I recently became an Accredited Gender, Sex and Relationships Therapist with Pink Therapy (often called a Pink Therapist for short!) which means I am able to specialise in working with LGBTQI+ clients. So what does this mean for my practice?
It doesn’t mean that I won’t see you if you’re not under the LGBTQI+ umbrella: I have and always will see a wide variety of clients with many different reasons for coming to counselling. And, naturally, my LGBTQI+ clients often want to talk about issues that don’t relate to their diversity, as well as issues that do. It simply means that any prospective LGBTQI+ client can feel assured that if they get it touch, I will be able to offer a welcoming and safe space for them to talk about gender, sexuality and relationships, as well as anything they might want to talk about.
Why is this important? Well, it’s incredibly painful to open up to someone and place your trust in them, only to find that they recoil when they learn you don’t fit the hetero/cis/monogamous profile. Unless you’re extremely bold about asking questions of a therapist upfront about their personal attitudes (and please do this, by the way, because any therapist worth their salt will be happy to reassure you), it’s something that can make the start of counselling a lot more stressful than it needs to be. Counsellors who put something in their profile blurb or website info about being LGBTQI+ inclusive are thoughtfully pre-empting this worry for their clients, and I think of Pink Therapy Accreditation as taking that one step further.
In order to achieve Accreditation, I had to prove my commitment to this client group by providing evidence of the CPD (Continuing Professional Development) I have done and the number of hours I have worked in LGBTQI+ therapy. You can be sure that a Pink Therapist has a decent whack of experience and that they have been well trained. Part of my commitment to keeping my title is to maintain my engagement in LGBTQI+ specific CPD and ensure my knowledge is current. LGBTQI+ communities do face specific issues that it is helpful to have specialist knowledge of. Even more importantly, I’ve reflected a great deal on how to make my practice as inclusive as I can. I’m learning all the time, but here are some of the things I’ve done:
Ensured my website is as welcoming as possible, outlining my Pink therapist credentials and inclusive stance
Replaced any language that was needlessly specific with inclusive alternatives
Added my pronouns to my email signature and my Zoom handle so that clients feel assured that I won’t assume their pronouns and will always ask them their preference
Put a rainbow flag (and trangender, asexual, lesbian pride, pansexual, bisexual flags) in my counselling room, where clients can see them in the background on online video calls, or see them displayed prominently when they are allowed to visit in person again
Added LGBTQI+ resources to my Instagram (@kirsty_counsellor) and written articles on my blog here - for example my inclusive article on menopause.
If you are looking for a Pink Therapist, you are welcome to get in touch with me, or read more about Pink Therapy here.