When I was a young girl, I was raised to believe that everyone was welcome in our home as long as they were good hearted, trustworthy, and kind. There are many things that my parents did well and loving and accepting my friends and neighbors for who they really are, sexual identity included, is one of them.
I played three sports as a kid but not just three sports, seven variations of three sports. From the time I was four to the time I was 17, my parents carted me all over the state and sometimes the country, for me to soar and passionately dive for basketballs as a female athlete with the world’s best friends. And while many of my dreams as a young girl included a future of becoming a WNBA player, you’ll see later, how my real dream of becoming a therapist actually took over because there was a need in my community.
In my hometown of Virginia Beach, Virginia, we had colossal sports program. Female athletics was an avenue in our community for women to find themselves, become themselves, feel accepted, seen, valued, play on a team of inspired girls, and to deepen their identity in a safer place not just as athletes: but as people.
For the majority of my adolescence and into early adulthood, most of my female identifying close friends “came out” one by one, both early on or later—identifying as lesbian, bisexual, or queer. I think back to these moments of fear and self reflection, where even at 13, I was listening to my friends talk about feeling “different.” To this day, I feel thankful that I was raised in a family in which I was raised to honor their voice and their real beliefs about themselves by listening well, holding their truths about being queer, sometimes for years, in a vault inside of myself. When I really think about it, these conversations were the beginning of real dream and my budding days into becoming the mental health counselor I am today.
Our community in Virginia Beach (though not perfect) was a safer stomping ground for most of my friends to figure out their varying identities, but some of their parents were drinking the extra thick koolaid of Southern, ultra right wing Conservative Christianity. Even though it was deemed as good intentions, and “following Christ’s path” some of their parents chose not to show up as emotionally safe people “in the name of the Lord.” They were shamed for who they are, told they were going to hell, and pushed to drink alcohol early, to numb, and run from the shame they were taught to feel about themselves and their identities.
While later in life, I had the great pleasure of security guarding them and having real direct conversations with their parents that sexuality is not a choice and they have a choice now whether they want to see my friend grow up, get married, have kids. And that they have a choice whether they want to lose access to their child or change. Thankfully, even in small ways, many of my friend’s parents changed—but we know this isn’t often the story and those are the friends whose alienation from their “Church of God” family’s caused a lot of heartbreak and cognitive dissonance about who they could safely be and the difference between religious “right and wrong.” These were adult enforced burdens I tried to shoulder with them, reminding them they weren’t alone.
Flash forward to 2026, and we are DEEPLY in the threat and emotional abyss that is fascism in America. Our psychologically dysfunctional, unaccepting, rigid authoritarian government is now “retraumatizing” many people who are part of the LGBTQIA+ population, sending their once regulated nervous systems into a state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn place as if they are young adults again, needing to come out to their parents all over again. Except now the system and the judgment is bigger and has even more power over the country, our laws, and the world.
What I’m seeing in many of my queer clients is an often anxiety induced frantic fear of safety and it tracks. Donald Trump is pushing and falsifying all sorts of punitive perceptions about this population. In this country, we FOUGHT for liberation and gay rights in 1969. 1969! And our mentally ill and narcissistic president is backdating our progress in inclusivity and diversity acceptance back FIFTY SEVEN years. The negative impact of fascism and authoritarianism is infiltrating the psyches, hearts, nervous, and limbic systems of my LGBTQ+ clients threatening real safety concerns.
I’m noticing that when I pay close attention, my LGBTQIA+ clients and loved ones feel on edge in this hateful era and political climate of MAGA. Their families don’t feel safe; they’re scared to send their kids to school; most of them are contemplating at some point in time moving far away to find the real land of the free—because it isn’t here anymore! The unicorn beauty of being LGBTQIA+ in Denver, one of most accepting and inclusive communities I’ve ever been a part of is being challenged by the rigid and vanilla-based categories that authoritarianism drinks from.
Their pool has strict gender binaries, believes in conformity over actual identity development (the opposite of what I support in my clients), “traditional” family structures (whatever the fuck that means) and the LGBTQ+ community and their ability to truly feel safe in a place or around other people rely on laws and rights built to protect them towards freedom of speech and expression, privacy, democracy, equity, and a freedom from state control over our personal lives.
Trump’s America has him projecting all of his “wounded little boy stuck in a man’s body” trauma-based demons onto marginalized communities, as he manipulatively falsifies data, portraying queer people as threats to children, blocking open discussion around fluid gender expression or the sexual identity spectrum. He’s been targeting many of my loved ones who are transgender and attempting to completely move their access to healthcare, all the while pushing real and tangible political-based violence against minorities. And because we know that politics is all about values, my LGBTQ+ clients are experiencing the large number of people who are telling them with their vote, with their silence against oppression, and with their voices that they don’t value them, that they are somehow less than because of who they are.
As a licensed psychotherapist who has specialized in the LGBTQIA+ population for all 13 years of my career (and really, my entire life), I’ve had to ask myself, how do I really help my clients feel safer? Is healing possible in 2026, when the safety of their identity of who they are is being threatened and berated so constantly?
My answer has been that, “Well, I will die trying” to aid in their recovery.
I’ve developed a bit of a methodology of what I’ve seen help my queer clients recover from trauma over the years, and I’ve tweaked it a little bit this year to provide more internal resourcing.
My first step is to help them understand what radical acceptance really is and then put it into *action. Radical acceptance is a concept that essentially means that “life is out of my control and other people are out of my control.” So, I work with my clients to assess, what do they actually have control over and the answer: It is always themselves. Here, I guide my clients by empathy-based solution-focused strategies to figure out what feels harmful and what action they can take to alleviate even a little bit of their safety concerns for themselves or their families by taking action!
