FAQ’S

Personal, safe, and non-judgmental therapy is the best. Although we like to talk about cognitive models, trauma modalities, or specific types of talk therapies, there isn’t one that fits everyone. We work in collaboration with our clients, making sure we address your concerns efficiently and confidentially. 

At iAmClinic we are a team of queer, trans, and allied therapists. We believe it is important that you work with someone who has not only walked in your shoes, but has also experienced the changes you seek. You have found a good trans therapist when they can speak from life experience in addition to their academic training. You should look for a therapist who does not need you to teach them about your trans experience, but one who knows because they share that experience with you.

Talk therapy is helpful in preparing for transitioning, process anticipated and unexpected challenges while transitioning, and can help provide the resources and support letters you need for your transition. We want to make sure that you are safe, prepared, informed, supported, resourced, and ready for your transition.

At iAmClinic we are a team of queer, trans, and allied therapists. We believe it is important that you work with someone who has not only walked in your shoes, but has also experienced the changes you seek. You have found a good queer or trans therapist when they can speak from life experience in addition to their academic training. You should look for a therapist who does not need you to teach them about your queer or trans experience, but one who knows because they share that experience with you. 

We often say that it is our job to work ourselves out of a job. In that light, therapy sessions are collaborations between you and your therapist. We first want to earn your trust by being safe, well-trained, and capable. As the therapeutic process takes shape, it becomes a working relationship, much like teamwork. We often provide psychological education on certain behavioral patterns or relational dynamics and provide safe feedback that will help you grow in a safe environment. We also take great pride in showing up authentically, so you’ll get to know your therapist as much as we get to know you. We affirm what research tells us time and time again: It is the therapeutic relationship that is most important. As a result, therapy sessions are more of a safe place to be challenged, to be heard, and to be allowed to be honest with how you show up in the world. 

The length of therapy depends on what you would like to address and how deep you want to go. Many people like to address a specific issue, while others want to reach a new level of wholeness. Although a specific number of sessions cannot be determined, you can work closely with your therapist to get the most out of every minute you are with us.

We have a wide range of experienced therapists who offer a variety of price points. Depending on what you would like to address and how deep you’d like to go, therapy will range in price. If you’d like to set a free consultation with a therapist, they will help give you an anticipated range of the cost. 

Yes. Therapy, especially therapy with queer, trans, or allied therapists, can be helpful in giving you tools to cope with, desensitizing reactions, and finding confidence to deal with discrimination and stigma. We often act as advocates when it is appropriate and help you find resources that offer support and assistance. In terms of therapy, we can use modalities like EMDR or Breathwork to help you gain the skills and insights to help you stand firm in a heterosexist, cisgendered world.

In couples therapy the client is the relationship. We focus on how the couple, throuple, or polycule functions as a system, rather than competing individuals. In couples therapy you will learn about your relational patterns, tools to improve communication, and identify why unwanted behaviors keep surfacing. We always tell our clients, “It is our job to work ourselves out of job.” We don’t want you to figure out who is right or wrong. We want you to figure out how to repair your relationship without us in the room because that will lead to your relational success. 

Many relationships experience challenges related to their differing identities and all the implications they have in their social lives. Empathizing with one another’s experience in a productive way requires a healthy and sophisticated boundary system- one that takes practice and  the emergence of a stable self-confidence. From a sturdy internal knowledge that sits behind a healthy and workable boundary, challenges can be talked about and resolved. To learn more or get the support you need, reach out for a free consultation.  

Dating and creating long-lasting, healthy relationships might just be two of the hardest things we will ever do. Navigating them requires a lot of awareness, and for many of us in the LGBTQIA+ community, the healing from developmental trauma. Knowing your attachment style and how to manage it will also give you a lot of control in relationships. To learn more, scroll through our blog or reach out to us for a free consultation. 

Anger is never the primary emotion. So a good technique we use in anger management therapy is to teach our clients how to build emotional intelligence, as a means of learning to identify and manage their emotional experiences. The better we are at identifying our primary emotions, the better we can avoid secondary emotions like anger. Doing so is what we call, “Getting to the root cause.” We also use techniques like assertive communication, healthy boundary setting, and a somatic (bodily) practice called Titration that helps your central and autonomic nervous systems regulate themselves. 

Typically, we see dramatic improvements in our 12-week group therapy course. But of course, anger stems from many experiences of injustice that stack up, trauma, and genetics. We look at anger not as a result of your deficiencies, but as a result of the pain you have sustained. This means that treatment will vary for everyone’s past. We recommend scheduling sessions not according to some systematic program, but in a way that helps you feel the momentum of change and growth. You are more than welcome to create a rhythm that works for you. 

Have you ever seen a doctor place the sticky pads on a heart-attack patient’s chest to monitor the electrical pulses of the heart? The sticky sensors feed the electrical data to the doctor so treatments and interventions can be determined. We use a very similar system, but ours is called EEG (electroencephalogram) and it measures brain activity. Once we know where and how the brain holds ailments like ADHD, anxiety, learning disorders, or depression, we develop a precise protocol to train the brain into different patterns. When our sensors tell the computer that the brain activity is what we want, the movie screen gets big and the sounds are crisp, thus rewarding the watching client’s brain. The more the brain learns how to receive this reward it continues to fire in this positive way. Over time, with significant training, the brain creates a new setting allowing the new pattern to persist over time. 

The interesting thing about the brain’s zip codes, if you will, is that they control more than one function. As we train one region of the brain we treat several symptoms. In this light, we commonly treat anxiety, depression, ruminating thoughts, a persisting focus on self-hatred or shame, and ADHD. We also treat learning disorders, auditory processing disorders, and many other ailments. As a queer-specific counseling center, we notice that nearly 100% of our clients have either a mild or major inclination to obsess about not being good enough- an intrusive thought-pattern that lives in our cingulate gyrus. It may be said that such a symptom develops as a result of living under the scrutiny—when closeted or out—of trans and/or homophobia. As a result, we are sure to make sure all of our clients live free from the effects of minority strain, from the inside out! Neurofeedback is a great treatment to reset the brain after the developmental effects of heterosexism.

Neurofeedback uses sensors to detect the brain’s activity and we use that information to train the brain into firing differently, creating new patterns of electrical activity. Training the brain to produce different electrical patterns allows the brain to function differently, thus training the brain out of diagnosable disorders like ADHD, anxiety, depression, and OCD. Mindfulness is a way of creating more awareness of and presence with the body. Luminosity helps the body rehearse skills to keep them active. Although mindfulness and luminosity helps the body regulate itself and preserve skills, neurofeedback helps treat diagnosable disorders. 

Yes, neurofeedback is a precise way of treating ailments like ADHD, anxiety, depression and PTSD. We target where and how those concerns are produced in the brain, show that information to the brain, and then show the brain another way of behaving. Neurofeedback is painless and quite easy. All you do is allow us to put sensors on your scalp and then all you do is watch a movie in a quiet room. Our computer gives all the information to your brain that it needs to train itself. Neurofeedback is like giving your brain a mirror to observe itself and adapt with a little coaching.