Walking the tightrope: Being a queer therapist in a system built to erase us

"The mental health system, as it exists, was not designed for us. Its history is deeply tangled with harmful practices and oppressive policies. Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder until 1973, in the lifetimes of many practicing clinicians today. Gender diversity remains medicalized and subject to gatekeeping. Conversion therapy, a practice condemned by every major medical organization, is still legally practiced and promoted in many U.S. states."

"The failure of the mental health profession to protect our clients has left blood on our hands. The field itself is rooted in white, cisgender, heterosexual norms-frameworks that have long framed queerness as deviant, dangerous, or defective. This history is not a neutral backdrop but the ground we walk on. Even now, "healthy" and "normal" are often defined in ways that exclude us."

"When I walk into the therapy room, I do so knowing that the profession I practice has a history of labeling my very existence as pathological. I am a queer, neurodivergent, cisgender woman trained in institutions that, up until recently, sought to erase people like me. That contradiction lives in me. I do not try to shed it; I use it. It keeps me alert to the harm my clients carry. It fuels my commitment to build spaces where they do not"

The mental health system was not designed for queer and trans people and carries a history of harmful practices and oppressive policies. Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder until 1973 and gender diversity remains medicalized and gatekept. Conversion therapy continues to be legally practiced and promoted in many U.S. states despite condemnation by major medical organizations. The profession is rooted in white, cisgender, heterosexual norms that have framed queerness as deviant. Queer therapists often carry personal contradictions from training within these institutions and use those tensions to stay alert to client harm and to build affirming, transformative clinical spaces.

Read at Advocate.com