Some of my clients are getting a second door with extra locks to get into their homes, some are planning escape routes to places far away from here. Some are protesting, even when they feel scared, or anxious, frantic, or panicky. Some are talking to their neighbors or forming deeper communities within their neighborhoods. Some are joining mutual aid networks and initiatives, participating in local organizing in the community, and I’m encouraging all of them to “get involved.” To tangibly DO something with the emotional experience that they feel, to hopefully get at least some of it OUT of their bodies. All the while, I’m encouraging them to still stay inside of their bodies and pay attention. I’ve taught most of my clients trauma-based resourcing and grounding skills to support them in getting out of dissociating. I’m encouraging them to honor their own internal needs for safety both in themselves and in their family systems.
After radical acceptance in action, as an attachment-based psychotherapist, from the beginning of the therapeutic relationship, I’m feeling into my client’s attachment style. Because most of them have been “othered” or convinced they don’t belong (even on a nervous system level), working with insecure attachment is a common experience and practice I support in my LGBTQ+ clients. Here, I strive to model consistency in the way I show up as their therapist, the timing and consistencies of my communication patterns. I communicate honestly and directly using warmth, compassion and kindness when speaking to them. When I listen, I model that I really care and I show this care through action, communication, vibes, and therapeutic co-regulation and attunement so they can get a sense of what being around “an oak tree,” or a secure attachment figure, actually feels like.
Insecure attachment, or “attachment trauma and wounding,” as I often call it, is a trauma formed in the nervous system of an individual in early childhood that explains how a dysregulated nervous system develops for kiddos (and eventual adults) who didn’t healthily bond, “attach” or attune to their primary caregiver(s). A skilled and healthy attachment psychotherapist aims to support clients with insecure attachment, most folx in the LGBTQIA+ population especially, in learning that we are “better together” and that other safe and healthy people can be “oak trees” in holding calm and present space for suffering, processing, and for eventual recovery.
My therapeutic work in this way is to offer what we call a “corrective experience” as I aim to be a safer relationship in their lives, now more than ever, as their rights are being threatened and stripped away. Now more than ever, many of my queer clients are showing up to sessions in an active trauma state of: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn because of something they saw on the news, something a person said to them in public, or in the chaotic and unsafe sense they feel now in this country that’s government is deeply threatening who they are as people, their own sense of belonging, and their safety.
Real nervous system attunement and therapeutic coregulation is sometimes a foreign experience for my Queer clients as they have spent their entire lives armoring their nervous systems for protection, hypervigilant to the real or perceived threat and 2026 has showed up with immense amounts of oppression on who they are to their core, who they love, and how hard they have fought for their own happiness, peace, and individualistic identities.
My attachment work with my clients is far deeper than I plan to get into here but the goal is to help someone who has an “insecure” attachment style, gently be “guided” back into the middle where secure attachment and nervous system regulation can more prominently exist. That said, this takes a lot of time and commitment on the part of both client and therapist, a lot of homework, and a lot of repetitive and consistent modeling in various ways that I won’t get into now.
I’ve shifted some of my modalities with this population lately into not only offering them a corrective nervous system “oak tree” experience and empowering them to become their own “oak tree.” While the way I work with clients is meant to provide warm and consistent emotional safety in a vulnerable relationship based on honesty, I have also begun teaching my clients the importance of being able to “reparent themselves.” This is my attempt to have them focus again on what they can do to heal and protect themselves, not what their parents can or can’t, would or wouldn’t do. To look inward inside of themselves for more safety versus out.
I encourage most of my clients to limit their news intake and to really pay attention to how the news is impacting their minds and their nervous systems. And I ask them to sit with the little person inside of themselves who is scared, who terrified, who feels afraid and learn to “be with” and hold themselves in their own fear and trauma responses. I teach them to stay, to love themselves even when they show up messy or overly exhausted, triggered, or feeling empty.
I teach them self-compassion over shame and blame, and I provide psychoeducation to my clients that it is shame and blame that are often the leading emotions that cause real impactful and lasting trauma.
I’ll part with you today with one of my favorite quotes that says, “Shame dies when stories are told in safe places.”
As a licensed psychotherapist for the last 13 years here in this wonderful city of Denver, I sit in puddles and in shame for a living. I teach my clients that they don’t have to shoulder their suffering, their burdens, their shame, or their fear alone, and I hold the flashlight as I help them dig themselves out of proverbial holes … when they are ready. I guide them to DO something tangible: Fight for their rights, deepen into a community where they feel seen, speak up and speak out, and remember …
That we are “Better Together.”
That not really living life as yourself isn’t pure.
In 2026, there are real and tangible threats that the Trump administration is making to the internal and external sense of safety of our LGBTQIA+ loved ones. While many of my queer clients have experienced religious trauma, Trump pretending that he gives a shit about the Bible and his intentional and manipulative plug towards right wing ultra conservative Christians selling himself with his hand on the Bible, even, has understandably sent some of my queer-identifying clients, who have had to work through and resolve the religious trauma and shame of becoming who they really are in their sexual identity, are now, again, finding themselves re-traumatized by Trump’s America where their rights and their family’s safety are being threatened on a daily basis.
One of the things I am most passionate about in my practice as a licensed psychotherapist is in my specialization as an attachment therapist. As a clinician who has always solely specialized in marginalized communities, to put it in layman’s terms, attachment theory is the psychological idea that the bonds we form with our primary caregivers as babies, shape how we navigate all future relationships as adults. These initial attachment modeling relationships, from zero to 2 years old, are the imprint our nervous system feels in terms of safety around other people and in general.
So flash forward.
