Finding a therapist who truly understands the complexities of queer and trans experience can be difficult. Too often, LGBTQIA+ clients find themselves educating their therapist rather than being supported by them. My work with LGBTQIA+ clients is grounded in specialist clinical training, doctoral-level research on identity construction in Queer men, and my own lived experience as a Black Queer man. I mention this not because lived experience alone makes someone a specialist, but because the combination of rigorous academic inquiry, clinical expertise, and personal understanding allows me to offer a space that is genuinely informed, affirming, and free from the need to explain or justify who you are.
Understanding the Stressors That Shape Queer Lives
LGBTQIA+ individuals experience significantly higher rates of anxiety, depression, and psychological distress than the general population. This is the result of minority stress: the cumulative burden of discrimination, anticipated rejection, concealment, microaggressions, and the gradual internalisation of negative societal messages about who you are. Over time, these experiences shape how you relate to yourself and others, contributing to chronic anxiety, shame, difficulties with trust and intimacy, and a diminished sense of belonging.
Yet minority stress alone does not tell the full story. Research by John Pachankis and colleagues has identified a further layer of strain that comes from within the gay community itself: the preoccupation with status, competition, physical appearance, and sexual desirability that can be profoundly damaging to mental health. The pressure to measure up against hierarchies of masculinity, attractiveness, and income, amplified by dating apps and social media, fuels body dysmorphia, chronic self-comparison, and a corrosive sense of never being enough. Rejection from within one’s own community, whether through racism on dating platforms or exclusion based on body type, has been linked to increased depression, anxiety, and sexual risk-taking.
I bring both of these frameworks into the therapy room, helping clients to untangle internalised oppression and community-driven shame from authentic self-experience, and to build resilience grounded in self-knowledge rather than self-denial.
Working with the Queer & Trans Community
You deserve a therapist who doesn’t need you to explain who you are.
Working with Trans and Non-Binary Clients
I approach this work from a position of deep respect for each client's self-knowledge and autonomy. I do not pathologise gender diversity. As a psychologist, my role is not to assess or grant access to gender-affirming medical care, but to offer something equally vital: a consistent, affirming therapeutic relationship in which you can process the emotional complexities that may accompany your experience of gender.
For some clients, that means working through the psychological impact of navigating lengthy and often impersonal medical pathways, or managing the anxiety and frustration of waiting for care that feels urgent. For others, it may involve exploring identity in a space that holds uncertainty without rushing towards conclusions, processing the effects of transphobia on self-worth and relationships, or addressing difficulties that have nothing to do with gender identity but are made harder by the absence of affirming support elsewhere. I can also support you in building confidence, developing language for your experience, and strengthening the emotional resources you need to navigate a world that still demands too much explanation from trans and non-binary people.
The therapy room should be the one place where you are not required to advocate for your own legitimacy.
Working with Black LGBTQ+ People
The decades since the turn of the millennium have seen a marked increase in the visibility of Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous People of Colour (QTBIPOC) within mainstream film and television, reflecting changes in cultural conversations and identity politics. Despite this increased visibility within contemporary media, there’s a significant lack of research into the intersectional realities of Black Queer lives. My doctoral research addresses this gap directly. It reveals a multifaceted reality in which institutional beliefs and societal values combine to shape the Black queer experience: identities that are at once sexualised and racialised, subject to the intersecting forces of homophobia, racism, and hegemonic masculinity, with individuals constructing a sense of self whilst processing the subjugation that comes from holding these unique minority positions.
I work with Black LGBTQ+ clients contending with the weight of these intersecting forces, whether that shows up as difficulty with self-acceptance, fractured relationships with family or community, chronic hypervigilance, feelings of not belonging anywhere fully, or the exhaustion of code-switching across every area of life. This is work I bring both clinical expertise and personal understanding to, and it is work I consider essential.
2025
“Communication was top-notch and the final outcome was even better than we imagined. A great experience all around.”
Former Customer