Identities Counseling

Our Practice

Going to therapy can feel very overwhelming and vulnerable for so many people. It takes a lot of courage and strength to take the first step toward healing and recovery. Whether you struggle with depression or anxiety, or more pervasive mental health concerns that negatively affect your life, we can meet you where you’re at and engage in a meaningful and collaborative working alliance to help you work through these things. We are an inclusive, affirming, empowering and supportive practice where we believe in our client’s autonomy, ability and capacity to achieve true healing. We embrace and respect diversity, and understand that each of us are unique and have varied life experiences that shape who we are and how we understand ourselves and how we exist in the world.

We are trauma informed clinicians and coaches and understand how varied traumatic experiences can change our worldview, undermine our trust and negatively impact our sense of self, negatively impacting our self-esteem and our ability to trust not only others, but our own perceptions of ourselves and others.

We are lgbtq+ informed and understand that gender and sexual identities are often fluid and expansive and reside on a spectrum. We are very much informed and aware of the many ways is which gender and sexuality intersect with every other aspect of a person’s life. We understand in some very profound ways, how discrimination, hatred and oppressive actions impact the lives of lgbtq people and how damaging this is to one’s mental health.

We have experience in many different areas and we work with each person in navigating their current mental health concerns and navigating the world around lgbtq identities. We work with families as they navigate the “coming out” as lgbtq+ family members. We work with parents as they come to learn and may need assistance in finding an understanding of their childs identity as they understand themselves. We assist families, parents and siblings in maintaining positive and productive connections within the family system, with hopes that the family can find healing while maintaining a loving and supportive system.

We come from a Christian faith-based perspective. We choose love and acceptance above all, and reject no one. We believe that there are many lgbtq+ people of faith in our community and others that may want to come to know Christ, but realize that the larger and extremely harmful narrative of Christianity is hateful, discriminatory and oppressive. We refuse and vehemently reject haters and the negative narratives they use to control and condemn lgbtq+ people.

We believe that maintaining family connection and resting on our faith can go a long way in healing individuals and families on their journey to finding acceptance. We also understand that faith is not everyone’s cup of tea, so we do not force our Chistian values or views onto anyone. All are welcome.

Our Focus

Our Treatment Focus

We come from an integrative, client centered, trauma informed and faith-based perspective with all of our clients. We consider our work together as a collaborative experience as we understand that each client is an expert in their own lives and have both the capacity to heal and autonomy to make their own choices about things that affect their lives.

Our Client Promise

We will support you and assist you in any way that we can in the service of your healing. We respect a person’s choices and autonomy to make their own choices and stand with you in the face of adversity, injustice and intolerance. We will always stand up for what is right and just.

Trauma Informed

It is almost impossible these days to navigate life without experiencing one, or more traumatic events. Trauma is defined as “a distressing event, which is usually something that overwhelms our ability to cope when the event as it happens”. Trauma is the lasting emotional response and feelings that often results from living through a distressing event. Experiencing a traumatic event can harm and negatively impact a person’s sense of self, removes a sense of safety and can cause significant issue in our ability to regulate emotions and navigate relationships. Trauma undermines our trust in others, in ourselves and in the world around us. Healing from trauma is possible, and it is difficult, but is necessary in order to move beyond the pain and into recovery and healing.

Our Therapy Services

Identity Development

Transgender, Gender Nonconforming and Nonbinary Identities

We believe that a person’s identity is a very complex construct. One’s identity is a personal understanding of who they are, an innate sense of who we are in the context of the world around us and often resides on a spectrum. Our identities can influence and impacted by internal factors, genetics, biological factors, family, culture and l

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Transgender, Gender Nonconforming and Nonbinary Identities

Transgender, gender nonbinary and other individuals who reside within the gender spectrum usually have unique concerns related to their gender identity especially young people who are trying to figure out who they are. We understand these unique concerns and appreciate the challenges that exist. We can work with you as you face these challenges and assist you in developing a healthy sense of self.

LGBTQ Identity Development Concerns

Transgender, Gender Nonconforming and Nonbinary Identities

LGBTQ Identity Development Concerns

Often times when someone identifies as gay, lesbian or bisexual, they may have a difficult time understanding what this means for their lives. Often discrimination, rejection and judgment can come along with these identities and could lead to pervasive mental health concerns. Depression and anxiety are often pervasive in this culture.

