You want a therapist who will really get you.

You’ve searched and searched, and no one seems to really know about being queer and trans. Some psychologists say they are LGBT-friendly but then ask you the most inappropriate questions or tell you all about the one gay person in their lives.

You really want to go to a practice where the focus is on working with queer people and trans people, bisexual people, lesbians, and gay men. You want your therapist to know that the LGBTQ community, is not just one community at all, that in fact, it consists of people from many different races, religions, ethnicities, socioeconomic places, abilities, and documentation status, size, gender identities or lack thereof. You want a counselor to know that if they say that they are queer and trans – affirming that they need to know at least the basics, as it isn’t your job to teach them those. 

At Waves, we try to do better. We don’t want you to have to feel like you need to educate us about lgbtqiqap basics. We know that we need to be the ones learning as much as we can in order to be the best psychologists that we can be. We want our clients to feel welcomed and respected. We also talk about power and privilege as they impact us all. 

You should know that we will ask you questions though, as we want to know about your specific situation. We want to know how you define the concepts important to you in your life. We want to know about your family, chosen and otherwise. We honor your story. We won’t assume the number of partners you have or don’t have. We won’t assume you are monogamous or polyamorous or if you like kink or are a switch. We will ask you your pronouns and which name makes you happy and we will use the name(s) and pronouns(s) that you want us to use.  

And we want you to know that your goals in therapy are our goals as well. We will meet you right where you are on your path and that we won’t direct you to a place where we think you should go without your knowledge or consent. Instead, we will talk together about what you want out of life, including your relationships, your occupation, your hopes, and we will work to help you get closer to them (as long your goals are reasonable and do not harm others, of course. We find consent very important).  

Each psychologist at Waves believes in the importance of being queer and trans centered. We also have specialties including transgender and trans teen and adult support; college and university student therapy; Deaf culture and language – affirming therapy; Jewish – affirming therapy; grief therapy; ADHD support; and online therapy.  

Frequently Asked Questions about Online Therapy with a Waves’ psychologist, can be found here.