You Already Know What You’re Looking For.
Queer Therapist. Utah. Online.
"Queer Affirming" Is Not Queer Competent
Therapists without a coherent understanding of queer people, our lived experiences, and the constant treadmill of issues that impact us, both outrageous and mundane, create unnecessary emotional labor for the client: to hedge, to minimize, to educate, to explain. They become part of the exhaustion instead of relief from it.
You, or your close friends, have had the kind, inoffensive therapist who never says anything wrong, but also seems to miss the substance in what you say. Or the one you never stopped teaching— sometimes when you barely had words for these things yourself. Unfortunately, you may have also had the one who couldn't accept you as a premise. You caught a look or a stiffening in their posture. Or they said something outright alienating, like 'Do you think you're drawn to women because your mother was cold?' If that's happened to you, I am sorry. It happens more than it should.
This space is fully yours. You can finally set down the work of educating, hiding, or caretaking your therapist.
However you got here
However you came to yourself: you knew, and you built a life around not knowing. Or you were told your body's response was universal, not a signal, so you never thought to question it. Or what you felt mattered less than the life you were already supposed to have. Or you found every other explanation first sensory, anxious, exhausted, low hormones, before you let yourself find the real one.
However you got here, you've moved against decades of deference, a script someone else handed you, a life you were already supposed to want, toward one that's finally yours.
What You Long For and What You Can’t Bear to Lose
Finally acknowledging this part of you opens more questions than it answers.
What comes next is usually a bewildering mix of relief and fear.
What you long for and what you can't bear to lose are inseparable.
You may love the man you married and still know you don't want a life with a man.
Taking stock of everything you've already built can feel heavy. You might wonder if you even know yourself.
You can't deny that good and beautiful things have come from the choices you made, but there's sharp grief, too, for the things you never even got to choose, and the fuller life that might have followed.
Privately, you may struggle with what all this means about you, tangled up in everything you heard or were taught about 'people like you,' and the kind of life they deserve.
You've spent a long time living inside a life others helped define. The last thing you need at this pivotal moment is another script. Whatever you choose next will be authored by you, and I'd be honored to work with you towards it.
What else have I been overriding?
Finally letting something this important about yourself matter can make the other ways you've overridden yourself much harder to ignore. You might start noticing how often you say yes before you ask yourself if you even want to. Or how quickly someone else's disappointment becomes your problem to pre-empt or to solve. How often 'I can handle it' stands in for 'that's not what I want.' Noticing yourself doesn't mean every yes becomes a no. But it does invite you to finally be a part of the conversation.
I’ll notice the half-sentence.
At first, it may be hard to hear your own thoughts, feelings, and wants amidst everything else competing for your attention. My job is to collect the fleeting moments that pass in conversation and help you hear what they're pointing to.
You might mention a feeling, an impression, something you want, moving past it so quickly it barely registers. You spend the next five minutes focused on what everyone else needs, expects, or might feel. I'll notice the half sentence.
I'll listen for the threads that keep showing up, too. A feeling you brush past. A want you talk yourself out of in the same breath you mention it. The same values or longings surfacing in stories and passing comments weeks or months apart.
I hear those threads, and I hand them back to you. Your words, your stories, your reactions. Seen all together, they reveal a pattern that begins to clarify what you want and where you want to go.
But you can hear yourself clearly and still talk yourself out of it. You can build a case for everyone else's needs so completely that your own threatens to disappear. My kids are happy. Maybe I'm focusing on the wrong things. Sex isn't everything. We've built a good life. Maybe I'm asking for too much. I can do this. They shouldn't have to pay for my mistake.
Building connection and aliveness within yourself doesn't have to threaten your current life or the ones you love. Decisions will still be complicated. There will still be competing needs, real losses and, much of the time, no obvious right answer. What changes isn't the decision. It's that you finally own the conversation.
Whatever Comes Next, It’s Yours.
If you’re looking for a queer therapist who will help you hear yourself more clearly and decide what comes next on your own terms, I’d love to work with you. Send me a message and I’ll be in touch within 24 hours with next steps.
You can learn more about me and the work I do here.