LGBTQIA+ Guide to Finding a Therapist
1. Figure out your basic needs.
Finding a therapist can be tricky, so let’s break it down. Start by figuring out practicalities and logistics:
Where is your ideal therapist located?
Are they seeing people virtually or IRL?
What is your budget or insurance needs? Do you need someone who takes FSA/HSA? If you have the means, are you able to pay a higher fee to allow other folks access to a sliding scale? Do you need a sliding scale yourself?
What level of experience or specialization are you looking for?
Do you need diagnosis and medication management, or mental health counseling?
Etc. etc.
Determine which of these things are your must haves, and prioritize those. With that clarified you can start looking around therapist databases, or ask your local communities for word-of-mouth referrals. Be prepared to make a few calls, and don't get discouraged if you don't find someone right away - finding the right person can make or break your experience, so it’s worth it to be patient and persistent.
2. Get to know them.
Once you've got a few options, see if any of them offer free intro calls - this is a great way to get to know your therapist first, and those of us that offer this service understand the value of a good fit. If you have any questions about their experience working with LGBTQIA+ folks, this is a great time to ask.
Check out their credentials: Are they transparent about their level of education and experience? Where are they licensed? If they're a pre-licensed professional, are they under appropriate supervision? Do they have other fields of specialty? Credentials vary by state and the acronyms can get confusing, but the information you need should be easily available to you on their website.
2. Consider safety and relational compatibility.
If you're a member of the LGBTQIA+ community seeking therapy, there are additional needs to consider, such as your personal safety and how well-informed the therapist is about queer issues. One option is to seek out a therapist who identifies as LGBTQIA+. While identity isn't everything, having this mutual understanding will make it less likely that you have to educate your therapist.
And while we're on that topic, a good therapist should be willing to learn, research, and consult with others to best support their clients. If your therapist doesn't share your exact identity but is open, compassionate, practices humility, and is willing to learn without leaning on you for education, then that's a win.
3. Make sure they have good boundaries.
While this is a must with any therapist, there's even more to consider if you and your therapist share the same small, marginalized community. As a queer person myself, there's always the possibility that I'll run into a client at a queer event, even in a large city. For this reason I start many sessions with a dialogue on how to approach this, setting ethical boundaries that also honor client autonomy.
Your therapist should also be showing up to support you as the client, not the other way around. While a certain amount of disclosure is useful for building rapport and providing transparency, your therapist should only be doing so for the benefit of you as their client.
Additionally, a good therapist is always willing to refer you to someone else if your needs are outside of their scope of practice. For example, I've had folks ask to see me to obtain an ADHD diagnosis, for which I don’t have the right experience or training. In this context I'm not the right fit, and will instead send along a few referral options or relevant resources. Having good boundaries as a therapist means knowing that you’re not going to be the right person for every potential client, and that’s okay.
4. Seek someone who visibly cares about social justice.
Be wary of therapists that don't publicly address social justice issues, or have an excessive focus on individualism over community. Previous generations idealized the therapist as a blank slate, dispassionate and uninvolved in order to avoid alienating potential clients. This encouraged a hierarchical, imbalanced client-therapist relationship.
Fortunately, more and more of the mental health field is shifting toward anti-oppressive, multicultural models, which recognize the influence of societal oppression on mental health, and emphasize cultural humility and equitable therapeutic relationships. Your therapist should be willing to advocate for basic human rights outside of the clinic space. A therapist who avoids social justice issues in favor of "love and light" and other forms of spiritual bypassing is not going to help you in session.
5. Be flexible.
You might not find your perfect unicorn therapist, but that’s okay! All relationships take time, and you might find someone solid to work with after building trust over a few sessions. The right person for you might not be right in your backyard, but they might be available virtually; they might not take your insurance, but they might offer a sliding scale close to your usual copay; they might not share your exact intersections of identity, but they might still be capable of holding space for you with compassion and humility.
If something isn’t working for you, try giving your therapist feedback so that they can work with you to support you. And remember, you can always end your therapeutic relationship if it doesn't work out.
