James Brillon Therapy is a Safe Space for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender clients to seek help whether or not your issues overtly relate to gender identity or sexual orientation. I am an LGBT – Affirming therapist.
What Is LGBT-Affirming Therapy?
Affirmative means you are embraced and cared for as a whole person however you identify. Stigma from culture and family are often at the root of problems with developing healthy coping and identity. LGBT people struggle with the same things as straight people because we are all human, but often for different reasons due to stigma, oppression and discrimination. LGBT-affirmative therapy understands how intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination.
The social awareness awakened by the LGBT-affirming perspective is of tremendous worth to straight clients as well. It is awake to the urgent need to challenge social assumptions that shape all of our lives, with or without our consent.
LGBT-affirmative Therapy:
- Affirms
- Advocates
- Promotes Awareness
- Understands Intersectionality (how our multiple social identities intersect with related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination.
- Honors Life Experience
- Recognizes effects of Discrimination
- Promotes Social Change
Will My Visit Be Confidential?
When you visit my office you can trust that what you say is confidential and will remain between us.
As a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor and Marriage and Family Therapist, I provide safe and effective LGBT-affirming therapy in Costa Mesa and Los Alamitos.
Currently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic all sessions are through Telehealth.
If you’d like to schedule an appointment, please call me at (714) 388-6457.
For more info about Gay-Affirmative therapy, see my OUT & INformed videos.
Gay Affirmative Therapy in Orange County
“Affirmed for Who You Are”
Having the courage and confidence to discover and to be yourself when others are telling you there’s something wrong with you is a struggle that can impact your mental and emotional health. This is especially true if you’re gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual or questioning your orientation. The LGBTQ Community face unique challenges that impact their lives and development, and these need to be understood in order to heal.
Even as our society has progressed to a degree, the oppression, discrimination and stigma they experience, sometimes especially from their families and communities, can be toxic. The fact remains that growing up LGBTQ in a straight world can put your development and mental health at risk. The community continues to experience higher than normal levels of mental health challenges.
Meet James
At James Brillon Therapy, I offer quality Gay-Affirmative therapy.
What is LGBT and Gay-Affirmative Therapy?
An LGBTQ-affirmative therapist understands that it is not anyone’s sexual orientation that is the problem, rather oppression, stigma and discrimination people experience often lead to cause suffering in their lives.
Let’s face it, societal change moves slowly. It was only in the 1970s that homosexuality was declared “not a mental illness”. At that time one of the common approaches to “curing homosexuality” was an inhuman approach called Conversion Therapy . This misguided approach cause increased suffering to countless people and thankfully has been disavowed and declared illegal in much of the country.
Affirmative therapy aims to benefit people with non-normative orientations through embracing a positive view of the whole person. It identifies the root causes of suffering while consciously embracing the multiple intersectional identities in a persons life.
Gay-affirmative therapy considers that all persons are innately worthy of love and respect, regardless of their sex, race, and gender or orientation. A gay-affirmative therapist works with a client to help them unravel the complex mix of influences that hold them back from living their desired life.
The social awareness awakened by the LGBT-affirming perspective is of tremendous worth to straight clients as well. It is awake to the urgent need to challenge social assumptions that shape all of our lives, with or without our consent.
You won't need to interpret your experience
At James Brillon Therapy you will be met with compassion, understanding and dignity. You won’t need to explain to me what the LGBTQ experience is like or to interpret those experiences for me. Your treatment will be individualized for you. Some issues that bring people into therapy or come up in therapy are:
- Dating and relationships
- Self-Esteem
- Coming Out
- Living with HIV/AIDS
- Sexual Compulsion
- Substance Addictions
- Intimacy Issues
- Sexual Identity
- Dealing with Shame
- Internalized Transphobia
Reach Out When You're Ready.
How Gay-Affirmative Therapy Helps You
Reduce the Mental Health Impact of Minority Stress
A gay-affirmative therapist helps identify pathways toward healing and how emotional suffering is often intertwined with identity in context of culture.
Stigma can manifest in a diffuse feeling of fear, shame, or guilt. Self-silencing and negative evaluation of personal life can be effects of minority stress.
Affirmative therapy help clients understand how these can impact mental health, develop self-acceptance and embrace their sexual identity.
Facilitate Mental and Emotional Awareness
Unintegrated sexual identity can block emotional awareness and self-acceptance. There is a bulk of evidence that how this impacts mental health and creates difficulties in relationships and emotional bonding.
Help Decrease Avoidance
Avoidance behavior is a hallmark of emotional problems. LGBT people may avoid intimate relationships or certain social gatherings to preclude feelings of rejection by their friends and family due to fear of rejection or non-acceptance.
Affirmative therapy helps clients address root causes of these and other behaviors by creating a safe space in which they can feel accepted and supported. Then healing can begin.