“There Is Nothing Wrong With You”: The Importance of LGBTQIA+ Affirmative Care
At Center for Mindful Relationships, we believe in cultivating a culture of compassion, authenticity, and presence. For LGBTQIA+ individuals navigating the weight of societal expectations, political hostility, and historical harm, showing up for therapy can be a radical act of self-care. But that self-care must be met with a therapeutic space that sees them clearly, affirms their experience, and does not replicate the very structures that have caused harm.
Many LGBTQIA+ individuals come into therapy carrying a lifelong feeling that something is wrong with them. This feeling is often not innate—it is absorbed from a world that persistently tells them, overtly or subtly, that they are too much, too different, or don’t belong. But the truth is: there is nothing wrong with you. You are not flawed. What is flawed is a system that denies people dignity, safety, and freedom.
As clinicians, we must be mindful of the impact of minority stress—the chronic psychological strain experienced by those who are marginalized. This stress is not just internal; it is compounded daily by an oppressive political climate, discriminatory policies, social rejection, and micro aggressions. It can manifest as anxiety, depression, exhaustion, hypervigilance, or disconnection.
And yet, these experiences are not monolithic. Intersectionality matters. An LGBTQIA+ person who is also a person of color, neurodivergent, disabled, an immigrant, or from a working-class background may carry layered traumas and stressors. Their identities intersect in complex, beautiful, and painful ways. We must make space for that complexity.
Affirmative care means not just welcoming LGBTQIA+ clients into the therapy room—it means doing our homework. It means learning and unlearning, not expecting our clients to educate us about basic terminology, identities, or histories. It means being mindful of not replicating colonial, cis-heteronormative, or hierarchical dynamics within the therapeutic relationship. It means understanding that shame has been weaponized against many LGBTQIA+ folks, and as such, we must not pathologize, shame, or kink-shame anyone for who they are or how they love.
Importantly, don’t assume. Don’t assume someone’s gender, pronouns, sexual orientation—or even that being LGBTQIA+ is the “reason” they’ve come to therapy. Their focus might be their relationship, their childhood, their career, or their grief. Coming out isn’t a one-time event; it’s a nonlinear and personal journey that may or may not be the center of a client’s therapeutic work.
What we can do is hold space—gently, mindfully, and with reverence for the unique journey each client brings. We can invite them to learn to honor their experience, offer them compassion, and help them show compassion to themselves when the world has failed to do so. We can model non-toxic, grounded, and gentle positivity—not the kind that glosses over pain, but the kind that sits beside it and says: “You are worthy. You are loved.”
To do this work well is to commit to ongoing reflection and growth. Affirmative care is not a checkbox—it’s a practice. Mindfulness. A choice, again and again, to show up differently.
At Center for Mindful Relationships, we commit to showing up differently—with care, with integrity, and with the deep knowing that healing is possible when we are seen, affirmed, and met with compassion.