Queer Affirming Psychotherapy

Somatic psychotherapy incorporates your bodily experience of emotions into talk therapy. Have you tried therapy and felt that focusing on thoughts alone was not enough or not a good match for your needs? Somatic psychotherapy shifts curiosity inward toward sensations, embodied emotions, psychological trauma in the body, and our psychological experience of nervous system regulation beyond thoughts in the brain. If you've tried thought-focused approaches to therapy and felt something was missing, somatic psychotherapy might be a great fit for you! Somatic psychotherapy is holistic, integrative, and centered on helping you live a more empowered life.

• You struggle with low self esteem, sense discomfort when thinking about yourself, and want to feel confident, safe, and at home in both your body and mind.

• You suppress your emotions and want to learn how to accept and cope without avoidance.

• You struggle to know what you want from life and relationships and feel numb.

• You have a hard time making decisions and trusting yourself.

• You feel stuck in a cycle of attachment wounds and trauma struggling to connect in relationships.

• You want to heal from psychological trauma and invite ways of healing your body’s experience of the trauma.

• You feel your experience of depression, anxiety, stress, etc. in your body is part of your difficulty and you want to shift that.

• You want a therapist who talks about mind-body connections.

• You want your body’s experience of emotions to feel more manageable, empowering, and guiding than overwhelming, scary, and inconvenient.

• You feel that focusing on thoughts alone hasn't been enough for you.

• You want a style of therapy that is grounded in your experience of yourself.

• You want to be more fully grounded in the present moment.

• You want to reconnect with joy, zest, and excitement.

• You want to heal from burnout and stress.

• You want to explore mental health impacts of chronic pain and chronic health issues.

• You want to show up more alive in relationships.

• Trauma, post-traumatic stress, complex trauma

• Internalized queerphobia, transphobia, mono-normativity

• Stress and burnout

• Grief and loss

• Attachment wounds

• Family of origin issues

• Anxiety

• Social anxiety

• Depression

• Anger

• Identity difficulties

• Low self-esteem

• Low self-trust

• Dating and relationship difficulties

• PMDD

Somatic psychotherapy emphasizes aiding clients in developing resources within themselves to support self-regulation and build trust in one’s own ability to adjust to life events and stressors.

Awareness of the body is integral to the process. It’s ok if someone starts with low awareness of the body; actually, this is a good fit! This offers an opportunity for someone to learn new ways of self-awareness and new ways of coping.

Grounding techniques and centering oneself in their own experience is a foundational practice to build a sense of a safe “home” in the body.