who speaks invitation over assumption

We can explore whether we’re a good fit.

Next Steps

If this resonates with you:

Therapy should feel like a place where you can finally breathe — not defend, explain, or shrink.