LGBTQ Affirmative Therapy

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The stigma and discrimination faced by LGBTIQ individuals can have a serious effect on their lives and their well-being. LGBTIQ individuals can effectively overcome the everyday challenges and become empowered in all areas of their life and relationships through LGBTQ affirmative therapy.

Affirmative Therapy focuses on honoring and understanding that the challenges faces by LGBTIQ individuals are unique therefore counselors can help them navigate the challenges in an effective way.

 

What is LGBTQ Therapy?

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Many LGBTIQ individuals choose to attend counseling sessions for reason ranging from gender or/and identity, sexuality, social anxiety, depression, family problems, work stress, grief, couples therapy, discrimination, starting a same sex families and other challenges that are directly related to LGBT community.

When talking about issues of sexual identity we often use the term LGBTI: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex. But we acknowledge that individuals may define their sexual identity in ways not limited to just these terms – and terms to describe sexual orientation and gender identity vary widely from culture to culture.

 

LGBTQ Mental Health Issues and Coping with Stigma

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Stigmatization is an act or process of characterizing or labeling a person negatively. This negative social attitude is an outcome towards people who are different from culturally agreed upon norms. It has become a common understanding that when the general public undervalue and discriminate against a group of people, members of these stigmatized group will suffer from social exclusion and status loss.

There are various forms of homophobic stigmatization such as exclusion, being confronted with inappropriate questions, ridicule, and subjected to abusive language or disapproving comments. Many research have found that LGBTQ individuals are stigmatized on a regular basis from their environment such as family members, peers, co-workers, even classmates can lead to higher rates of struggles in the mental health related issues such as self- harm, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse problems and risky sexual behaviours.

 

Gender Dysphoria 

 

Gender dysphoria (GD) formerly known as gender identity disorder is the distress a person feels due to a mismatch between their gender identity and their sex assigned at birth. It is no longer considered a medical disorder according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.).  An individual’s overall mental well-being can be highly affected as a result of gender dysphoria

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Sexual Orientation

 

Sexual orientation or sexual identity issues is how we identity ourselves, through desires, feelings, fantasies and sexual activity that contribute to a person’s sexual or romantic attraction to another person, this includes people of the same sex and opposite sex.

 

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