LGBTQ+ Therapy in New York

Written By Yoni Shedlo

Affirming, Justice-Oriented Care With a Licensed Brooklyn Therapist

Finding a therapist who truly understands LGBTQ+ life should not feel like another place where you have to explain yourself, defend your reality, or make yourself smaller. Too many queer and trans people come to therapy already braced for misunderstanding, erasure, or subtle judgment.

At Equanimity Therapy Collective, we offer LGBTQ+ affirming therapy in Brooklyn and across New York State that is grounded in social justice, historical awareness, and respect for lived experience. Therapy here is not about fixing you, diagnosing you, or neutralizing your difference. It is about honoring who you are, where you come from, and what you have survived.

As a licensed Brooklyn therapist who accepts major insurance plans, I work with LGBTQ+ individuals and relationships navigating identity, family dynamics, work stress, political fear, dating, attachment, intimacy, spirituality, trauma, and the ongoing impact of oppression. This work holds both the pain and the power of queerness.

What Does LGBTQ+ Mean?

LGBTQ+ is an umbrella term that includes, but is not limited to:

  • Lesbian

  • Gay

  • Bisexual

  • Transgender

  • Queer and Questioning

  • Nonbinary and Gender-Expansive

  • Asexual

  • Intersex

  • Two-Spirit

  • And identities that resist rigid definition

Sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and relationship structure are distinct. LGBTQ+ people are not one experience or struggle. Affirming therapy must hold complexity rather than flatten it.

LGBTQ+ Identity, History, and Pride

LGBTQ+ identities exist within a long history of resistance. Pride did not come from acceptance. It came from survival in the face of criminalization, medical abuse, police violence, family rejection, religious harm, and cultural erasure.

Understanding this history matters in therapy because:

  • Many LGBTQ+ people carry intergenerational and collective trauma

  • Safety has often required invisibility or self-censorship

  • Queer joy and community have been hard-won

  • Pride is not ego, it is resilience

Therapy that ignores history risks turning systemic harm into a personal failing. At Equanimity Therapy Collective, distress is understood in context.

What Is LGBTQ+ Affirming Therapy?

LGBTQ+ affirming therapy is not tolerance. It is an ethical and political stance.

Affirming therapy includes:

  • Recognition that queer and trans identities are not disorders

  • Awareness of oppression, minority stress, and structural violence

  • Understanding how bullying, misgendering, and invisibility shape attachment and nervous systems

  • A non-pathologizing approach to gender, sexuality, and relationships

  • Support for autonomy, fluidity, and self-determination

Therapy does not ask you to adapt to injustice. It helps you understand how injustice has shaped you and how you want to live now.

Trauma, Bullying, and Learning to Make Yourself Small

Many LGBTQ+ clients live with trauma that is chronic rather than singular. It often shows up as:

  • Hypervigilance in relationships

  • People-pleasing and fear of conflict

  • Difficulty trusting consistency

  • Shame around needs or desire

  • Fear of being fully seen

Bullying, rejection, erasure, and conditional acceptance teach many queer people to shrink themselves to stay safe. These were adaptive strategies. Therapy helps you recognize that you are no longer required to disappear to belong.

Queer Dating in NYC and Brooklyn Through an Attachment Lens

Dating in New York City, and especially in Brooklyn, can be uniquely intense for LGBTQ+ people. The dating pool can feel both vast and small. Apps increase access while also amplifying comparison, disposability, and ghosting.

Attachment therapy offers a powerful lens for understanding these dynamics without blame.

Many queer clients notice patterns such as:

  • Anxious attachment showing up as over-investment, scanning for reassurance, or fear of abandonment

  • Avoidant attachment appearing as emotional distance, ghosting, or difficulty committing

  • Push-pull dynamics shaped by fear of rejection and desire for connection

  • Confusion between chemistry and nervous system activation

These patterns do not arise in a vacuum. They are shaped by:

  • Early experiences of rejection or invisibility

  • Family dynamics that did not mirror identity

  • Community trauma and instability

  • Dating cultures shaped by speed, scarcity, and capitalism

Attachment therapy helps you understand how your relational patterns developed, what they once protected, and how you want to relate now.

Attachment Therapy Without Pathologizing Queerness

In affirming attachment-based therapy, attachment styles are not labels or diagnoses. They are relational strategies shaped by experience.

Therapy focuses on:

  • Building emotional safety and relational clarity

  • Learning to tolerate intimacy without self-erasure

  • Developing boundaries without withdrawal

  • Naming needs without shame

  • Recognizing when dating dynamics activate old survival responses

For queer and trans clients, attachment work must account for systemic harm. Therapy does not frame insecurity as a flaw. It recognizes that inconsistency, rejection, and fear have been real.

Work, Survival, and Queer Burnout

Many LGBTQ+ clients are exhausted not because they lack resilience, but because they have been surviving layered stress.

Work often requires:

  • Identity management

  • Emotional labor

  • Code-switching

  • Silence around harm

Therapy reframes burnout as a structural response rather than a personal failure.

Spirituality, Meaning, and Queer Resilience

Many LGBTQ+ people develop spiritual frameworks outside traditional institutions. These may include values, ritual, creativity, embodiment, ancestry, or community care.

Therapy honors spirituality as a source of grounding and resilience, not something to correct or define.

Non-Monogamy and Liberated Relating

Many LGBTQ+ people explore non-monogamy as a way of resisting ownership and rigidity.

Therapy supports:

  • Consent-based agreements

  • Honest communication

  • Jealousy without shame

  • Repair after rupture

  • Navigation of stigma

Non-monogamy is treated as a relational orientation, not a symptom.

Queerness as Power

Queerness is not only about harm endured. It is also about insight, adaptability, creativity, and resistance. Many LGBTQ+ people develop deep relational awareness precisely because they have had to question inherited norms.

Therapy helps reconnect you to this power rather than flatten it.

LGBTQ+ Therapy in Brooklyn That Accepts Insurance

Affirming care should not be a luxury.

As a licensed Brooklyn therapist, I accept many major insurance plans, including:

  • UnitedHealthcare and Optum

  • Oxford

  • Oscar

  • Aetna

  • Cigna

  • Blue Cross Blue Shield

Out-of-network support and superbills are available.

Who I Work With

I work with:

  • LGBTQ+ and questioning adults

  • Trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive clients

  • Polyamorous and non-monogamous relationships

  • Creatives, activists, students, and professionals

  • People navigating family, cultural, or religious tension

Your attachment history, identity, and power belong here.

Online and In-Person LGBTQ+ Therapy in NYC

  • Telehealth across New York State

  • In-person therapy in Brooklyn

  • Same affirming, justice-oriented approach in both formats

Ready to Begin LGBTQ+ Affirming Therapy in New York?

If you are looking for a licensed Brooklyn therapist offering LGBTQ+ affirming therapy, attachment-based therapy, and a holistic, justice-oriented approach, Equanimity Therapy Collective is here.

Your identity is not the problem.
Your attachment patterns make sense.
Your queerness is not only something to heal around.
It is also a source of wisdom, strength, and possibility.

Yoni Shedlo
Previous

Anxiety Isn’t a Personal Failure
Next

Neoliberalism, Burnout, and Mental Health