LGBTQ+ Therapy
for Sexuality, Gender and Relationships
You might be working something out about your sexuality or your gender, or carrying a shame that feels older than you are. Perhaps you simply want to talk about your relationships, or about kink, with someone who won’t need the first few sessions spent on the basics. As an LGBTQ+ therapist working online, I meet people at very different points in this, and you don’t need to have anything figured out before we start. If you’re straight or cisgender and it’s kink or non-monogamy that brings you here, this page is for you too.
A lot of what hurts in this area began in relationship. Most of us learned early, from family, school, church or the people around us, which parts of ourselves were acceptable and which were better kept out of sight. That’s often where shame takes root, along with a quiet sense of not being good enough or not quite loveable. Because it was learned between people, it rarely shifts just by thinking it through on your own. It tends to heal in relationship too, when you can show more of yourself to someone and find that they stay.
I identify as a queer gay man, so this isn’t an abstract specialism for me. I’ve lived my own version of many of the questions people bring here: coming out, working out who I was beyond what was expected of me, living with shame, and slowly learning to be at home in my body and my desires. Your story won’t be mine, and I won’t assume it is. But I’m not looking at this from the outside, and there’s a particular kind of relief in being met by someone who has been somewhere near it.
Much of what we carry in this part of life has roots beyond us, in families, cultures, religions and systems that weren’t built with us in mind. I hold that context alongside you, rather than treating what you feel as though it started with you.
Shame is learned between people, and it tends to heal between people too.
LGBTQ+ identity, coming out and gender
These are some of the things people bring to this part of the work:
- Coming out, or working out whether you want to, and to whom
- Coming out later in life, after a marriage or after years of keeping it unsaid
- Shame about being gay, lesbian, bisexual or asexual that has quietly become part of how you see yourself
- Internalised homophobia or transphobia, and the ongoing minority stress of being different from those around you
- Questioning your gender, or living as trans or non-binary somewhere that makes that costly
- Being intersex, and finding your own relationship to a body others may have had a lot to say about
- A religious upbringing that taught you something about yourself you’re still unlearning, whether you’ve kept your faith or moved away from it
- Family or culture pulling hard against who you are
- Being the only LGBTQ+ person at work or in your family
- Dating and intimacy, and what gets in the way of them
- Bringing all of it together into one sense of yourself, rather than a self kept in separate compartments
You don’t need to arrive with a label, or with any clarity at all. Not knowing is a reasonable place to start.
If faith or spirituality matters to you, it’s welcome here as well. Many people find their own way of holding spirituality and sexuality together, and I’m glad to explore that with you without nudging you in either direction.
Kink, BDSM and alternative sexual practices
You won’t need to explain kink or BDSM to me before we can get to the work. I know the territory, and I won’t treat your desires as a symptom of something that went wrong. Kink isn’t limited to any one community, and if you’re straight or cisgender you’re just as welcome here.
That doesn’t mean nothing is ever worth looking at. If something about how you practise is troubling you, perhaps the way it tangles with shame, or questions about consent and control, we can look at it properly. The difference is that we start from curiosity rather than from a diagnosis.
Non-monogamy and relationship diversity
Polyamory and open relationships are as workable as monogamy, and so are the many arrangements that don’t fit neatly under either name. I don’t treat them as a phase, or as a sign of avoidance. What matters is what’s actually happening for you inside your relationships: jealousy you didn’t expect, agreements that stopped fitting, being the one who wanted this less, or the loneliness that can sit oddly alongside having several people in your life. Together we can look at what you want and what you’ve been finding hard to say.
If you move in kink, queer or non-monogamous communities, our paths may cross outside sessions. I’ve written about how I handle that on my professional boundaries page.
Sexuality, desire and the body
Not everything people bring here is about identity. Sometimes the question sits closer to the body: desire that has gone quiet or feels out of step with a partner’s, difficulty enjoying sex or staying present during it, sex that has become something you perform rather than something you feel, or questions about pleasure you’ve never quite let yourself ask. Body confidence plays a part for many people too, especially in communities where some bodies get a great deal of attention and others very little.
Sometimes sexual difficulties are the most visible part of something older. After assault or abuse, sex can become a place where the body braces, or goes somewhere else entirely. Working with that gently, at a pace your body can manage, is also part of my trauma and EMDR work.
I also work with people whose sex lives involve chemsex, whether you want to change something or would first like to understand what it gives you and what it costs. It isn’t my core specialism, so where it helps I may suggest specialist support alongside our sessions. What I can offer is a space to talk about it honestly, without being lectured, and to look at what lies underneath, which is often a longing for connection or a way past shame towards pleasure.
Whatever shape it takes for you, pleasure is a legitimate thing to want, and it’s a welcome subject here.
How I work with sexuality and identity
The relationship between us is at the centre of the work. Trust takes time, especially if you’ve learned that showing parts of yourself comes at a price, so we build it gradually. As it grows, there’s more room for you to be seen, to notice how you relate to me and how I affect you, and to try out other ways of being with someone. Because this relationship sits apart from the rest of your life, you can experiment within it without worrying about what it will do to your other relationships.
Talking matters, but it isn’t everything. What we carry about sexuality and identity often lives in the body long before it reaches words: a tightening when someone gets close, a habit of holding back, a numbness during sex, or a sense of watching yourself from slightly outside. The mind is very good at building explanations, and sometimes it keeps us circling inside them. So alongside conversation, we pay attention to what your body is doing, sometimes through mindful noticing and sometimes through more direct somatic work. Over time, mind and body start to inform each other rather than pulling apart.
For many LGBTQ+ people, the hardest moments weren’t only the events themselves, but having nobody to turn to when they happened. That isolation is a large part of what makes an experience traumatic. So I don’t try to force anything open. We build enough safety for your guard to come down in its own time, and where earlier experiences, such as rejection or a difficult coming-out, are still shaping how you relate to yourself, I use EMDR to help your body process them.
This is slower work than a quick fix, and deliberately so. Much of the pressure people feel around sex and identity comes from a world that expects them to be sorted and confident on someone else’s timetable. Change that lasts usually comes from giving things the time they actually need, and from seeing what you struggle with in its wider context rather than treating you as the problem.
My training in this area is specific rather than incidental. Alongside EMDR, I trained as a Somatic Sexuality Practitioner and completed further training in therapy with sexual minority clients. I have also reviewed for the Journal of Homosexuality and lectured to trainee psychologists and therapists on the subject. You can read more about my background on the about page.
If you’re a therapist yourself, I also offer supervision for practitioners in this area.
Sessions are online, in English or Maltese, and I can also work in Italian if you’re comfortable enough in English for us to switch when needed. Fees, session length and other details are on the practical information page.
Ready to talk?
If this sounds like the kind of support you’re looking for, I offer a free initial call.
It’s a chance to tell me what’s bringing you and to get a sense of whether we’re a good fit, with no obligation either way.
