What Is Queer-Affirming Care? Understanding Queer Theory in Therapy

No one’s identity should be a barrier to receiving quality mental health care. Understanding queer-affirming care, and how ideas such as queer theory can inform therapy, can help you understand what an affirming approach means.

What Is Queer-Affirming Care?

Queer-affirming care is an approach to inclusive and nonjudgmental mental health care for members of the LGBTQ+ community. It recognizes that sexual orientation, gender identity, relationships, and the way others respond to those parts of a person's identity can affect their experiences and mental health.

Affirming therapy allows clients to know that their therapist understands and accepts their identity without making that identity something that needs to be explained, defended, or changed.

The aim is to create room to focus on the reasons you came to therapy, rather than on whether your identity will be accepted.

What Is Queer Theory?

Queer theory starts with the idea of questioning expectations about sexuality, gender, relationships, and identity. At its core, "queer" can mean going against tradition, challenging expectations, and questioning ideas about what is considered normal.

While queer theory is often associated with sexuality and gender, it can also be used to examine expectations involving relationships, family, social roles, institutions, and other parts of life.

How Can Queer Theory Shape a Therapy Conversation?

In therapy, queer theory can provide a way to examine expectations that may not fit who you are or what you want. Instead of assuming there is one correct way to experience relationships, gender, sexuality, family, or life in general, you and your therapist can explore where those expectations came from and whether they actually work for you.

The goal isn't for your therapist to decide what you should believe or how you should live. It is to create more room for you to understand your own wants, needs, values, and identity without automatically being limited by outside expectations.

Why Do Identity, Relationships, and Community Matter?

Sexual orientation, gender identity, relationships, family, community, and social experiences can influence the concerns a person brings to therapy. Affirming care takes these parts of a person’s experience into consideration.

We believe therapists have an ethical responsibility to understand the clients and communities they serve. The goal is a therapeutic environment where people can talk openly about their lives without having to wonder whether their identities, relationships, or experiences will be understood or accepted.

What If Affirming Care Is Difficult to Access Nearby?

It is a reality that many LGBTQ+ people struggle to find affirming mental health care in their local communities. This can be especially difficult in rural areas where there may be fewer therapists, fewer specialized mental health resources, or concerns about whether a provider will understand and affirm LGBTQ+ identities.

Telehealth cannot eliminate every barrier to finding affirming mental health care, but it can reduce barriers related to distance and transportation. Being able to look beyond your immediate area may provide more options when an affirming therapist is difficult to find nearby.

Does Affirming Therapy Have to Focus on Sexuality or Gender?

Providing queer-affirming care means creating a therapeutic environment where LGBTQ+ identities are understood and respected. It does not mean that every client has to identify as LGBTQ+ or that every therapy session focuses on sexuality or gender.

Many of the ideas used in affirming therapy—understanding yourself, examining expectations, improving relationships, setting boundaries, and deciding what you want from your life—can be relevant regardless of how you identify.

LGBTQ+ affirming therapy provides a space where sexuality, gender, relationships, and identity can be discussed openly when they are relevant—but they do not have to become the focus of therapy simply because you identify as LGBTQ+.

Do You Need to Understand Every Therapy Approach First?

Therapists use many different treatment approaches, and those approaches are influenced by their training, experience, and perspective. You may see terms like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Internal Family Systems (IFS), queer theory, or sex therapy when reading therapist profiles.

Those terms can be useful for understanding how a therapist works, but you don't necessarily need to know which approach you want before starting therapy.

Just like identities, therapy approaches don't always fit neatly into one box. Therapists may use more than one approach depending on the client, what they are working through, and what seems helpful.

The relationship you are able to build with your therapist also matters. You should feel comfortable enough to talk honestly, ask questions, disagree, and tell your therapist when something isn't working for you.

Instead of trying to choose a therapist based only on a list of therapy acronyms, consider the bigger picture: Does this therapist understand the concerns I want to work on? Do I feel understood and respected? Does their approach make sense to me? Can I see myself talking openly with this person?

You don't have to become an expert in therapy approaches before you can start therapy. A therapist can explain the approaches they use, why they use them, and how those approaches might apply to what you want to work on.

Finding Space to Be Yourself

Finding the right therapist should not require you to set aside or explain away important parts of who you are.

Learn about LGBTQ+ affirming therapy at Bloom Wellness Group, with in-person appointments in Bettendorf and online options across Iowa and Illinois.