LGBT Therapy

Looking for LGBT Therapy?

It can be challenging at times to find a counselor who understands you. If you’re looking for a therapist who specializes in LGBT concerns, you’re in the right place. That’s one of our specialties LGBT Therapy. The LGBT Counselors at Orlando Counseling & Therapy Group have worked with the community here in Orlando for nearly a decade, both in private practice and at our local LGBT Center.

You may not be coming to counseling to specifically address LGBT concerns. But it can be a great asset to work alongside a counselor who has a good understanding of the context this brings to your life. Also, it is helpful to not have to explain Grindr to your counselor.

The LGBTQ+ community has many unique issues. These range from issues unique to gay men, lesbians, folks that are in their transition process to couples that deal with complex relationship issues that go well beyond communication difficulties.   The LGBT therapy at Orlando Counseling and Therapy Group has successfully helped individuals with many of these unique issues. The LGBT counselors at Orlando Counseling and Therapy Group have spent years volunteering and counseling at the LGBTQ+ Center of Central Florida.

Some of these issues include: 

Issues specifically related to gay men

Coming out issues and moving family and friends to a place of acceptance

Couples dealing with open, semi-open, or poly relationship issues 

Transition – Trans related issues

Substance use and process addictions

Overcoming rejection and self sabotage

Religious discord and LGBTQ+ identity

Family planning for LGBTQ+ couples 

Helping LGBT Parents learn about the community

With years of experience the therapists at Orlando Counseling and Therapy Group are ready to help you in your journey related to LGBT concerns. You deserve to do this work for yourself. Starting is the hardest part. You have already taken this step by reading this. You matter, keep going!

Why LGBT Therapy is Different

LGBT Therapy is different in many ways from regular therapy. As many as one in three LGBTQ+ individuals experience issues with mental illness. This includes anxiety, depression, higher rates of substance abuse and more. Understanding issues like this must be addressed. But it is equally important to understand how just being part of the LGBTQ+ community brings a unique perspective to these issues.

Living authentically

One of these issues or filters that LGBT therapy involves is living authentically, or lack of living authentically. Not living authentically leads to searching for validation.When one feels like you are always searching for validation from others, this can cause dysfunction. This manifests in many different ways in LGBT therapy; substance abuse, unquenchable desire for sexual connection, feeling like one does not deserve good things. These dysfunctions can cause one to feel: empty, unsatisfied, lonely, and hopeless. This sounds a lot like depression doesn’t it? It very well could be a depressive episode, but it could also be the context in which LGBT person comes to being in a world that tells them that they are less than. It is important to find LGBT therapy to help you sort out what is actually going on for you.

This is common in the LGBTQ+ community. When you spend years of your life living in an unauthentic way because you are not allowed to be yourself. Being in the closet causes this. It is difficult to be authentic and live authentically when society tells us that our feelings of love are wrong. Even if you had supportive parents and let’s face it supportive parents is more rare than we like to think. When a new lover validates you, when your drink numbs the invalidation that you have felt, it reinforces these negative patterns that now cause dysfunction.

So we feel depressed, lonely, not worthy, hopeless. How do we cope with this? We drink, we find a new Grindr hook up, we suppress the feelings so much that they bounce back as racing thoughts and anxiety. These are very common patterns in LGBT therapy that aren’t simply treated as anxiety, depression, or addiction because they stem from the larger issue of being part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Creating the Support System We Deserve

Living in fear of losing everyone we love can be an overwhelming state to live a large portion of life in. This is true of life for LGBTQ+ folks when they live in the closet for years. We are told that family is forever. What about a family that never accepts us for who we are. This causes us to either live a life of identity crisis at all times coming in and out of the closet depending on who we are around at the time.

While pretending that one is straight for Grandma’s sake seems harmless enough. The subconscious effects of knowing that Grandma will never really know us for who we truly are is invalidating. It can cause difficulties that feed already existing depression or anxiety. This is another way that LGBTQ+ folks feel more disconnected. Or it causes us to create a chosen family of friends that accept us for who we are and never look back. This can be a validating experience for LGBTQ+ folks to build a loving family that accepts them for who they truly are. But many times they miss family or feel an increased sense of low self worth because their family never came to a place of acceptance.

Another Way Forward

These are the two choices that most LGBTQ+ folks have to choose from. While it is up to every individual person to make these choices for their unique circumstances. And their is no right or wrong way to build the support system that you want. There can be another way. One that moves your family and friends down the path to acceptance. And while we can not change others, we can educate them in a non-judgmental way that helps them come to a place of understanding. Is this an easy or perfect process? No, it requires an understanding that you might not reach the end of the path. It requires that we hold our boundaries and ideals firm by identifying what we can and can’t deal with. And holding those boundaries.

This feels like a daunting task, one that can never be achieved but with time, hard work, and self reflection in LGBT therapy. One can build the support system that they need, with education and identifying/holding boundaries.

The LGBTQ+ Addiction Connection

As high as fifteen percent of LGBTQ+ adults have had a drug or alcohol use disorder in the past year, compared to eight percent of heterosexuals. Why is there a higher rate of substance use/abuse in LGBTQ+ communities? What are the additional factors that LGBTQ+ folks deal with in LGBT therapy that is not addressed in traditional addictions treatments?

