Understanding Sexual Orientation

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Many queer clients are misunderstood and judged in therapy with straight therapists.

Queer people deserve the option to see someone skilled and queer.

Straight therapists who work with queer and trans folks need to do more to be educated about our lives.

Straight therapists can do this through immersing themselves in queer culture and getting supervision.

As a therapist who is both queer herself and works almost exclusively with queer and trans folks, I have both firsthand experiences and have heard from hundreds of clients that past therapists didn’t understand them, and in fact, pathologized them, for the ways their lives fall outside the straight norm.

For me, this showed up when a trauma therapist I saw in college conflated my lesbianism with sexual abuse I must have not remembered. The same therapist, when I expressed distress over breakups and hookups happening in my friend group, suggested: Why don’t you all just stop having sex with each other? I stopped seeing her shortly after both of these comments and avoided therapy for years.

This therapist couldn’t comprehend why I wouldn’t be with a man other than having experienced sexual abuse at the hands of one — a take that is extremely reductive and pathologizing for queer and trans folks, but also for survivors of sexual abuse.

This therapist also didn’t understand, because she didn’t take the time to, that my friend group was also my dating pool, my hookup pool, and that, generally speaking, it is typical for queer and trans folks to have relationships of all kinds with their friends, sexual ones included.

These are simply two reasons out of hundreds I could provide for why I worked up the courage to step into the office of a queer therapist. When I did, I no longer had to explain myself. I no longer felt judged or misunderstood.

My clients come to me because of the thing that makes me different, my queerness. They also come to me for specific types of life issues, and for certain modalities I offer, like EMDR, I-CBT, and so on. They deserve care that is affirming and evidence-based. But in my community, we are so rarely able to access both of these, or even one of them.

When I began experiencing postpartum OCD after the birth of my first child, I sought out an OCD specialist. There was not a queer OCD therapist I could find in my area (let that sink in), so I opted to see a highly experienced clinician who was heterosexual, and hoped for the best.

I was able to experience such a corrective experience with her. She had all the skills I needed to heal from my OCD, and our work inspired me to get trained myself! When, at one point, she felt she had said something offensive, we had an open and honest conversation in which I did not have to educate her or take care of her emotionally.

Queer clients need us, as queer therapists, so they can show up fully and not fear shame or judgment. It is also our job as queer therapists to not be just a safe person in the community, but also a person in our community who is ready and skilled in specific mental health issues our community faces and needs help with, such as trauma, OCD, addiction, depression, relationship issues, and family issues.

Heterosexual clinicians need to take the time and care, if they are going to work with queer and trans clients, to become competent in our lives. And I do not mean a two-hour CEU training on the LGBTQ+ Community. Read books by queer and trans authors! Watch films by us. Seek out supervision from queer and trans therapists! It really is that simple. Immerse yourselves in our lives, our culture, respectfully.

Understanding Sexual Orientation

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If you are a client reading this and realizing you may be ready for a change in your therapy, the final chapter of my new book Healing the Oppressed Body: A Therapeutic Guide for Radical Self-Liberation is devoted to questions you can ask yourself, your current therapist, and a new therapist to make sure you get what you need right now on your healing journey.

© Psychology Today