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LGBTQIA+ and Gender Exploration Therapy

Meet Our LGBTQIA+ and Gender Exploration Therapists

How can therapy help with experiences related to LGBTQIA+ individuals and their mental health? 

The world, including systemic systems and our personal worlds, often fails to embrace and affirm those with LGBTQIA+co identities, fostering negative self-perception and negatively affecting the feeling of safety and belonging within our communities.

Therapy can assist individuals with navigating the complexities of existing on the queer spectrum within a heteronormative society. LGBTQIA+ clients not only have specific individual mental health challenges, but varying levels of minority stress experienced by LGBTQIA+ clients is also a sensitive, underserved need. We prioritize listening to our clients to comprehend how their identities intersect with their mental health, sexuality, gender identity & expression, race, ethnicity, class, age, size, and differing-abled individuals - whether identity issues are the primary focus of therapy or not. 

We aim to create a supportive environment that challenges heteronormative dynamics by collaborating with you to cultivate your inclusive goals to validate and affirm clients’ intersectional identities.

Identifying common experiences many individuals who identify as LGBTQIA+ might live through:

✦ Systemic trauma and social stigma

✦ Social rejection, isolation, and disapproval from friends and family

✦ Body image concerns or gender dysphoria

✦ Feeling pressured to maintain restrictive gender binary status quo

✦ Stress with decision-making related to navigating the transition process 

✦ Vulnerability and feeling unsafe in the world

✦ Stressors with expectations of rejection, internalization of negative societal views, and identity concealment to maintain status quo for one’s own safety

✦ Feeling discouraged from exploring gender, expressing gender & sexuality, and celebrating intersectional identities

✦ Alienation from affirming social supports, spaces, and systems

✦ Trouble feeling confident and embodied in one’s own gender or sexuality expression

✦ Lack of access to gender-affirming healthcare and resources 

✦ Stigmatization, discrimination and violence related to sexual-and gender-minority status

✦ Healthcare inequalities that inhibit access to structural, interpersonal and psychological resources that could be used to have access to systemically inclusive healthcare with LGBTQIA-sensitive practitioners

✦ Experiences of discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations that lead to economic instability and higher levels of unmet needs

✦ Frequent prejudiced experiences with heterosexism or transphobia leading to anxiety, development of trauma-related symptoms, and depression

✦ The pain of navigating frequent negative messages and policies placed in society that affect day-to-day endurance of oppression and self-acceptance

✦ Oppressive, heteronormative systems dejecting acts of resistance against societal norms, binaries, and expectations that allow space for unabashed radical self-acceptance

What does it mean to explore gender identity in therapy?

Gender exploration can be overwhelming and confusing, but it can also be a source of joy, curiosity, connection, and pleasure. We are here to support you wherever you are on your journey and to collaborate with you on working towards your goals and desires related to gender identity. Whether you are beginning your self-discovery process, have desires to transition, or are further along in self-acceptance & authentic living, we are here to understand and support you as you navigate your personal journey towards feeling comfortable in full embodiment of your identity & gender expression.

We aim to support your needs and offer a secure space to explore your gender at your own pace. We firmly believe that all gender identities, expressions, and experiences are equally valid, 'natural,' and 'normal’ while rejecting societal expectations of medically transitioning or engaging in the imagined gender binary imposed by society.

Therapists at Balanced Awakening explore emotions and sensations related to exploring gender identity with support for clients without over-focusing on your gender or requiring you to perform under systemic gender constructs. We intend to meaningfully motivate clients to explore routes of self-expression to support clients' self-expression in how they present themselves as their most authentic selves while resisting societal norms, binaries, and expectations.

Therapeutic Vision and Approaches 

We celebrate identity exploration and normalization of conceptualizing gender as a spectrum, including transgender, non-binary, genderfluid, two-spirited, and agender identities. 

We believe that clients are experts in their own lives and that therapy can be a path towards self-discovery & self-acceptance in relation to their individualized mental health. 

Many therapists at Balanced Awakening are clinicians who have lived experiences with LGBTQIA+ identities or are trauma-informed clinicians with affirming approaches to help you feel supported in your identity and process of self-acceptance & self-discovery. Some of the values held & validated by our therapists include:

✦ Inclusive care that evaluates how oppressive systems undermine and intersect with the goals and needs of minority identities

✦ Rejection of the idea that medical transitioning is the “right” way to transition or that one must express themselves within the social gender binary norm to “pass”

✦ Social justice and transformative justice

✦ Autonomy and Agency

✦ Self-Care in opposition to productivity 

✦ Freedom to construct self-concepts

✦ Freedom to feel safely vulnerable

✦ Respect and honor of intersectional identities 

✦ Affirming spaces that reduce stigma

✦ Fat liberation and body neutrality 

✦ Joy and meaning-making

✦ Rest and self-compassion

✦ Vulnerability as resistance to shame

✦ Connection and community care

✦ Decolonization of gender, decolonization within body positive movements

✦ Collective liberation and emotional well being

✦ Resiliency, healing, and resistance of systemic oppression

Getting Started with LGBTQIA+ and Gender Exploration Therapy at Balanced Awakening

We are here for you whenever you would like to get started! Feel free to contact us or explore the profiles of the therapists that we have listed at the top of the page.

Balanced Awakening Lakeview
4043 N Ravenswood Ave, Ste 301
Chicago, IL 60613
 
Balanced Awakening Andersonville
5215 N Ravenswood Ave, Ste 201 & 208
Chicago, IL 60640
 
Balanced Awakening Loop
25 E Washington St, Ste 1505
Chicago, IL 60602
 

LGBTQIA+ and Gender Exploration Therapy FAQs

  • In the first two sessions, your therapist will ask you questions about your life currently, your history, and what you might hope to get out of therapy. From there, you and your therapist will discuss goals for therapy. Sessions can focus on whatever you’d like the most help with at the time or on working towards your established goals for therapy.

  • Our therapy rate for the first two sessions is $245. After that, individual 55 minute sessions are $220. Most of our providers accept BCBS PPO and Aetna insurance.

  • Yes! We offer virtual therapy sessions as well as in-person. Sometimes it’s easier for clients to engage in therapy virtually, especially when they are juggling work, school, or family life at the same time.

  • The benefits of engaging in LGBTQIA+ therapy are many! Here are some common ones:

    • Empower you to live your most authentic life

    • Provide a safe space for you process emotions around experiences you have related to your gender or sexual expression - or anything else!

    • Help you determine boundaries to set in relationships

    • Facilitate overall better mental health and emotional well being