LGBTQIA2S+ Affirming therapy is an approach that actively celebrates the identities and experiences of queer people. An open space is provided for exploring and expanding one’s sense of self, offering support not only for healing from discrimination and the lingering effects of trauma, but also for deepening self-understanding, joy, and pride. Affirming therapists recognize the richness of identity, challenge stigma, and help clients build lives rooted in authenticity, connection, and liberation. At its core, this approach honors identity as something to be explored, expanded, and celebrated—not just accepted.

This is a queer practice. Queering is the active process of questioning, disrupting, or reimagining dominant norms—particularly those related to identity and power. In academic, cultural, and everyday contexts, queering invites a critical lens that exposes how societal structures often privilege certain ways of being while marginalizing others. To queer something—such as relationships, family structures, or even time—means to challenge the assumption that there is one “right” or “normal” way to exist. In therapy, queering might look like creating a practice that affirms fluidity, rejects pathologizing frameworks, and honors non-normative ways of relating, coping, and expressing. It can also involve rethinking what healing looks like outside of traditional clinical expectations.