LGBT Issues therapists in Granada Hills, California CA
LGBT Issues
West Valley Counseling Center
Marriage and Family Therapist, Licensed Therapists and pre-licensed therapists
Our mission here at West Valley Counseling is to provide affordable therapy to individuals and families. All of our therapists are licensed to practice as pre-licensed and licensed therapists in the State of California. Our staff is diverse, multi-cultural and LGBT informed.
18 Years Experience
LGBT Issues
Stacey Osder
Licensed Clinical Social Worker, LCSW
IMAGINE A LIFE FULFILLED! Hard to do? Your feelings of confusion, pain, fear, being stuck, or overwhelmed, are real. But, you can overcome them! There are times, in everyone's life, when assistance is needed to help live the life you want and deserve. I can help you.
17 Years Experience
LGBT Issues
Pamela Pine
Therapist, Ph.D.
I strive to not make assumptions, but to listen to you with an open mind, to respect you and your feelings, to be sensitive yet objective and flexible, honest, and direct. My challenge is to craft a treatment specifically for you and your unique needs and to keep you clearly in my focus.
32 Years Experience
LGBT Issues
Jennie Steinberg - feminist, queer-affirming therapist
Marriage and Family Therapist, LMFT, LPCC, PMH-C
I am a queer-affirming therapist, and I’ve been working for 15 years with clients who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, transgender, nonbinary, poly, and kinky. I believe that there is magic across the entire gender, sexual, and relationship minority spectrum. My guiding principle is that if you aren’t harming anyone and you feel good on the inside, you’re probably doing okay. I support queer clients in navigating identity questions, coming out, navigating oppression, being misgendered, being outed, struggling with visibility in a heteropresumptive culture, intersectionality, reconciling privilege, the stress of having to play educator, navigating systems while queer, and navigating fraught family relationships. I also support queer clients in managing depression, anxiety, trauma, work stress, life transitions, relationship challenges, body image, parenting stressors, boundary-setting, self-esteem, self-compassion, managing anger – in other words, the same things I work on with my cishet clients, but in an affirming and supportive environment. For more information I can support you in all your queer glory, reach out. I look forward to hearing from you!
17 Years Experience
LGBT Issues
Catherine DeMonte, LMFT
Therapist
Helping people find peace in their relationships & meaning in their lives is what my work is about. If you're looking for extra support & guidance through a challenging situation or you're just ready to take your life to the next level, then I look forward to working with you to achieve your goals.
38 Years Experience
LGBT Issues
Doug Wilson
Psychologist, Clinical Psychologist
I am well versed in practicing from an affirmative stance for the LGBTQ+ community.
12 Years Experience
LGBT Issues
Samer Fawaz
Marriage and Family Therapist, M.A., AMFT
As a gay man living in Los Angeles for over twenty years, I have experienced the challenges of cultivating and maintaining a genuine sense of self while being bombarded with body image issues, homophobia, gay shame, and the hyper-sexualized competitive nature of the gay community. As gay men, our sexual currency can sometimes become the focus of how we see and place value on ourselves. This can lead to addiction, self-loathing cycles, self-harm, anxiety, and depression. I am passionate about helping you dismantle what society, and the gay community has led you to believe about yourself. Together, we will get to the root of what makes you feel centered, authentic, and grounded. I am highly invested in creating a judgment-free space for you to feel safe to talk about anything you feel is relevant to your growth.
4 Years Experience
LGBT Issues
Carl H. Shubs
Therapist, Ph.D.
CREATE THE LIFE YOU WANT.
Things not working the way you'd like? Find out why and change it.
Anxiety, depression, trauma, gay/lesbian/bisexual issues, addictions (substances or behaviors)? These are some of the areas where I can help.
YOU SET THE COURSE, AND I'LL HELP YOU GET THERE.
39 Years Experience
LGBT Issues
Michael Pezzullo
Marriage and Family Therapist, LMFT
Most LGBTQ folks spend a significant portion of their lives living in secrecy, isolation and shame. As a result, empathic attunement and mirroring are completely absent from their everyday life experiences. Therefore, I take an actively affirmative stance when working with LGBTQ clients.
7 Years Experience
LGBT Issues
Jonathan Kruger Therapy
Marriage and Family Therapist, LMFT
Members of the LGBT community face unique and multifaceted challenges that add additional layers of complexity to the therapeutic process. It is vital that therapists working with LGBT clients have a deep understanding of these challenges in order to serve as an effective partner in the journey of self-discovery. My work with LGBT clients, as well as my own personal experience, have taught me that throughout each stage of life, LGBT persons are confronted with issues and prejudices that can be easily internalized, resulting in a profound struggle within themselves trying to maintain a healthy sense of self, self-confidence, and self-acceptance.
Indeed, for many LGTB persons, these issues begin early in youth: a significant portion of the LGBT community have faced down unaccepting parents and families, bullies, and, at times, a deeply prejudiced society that teaches from birth that LGBT persons are defective and unworthy. These are messages that wound at a fundamental level and, unfortunately, can reinforce an internalized message of unworthiness and defectiveness. Left unexplored, these external attacks on the self can manifest in many ways: shame which leads to substance abuse, reckless sexual behavior, an inability to sustain long-term intimate relationships.
Another unique aspect of my work with the LGBT community is the continued reverberation of the AIDS crisis that swept the community in the 80s and 90s. While we have made enormous strides in both understanding and the treatment of the HIV virus, learning of an HIV positive diagnosis remains a traumatic life event, where one’s sense of self may become gravely damaged or perhaps even destroyed. In addition, a large portion of the LGBT community directly experienced the peak of the AIDS crisis, and faced the untimely loss of beloved friends and colleagues, leading to intense bereavement, grief, and the relentless death of entire communities. The effects were and are ravaging; the trauma intense and enduring.
Furthermore another challenge facing this generation of openly gay men is that they are the first entering old age openly gay and out of the closet. How to not become invisible to the community, disappear and lose all sense of oneself becomes a vital priority. There have been few role models, no one demonstrating how to age in a successful, happy, purposeful way. So with age comes the loss of physical vitality and attributes, which for many gay men has been the leading currency of their lives. How does one reinvent oneself so as to stay vital and relevant, or risk slipping into the invisibility cloak that old age often brings upon gay men and people in general?
In treating the LGBT community, I strive toward creating and fulfilling a sense of completeness and wholeness within the self. Working empathically, slowly and deliberately to heal old wounds, and eradicate the innate sense of defectiveness. Always seeking to understand the sources from which that sense of defectiveness derived. With insights, understanding, processing and evaluating we then begin to reinstate a sense of enough-ness, perfection (even where there may be imperfection), wholeness, and completeness within and unto the self. It is a journey of self discovery which I have lived, understand and continually work on healing.
Slowly building understanding and conviction that the LGBT person is as complete and perfect as any other differently sexually identified person. The goal is to create and improve a strong, authentic sense of self, not one that needs to be propped up by the creation of a “false self” in order to be loveable or to feel adequate and enough.
11 Years Experience