Trauma Focused Narrative Therapy

Dissociation, Derealization & Depersonalization

LGBTQ Identity Development Concerns

Many individuals can easily recount at least one traumatic experience in their lives, if not more. These events overwhelm ones ability to cope with the situation and process the information as they are experiencing these events. If these traumatic events are not processed, they can cause significant distress later in life. We work within

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Borderline Personality Disorder

Dissociation, Derealization & Depersonalization

Borderline is one of the most difficult and pervasive mental health issues to deal with. Borderline is sometimes a direct result of trauma. Its presentation of the fear of abandonment, pervasive and unstable sense of self, splitting, turbulent relationships, highly disregulated mood and affect, impulsive and the engagement in self destru

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Dissociation, Derealization & Depersonalization

Dissociation is often a result of trauma and other events that have caused us to feel overwhelmed and overly distressed. It can make us feel like an outside, third, party observer of our own lives. We can "zone" out because the memories are too painful to deal with. It is the minds way of protecting itself. This can be activated by many different triggers, memories or flashbacks.

Neurodivergent Identity Development

People who are neurodivergent and reside or reside on the ASD Spectrum can struggle with many challenges, including sensory issues, challenges in social settings, making personal connections, and engage in repetitive behaviors. An individual can be easily distracted, or can become overwhelmed quickly when stress levels rise. Sometimes an individual can become hyper focused on tasks and projects, or can become extremely demand avoidant. More often than not, these individuals can struggle within social engagement and social settings due to thinking through a different lens from which they view and understand the world. Often struggling with routine, emotional dysregulation and can struggle with picking up on and noticing social cues. Individual therapy can go a long way in helping an individual begin to understand and find ways to work through specific challenges and learn to regulate their emotions.

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Self Injury

Neurodivergent Identity Development

Sometimes when someone is struggling with profound internal pain, they will engage in self-injury, such as cutting, burning, biting, head banging, hair pulling and other acts that will produce physical pian allowing them to feel something other than emotional pain. This is often a method of trying to ameliorate internal pain. These are no

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Suicidal Thinking

Neurodivergent Identity Development

Suicidal Thinking

Sometimes people begin to feel so hopeless and alone, so incredibly exhausted with having to deal with ongoing depression, sadness and emotional pain every single day, that it becomes so hard for them to think that things can get better. Sometimes they don't feel like they have the energy to go on, so they seriously think about ending their lives. There is help. And things do get better.

Our Therapy Offerings

Individual Therapy

Most people at one point or another may experience difficult life stressors, grief from loss, past trauma histories and bad memories that keep getting in the way of moving forward. Maybe you’re dealing with depression, anxiety or other more pervasive mental health conditions. Maybe you just need to talk with someone about direction, to increase discernment, clarity and to find some balance and perspective from someone who can remain objective and do so in a nonjudgemental space. We are able to work with you in finding these things in individual therapy.

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Family Therapy

Individual Therapy

Family therapy can work in really profounds ways in maintaining connection, promote healing and create accountability. Many families struggle when someone within the family system struggles with mental health concerns. It is also very common for families to become impacted by someone coming out as lgbtq+, it can have a profoundly devastating impact on the family system. Many people are not sure how to navigate these conversations, and rather than working together to support and find understanding within these concepts, the family system can fall apart. We work with families as they navigate difficult conversations, find a level of acceptance and understanding so the family system can sustain and even flourish.

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Couples/Marriage Counseling

Parenting Support Counseling

Most couples struggle with a variety of stressful life situations and sometimes they can feel overwhelming. Often times this stress can lead to conflict and tension between partners. Couples therapy can be a vital part of maintaining a happy and healthy relationship. Other times, conflict can lead to bigger issues within the relationship,

In couples therapy, we begin to identify the issues, begin rebuilding trust and lead to meaningful repair, but it all starts with healthy and effective communication. Our basic premise is most things can be fixed, worked out and resolved if everyone is willing to be open, honest and engage in meaningful and truthful conversation.

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Parenting Support Counseling

Having children is one of life’s greatest blessings anyone can experience, and parenting can be one of the most rewarding gifts in life, but parenting is also often fraught with many challenges and stress. There is no playbook or manual, we often find ourselves going through the experience, picking up strategies and discovery and establishing best parenting practices from others, but also from what we’ve leaned along the way, whether through past successes, or more often through our mistakes. Parents can experience stress and anxiety around life changes, children growing up and things that come up in their lives as well as our own. Sometimes sitting down and discussing family experiences with an objective person can lead to greater understanding with balance and perspective. Parent child communication is also paramount to having and maintaining a healthy and productive relationship with our children. In parenting groups and in therapy sessions, we discuss effective communication, boundary setting, respecting autonomy and guiding our children in life through faith and discernment.

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