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Get the Help You Deserve

One of this website's main goals is to provide individuals who are non-binary and interested/actively in therapy with accessible information to navigate through this oftentimes difficult process.

Guidelines and Expectations for Therapy: What to Expect

This section serves as a touchstone for the relevant and recent guidelines that mental health professionals, psychologists, and therapists are recommended to follow when working with TGNC patients. The hope is to provide this information to help individuals know what they should expect from their mental health care provider when talking about gender identity and to validate your right to trans-affirmative care. 

Guide to: Navigating Negative Therapeutic Relationships and Experiences

This section will explain and reassure the expected treatment that trans and/or non-binary individuals should receive. With this, there is a discussion of the potential discriminatory actions that can occur in a therapy session and how/why these actions can affect a therapeutic relationship. We provide a few templates for how to start a conversation with a mental health provider about microaggressions/discriminatory actions. 

Definitional Elements

1. Affirmative: (In context to self-affirming results in therapy) Affirmative results in a therapeutic setting would include comprehending the validity of one's own identity and a boost in self-esteem in regard to that same identity (McNulty Counseling, 2019). The hope is to feel confident that one's identity is not a hindrance to one's life nor the lives of those around them (McNulty Counseling, 2019). Affirmation of identity will ideally lessen symptoms of severe mental illness and increase quality of life. 

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2. Gender Non-Conforming: This term has been coined in recent gendered developments within the larger LGBTQ+ community. This term is often used under the umbrella term, transgender, which describes someone who feels as though their assigned sex at birth deviates from or does not align with the gender identity they feel within themselves (Nadal et al., 2012). The term gender non-conforming alludes to an individual who does not identify within the gender binary. For the purposes of this site, we refer to these individuals as TGNC (transgender & gender non-conforming). These individuals can also be categorized as gender diverse.

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3. Therapy: (In context to LGBTQ+-specific counseling) Conducted by a counselor that is knowledgable and informed on issues related to LGBTQ+ identities. According to Clarity Clinic, a therapy office that provides LGBTQ+ therapy, the sessions typically do not focus on the specific LGBTQ+ identity itself, but rather explores the challenges that one may encounter in daily life (n.d.). Since daily experiences can be greatly influenced by these identities, being knowledgeable on the topics, and marking oneself as such when marketing their practice will be important to LGBTQ+ people who are seeking treatment. 

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4. LGBTQ+: This acronym has commonly been used to describe members of a community who do not identify within the confines of the labels "heterosexual" and/or "cisgender" (one who identifies as the gender the were given at birth). This term has been used to describe those people as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and/or other sexualities/gender identities not represented by the corresponding letters (i.e., the +) ("Defining LGBTQ", 2020). 

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5. Age/Age Cohorts: For purposes of our research project, we are designing this website for TGNC individuals, regardless of age group, and professional mental health clinicians. We wish to offer resources and education to TGNC individuals in need of affirmative therapeutic services, as well as guidelines and codes of ethics for mental health professionals seeking to learn methods of allyship towards this vulnerable community. 

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1032 W Sheridan Rd, Crown Center 117, Chicago, IL 60660

ahogarth@luc.edu  jriedel@luc.edu

636-358-5910 

816-726-4138

© 2021 Jade Riedel and Mern Hogarth. Proudly created with Wix.com

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