Less Affirmation in Society Causes Dysfunction

First, being told over and over again that one does not belong causes the need for an altered state of consciousness to feel connection. Everyone is engaging in drinking, drugs, anonymous sexual encounters, so should I. If one is raised in a more accepting environment the drive for connection thought these means in diminished because they already have that connection. During LGBT therapy, one needs to factor this into their recovery process.

Social Context of the LGBTQ+ Community

Stonewall! Bars and clubs serving alcohol were the first places in society that LGBTQ+ folks were accepted. To this day most places that are “gay hangouts,” serve alcohol. This causes more LGBTQ+ folks to fall into the clutches of addition.

Another reason for LGBTQ+ folks to more likely have addictions issues is that they struggle with having sex. While the process of getting comfortable ones sexuality and having sex for the first time is awkward for everyone. LGBTQ+ folks have to deal with internalized homophobia on top of that awkwardness. Wondering if we are doing “something wrong,” the whole time because of all of the homophobic messages that society has ingrained is us. What can calm that voice that we fight? Alcohol and drugs. Here is another reason that LGBT therapy is different that regular addictions treatment.

There also is a very specific drug/sex culture (Chemsex) in the gay male community that involves crystal meth and GHB. Not all gay men encounter or experiment with these drugs, but they are certainly more likely to than their heterosexual counterparts. Thus, another reason that LGBT therapy is better than regular therapy.

Top 10 Things You Don’t Want to Have to Teach Your Therapist

Learning about LGBTQ+ issues is part of counseling programs across the world now. It has been for many years. All Master’s level clinicians have multicultural training. In this training LGBTQ+ issues are certainly explored and tough. But one or two classes on LGBTQ+ issues certainly does not make one an expert on LGBT therapy issues. We have created a list of some of the issues that you don’t want to spent your time teaching your therapist about (Which you won’t at Orlando Counseling and Therapy Group).

10. Different Letters of the Alphabet Soup

It’s bad enough when your mother, who is working very hard to be accepting, asks “what’s the T in LGBT stand for again?” She is trying with all that you have been teaching her. But how much worse would it be to have to explain what the T means to your therapist. You would shut down immediately and this can seriously damage therapeutic report.

9. The Adoption Process

You have decided that you want to have kids. Then you go see a couples counselor to help you and your husband handle the stress of this exciting time. But it is likely that you don’t want to have to spent time explaining the in’s and out’s of the process to your therapist. It sure would be helpful to have a therapist that has helped others through similar stresses because of the adoption process.

8. Open/Non-traditional Relationships

You are working as hard as you can to improve communication with your partner and in the process you mention a recent sexual encounter with someone other than your partner. The therapist takes a left turn to infidelity and trust issues. You explain that you have a semi-open relationship and your partner knows about your hook up. But the therapist is can not recover from the thought of infidelity because of her lack of knowledge of non-traditional relationships. Another reason that an LGBT therapy is different.

7. Being Bi in a Relationship with Someone of the Opposite Sex

It was hard enough to come out to your wife and still feel the commitment to your marriage. But to have to struggle to explain that just become we appear as a heterosexual couple doesn’t mean that we are to your therapist, was not what you signed up for when you came into counseling. Having an LGBT competent therapist will insure that you will not have to struggle with this nuance of your relationship.

6. Transition

Explaining your transition process to your Dad can be one of the hardest experiences for a transwoman. Now imagine working with your therapist to try to discern the difference between your depression and gender dysphoria and you have to explain what the process looks like to them. This is why making sure you have LGBT therapy to work on your depression is important.

5. HRT / Gender Affirming Surgeries

Having a therapist that can help you personalized your transition process is key. You can make it what ever you want it, but it is important to have a therapist that not only knows about hormone replacement therapy, top surgery, and all of the surgeries. But also knows who to refer you to in town that can help you through the process.

4. Local Club Scene

Let’s be honest you don’t want to see your therapist out at the clubs. It surely dampens the mood of having a fun evening. But you do want your therapist to understand the difference between Club Orlando and Southern Nights. It is a waste of your therapy time to have to get into what types of activities happen in different bars.

3. Pronouns / Gender Fluidity

Part of the reason to make sure that your are getting LGBT therapy from an LGBT counselor, is that you don’t have to explain your pronouns or your gender fluidity. You use “they/theirs” and your therapist at Orlando Counseling and Therapy Group will hit the ground running.

2. Grindr and Hook Up Apps

No one enjoys explaining how GPS location apps for sexual encounters works to their therapist. It is nice to be able to reference your app’s name and all of the context of them app is already know by your therapist. This is what you get in LGBT therapy.

1. Sex Positions / Rolls

Bottom. Top. Vert. These are terms that you just want your therapist to know so you don’t have to explain them. We hope over at Orlando Counseling and Therapy Group, that we create such a safe and welcoming environment that you would feel comfortable enough to explain these terms but we also understand how nice it will be for you to hit the ground running with you counseling sessions.

At Orlando Counseling and Therapy Group one of our specialties is working with the LGBTQ+ community and you can feel confident than none of your counselors will need anything from this top 10 list will need further explaination of any of the above issues.