Creating Safety for LGBTQ+ Clients Amid Growing Hostility
In recent years, it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the rising tide of hostility toward LGBTQ+ individuals across the United States. Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, we’ve seen the repeal of protections, targeted legislation, and now the chilling decision to remove Pride Month from federal recognition. For queer, trans, and nonbinary people—especially those already carrying trauma—these acts are not just political. They are deeply personal, often retraumatizing, and emotionally destabilizing. As a trauma therapist in Pasadena specializing in EMDR and Internal Family Systems (IFS), I’ve seen how critical it is to create safe spaces where LGBTQ+ folks can process the grief, fear, and anger these cultural shifts bring up.
The Personal Impact of Political Trauma
For LGBTQ+ clients, national policy changes aren’t experienced in the abstract. They land in the body like micro-assaults—often triggering past experiences of rejection, bullying, violence, or institutional harm. Clients frequently report increased hypervigilance, depressive symptoms, dissociation, and reemerging feelings of shame or worthlessness when these larger societal messages reinforce the idea that their identity is invalid or unwanted.
Removing Pride Month from the national calendar is not just symbolic. It’s a stripping away of visibility, affirmation, and belonging. For many, Pride isn’t just a parade—it’s a critical annual touchpoint of celebration, community, and resilience. To erase it is to gaslight the entire community into silence.
Trauma in the LGBTQ+ Experience
Most LGBTQ+ individuals carry some form of trauma related to their identity. Whether it’s growing up in a hostile family, experiencing violence or harassment, or enduring the more subtle wounds of exclusion and erasure, these lived experiences shape how individuals navigate the world—and their own internal emotional lives. As a therapist, I often witness how this trauma plays out in self-protective patterns:
Minimization: Clients may downplay their feelings in order to avoid being seen as “too sensitive.”
Internalized oppression: They may carry parts that believe they are “too much,” “unloveable,” or “not safe.”
Hyper-independence: A survival response to abandonment or institutional betrayal.
Avoidant parts: Ones that disconnect from the pain by shutting down or staying busy.
When the larger culture becomes increasingly hostile, these parts go into overdrive. What once felt like manageable wounds now become open again, bleeding into daily life.
EMDR for Collective and Identity-Based Trauma
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is well-suited for addressing identity-based trauma, including the ongoing distress caused by anti-LGBTQ+ political rhetoric and action. EMDR allows clients to reprocess both individual and collective traumas—ranging from specific memories of being bullied in high school to the present-day overwhelm of seeing lawmakers try to erase queer existence.
EMDR’s bilateral stimulation helps clients move traumatic material from the emotional brain to the thinking brain, reducing the charge of deeply painful memories and beliefs. In the context of current events, EMDR can be used to:
Desensitize triggering public events or messages (e.g., hearing anti-trans legislation discussed on the news).
Address complex trauma stemming from a lifetime of marginalization.
Reprocess early attachment wounds related to rejection or shame.
IFS: Building Internal Safety for Queer Parts
In Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, we recognize that every person has an internal system made up of various parts—some holding pain, others protecting us from that pain. For LGBTQ+ clients, many of these parts are shaped by societal messaging. There might be a young exiled part that remembers being told they were going to hell, or a hypervigilant protector that scans every room for signs of danger.
IFS helps clients:
Build relationships with protective parts that have kept them safe through hyper-independence, numbness, or people-pleasing.
Unburden exiled parts that still carry shame or fear from early invalidation.
Access Self-energy, the calm, compassionate core within, capable of leading the system and creating healing.
For queer and trans clients, IFS is also deeply affirming. It recognizes and honors all parts without judgment, exactly the kind of internal world that so many LGBTQ+ people have been denied in the external one.
Holding Space for Grief, Rage, and Resistance
There is a unique kind of grief that comes from being targeted again and again by the very institutions that are supposed to protect you. As a queer-affirming trauma therapist, I work hard to normalize and validate the full range of responses clients have to this environment: rage, despair, numbness, burnout, and the deep need for rest. These are not signs of dysfunction—they are natural, embodied responses to a world that feels increasingly unsafe.
My job is to create a therapeutic space where LGBTQ+ clients can let their guards down. Where they can:
Cry without explanation.
Scream without being silenced.
Speak about identity, community, sex, politics, and spirituality without filtering.
Reconnect with their own inner wisdom and power.
In this space, clients don’t have to “make sense” of their feelings for anyone else. They are already valid. The goal is not to become “okay” with what’s happening politically, but to feel resourced enough to respond with clarity, connection, and courage.
Community as a Resource
Therapy is one part of the healing equation. For many LGBTQ+ individuals, a connection with the community is what keeps the spirit alive. Whether that’s a queer book club, a chosen family group chat, a local drag performance, or a protest march, these connections are vital.
When clients feel alone or demoralized, we often explore what “community” means to them and how they can nurture it—even in small, nourishing ways. Safety isn’t just created in the therapy room—it’s co-created in every space where authenticity is welcomed and celebrated.
Final Thoughts: Safety Is a Birthright, Not a Privilege
The current political landscape is an emotional minefield for many LGBTQ+ people. But trauma healing offers more than relief—it offers liberation. Through EMDR and IFS, we can reclaim what oppressive systems have tried to steal: our sense of worth, our connection to others, and our right to feel safe.
Start Working With an LGBTQ Affirming Therapist in Pasadena, CA
If you’re an LGBTQ+ person in pain right now, you’re not alone. Your anger is valid. Your heartbreak is real. And your healing is possible.
As a team of trauma therapists, we are here to witness your story with respect and care—and to walk beside you as you reclaim your space in a world that keeps trying to push you out. Start your therapy journey with Thomas Blake Therapy by following these simple steps:
Contact us for a free consultation
Meet with a caring therapist
Start healing in a safe, understanding space
Other Services Offered at Thomas Blake Therapy
LGBTQ affirming therapy isn’t the only service that is offered at Thomas Blake Therapy. Our team is happy to offer support for your mental health with a variety of services. Other services offered include EMDR therapy to help you cope with past trauma, narrative therapy, and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy to assist patients who have struggled with treatment-resistant concerns. If any of these services resonate with you, please reach out. Our online therapy services are offered in California and New Jersey. For more about us and our services, check out our Bio page and Blog today!
About the Author
Thomas Blake, LMFT, is a queer-affirming trauma therapist based in Pasadena, CA. Specializing in EMDR and Internal Family Systems therapy, they support LGBTQ+ clients in healing from complex trauma, building internal safety, and reclaiming their voice in a shifting world. Reach out to schedule a consult.
