When your identity is something you’ve had to navigate, explain, or hide, being yourself can feel more complicated than it should. Many of our clients arrive after years of managing other people’s reactions and expectations, along with the shame that gets absorbed along the way.
You May Relate If:
- you’re working through internalized homophobia, transphobia, or shame about who you are
- you’re navigating coming out, or still deciding if or when to
- you carry the weight of past prejudice, rejection, or discrimination
- you’re exploring or questioning your sexual orientation or gender identity
- family, community, or workplace responses are affecting your wellbeing
Understanding LGBTQ+ Identity
Many 2SLGBTQ+ people grow up hearing, implicitly or explicitly, that their sexuality and/or gender identity is wrong, or bad, or inferior in some way. Over time, those messages get internalized. The clinical terms for this are internalized homophobia or internalized transphobia, and they can show up as shame, self-doubt, hypervigilance, or difficulty feeling at home in who you are.
The impact of this cannot be underestimated. Ongoing exposure to prejudice, rejection, and discrimination puts 2SLGBTQ+ people at greater risk for depression, anxiety, substance use, and suicidal thinking. This isn’t because there’s something wrong with being queer or trans. It’s because the world hasn’t been uniformly safe. Affirming counselling is about making space for that weight to be named, understood, and carried differently.
Counselling can help you understand:
- how early and ongoing messages shaped the way you relate to yourself
- what part of your distress is about identity versus how your identity has been received
- how to distinguish internalized shame from your actual values and desires
- what safety, authenticity, and community can look like for you
- how to navigate coming out, transitioning, or identity exploration if that’s part of your path
By understanding the difference between what’s yours to carry and what’s been put on you, you can begin to relate to yourself with less shame and more freedom.
How Counselling Can Help
Counselling can help you:
- Accept your sexual and/or gender identity as a natural part of who you are
- Work through shame resulting from negative social attitudes, prejudice, and discrimination
- Develop healthy coping strategies and a stronger sense of self-worth
- Build healthy friendships and intimate relationships that support the life you actually want
- Navigate the fear and changes associated with coming out, if that’s part of your path
- Support a loved one’s coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or another identity
The goal isn’t to change who you are. It’s to give you more room to be yourself, with less weight and more freedom.
Our Therapeutic Approaches
We draw on a range of evidence-based approaches, grounded in a flexible, collaborative, and client-centred way of working that adapts to what is most helpful for you.
This allows us to shape our work around your needs, experiences, and goals, drawing from different therapeutic modalities as needed. Learn more about our approach to care.
Person-Centred Therapy
Person-centred work starts from the assumption that you are the expert on your own life and identity. Your counsellor’s job is to hold space for your exploration. This matters especially for identity work, where what you need is support figuring out what’s true for you.
Narrative Therapy
Narrative therapy looks at the stories you’ve been told about yourself, including the ones you’ve absorbed without choosing them. Together, we untangle what’s yours from what’s been put on you. Then we help you author a story that feels more accurate.
Compassion-Focused Therapy
Many 2SLGBTQ+ people grow up with an inner critic shaped by rejection or shame. Compassion-focused work helps you build a different inner voice. One that can sit with difficulty without turning it back on you.
Attachment-Based Therapy
When acceptance has been inconsistent, especially from family or early caregivers, it shapes how you relate to others and to yourself. Attachment-based work explores those patterns. It helps you build relationships, including with yourself, that feel more secure.
ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)
ACT helps you figure out what you actually value. It also helps you move toward those values even when the world pushes back. It’s useful for identity work because it separates what matters to you from what you’ve been told should matter.
You don’t have to do this work on your own. Counselling can help. At your pace. Book an appointment when you’re ready.
Meet Some of Our Counsellors Who Work With Anxiety
Allison Paré
Warren Tews
Alissa Caskey
Sabrina Roach
Michelle Bella
Nikita Eglinski
Webinars on This Topic
Frequently Asked Questions About Anxiety Counselling
Yes. Affirming care is part of how we work at River’s Edge. That means we see your sexual orientation and gender identity as part of who you are, not something to be questioned, converted, or “fixed.” Our therapists bring a range of training and backgrounds, but they share a commitment to being a safe and respectful place for 2SLGBTQ+ clients.
No. Plenty of our clients are still figuring out what and how to share, and some haven’t told anyone else in their life. Counselling is a confidential space. What you share stays between you and your counsellor, and you’re always the one deciding what, when, and who to tell outside of therapy.
That’s welcome at River’s Edge. Identity isn’t always something people arrive knowing. Some clients come in with clear language for who they are. Others come in unsure. Both are valid starting points, and counselling can be a good place to explore without pressure to land somewhere.
Yes, if that would be helpful. We offer individual counselling for people working on identity, relationships, and wellbeing. We also support couples and families navigating a loved one’s coming out or transition. Your counsellor can help you think through what would fit best for your situation.