You Are at the Center of the Work
Deb Hemgesberg, our telehealth clinician at Unity Counseling, specializes in LGBTQ+ affirming therapy and has spent years helping clients find what genuine affirming care actually feels like. She offers one of the simplest — and most powerful — ways to understand it:
"You are the boss. I work for you."
Affirming therapy isn't about being told what to do or who to be. It's a collaborative process where your experiences, identity, and goals are respected and centered.
You're not expected to fit into a framework. The therapy should fit you.
What Makes a Space Truly Affirming
An affirming space isn't just about being "nice." It's about how you're treated, understood, and supported over time. Deb describes it as a balance of nine elements:
authenticity
accountability
kindness
gentle questioning
validation
encouragement
honest feedback
boundaries
psychoeducation
Notice that some of these words might surprise you. Gentle questioning and honest feedback sit right alongside kindness and validation — because affirming therapy isn't toothless. It's not a space where everything you say is simply agreed with. A truly affirming therapist supports you and challenges you, validates your experience and helps you see new perspectives, holds space for your pain and helps you build skills to move through it.
For LGBTQ+ clients specifically, this also means a therapist who understands minority stress, doesn't conflate identity with pathology, knows the difference between gender, sex, and sexuality, and is committed to ongoing learning. Affirmation isn't a checkbox — it's a practice.
Why Feeling Seen and Understood Matters
Humans are wired for connection.
"We are pack animals — we thrive when we have validating and affirming connections," Deb explains.
When you feel seen and understood in therapy, it creates the foundation for everything else. It allows you to open up more honestly, explore difficult experiences without bracing for judgment, and build trust in the therapeutic process itself.
This matters even more for people whose identities have been questioned, debated, or politicized in the wider world. If your daily life requires constant explaining or guarding, therapy needs to be the place where you can finally exhale. Without that, the deeper work simply can't happen.
As Deb puts it, "you can't pour from an empty cup."
The Impact of Non-Affirming Care
Not all therapy experiences feel safe or supportive — and that can have a lasting impact.
"Our clients are very vulnerable, especially due to the power dynamic," Deb shares. "Judgment and non-affirming care may damage someone's ability to seek support in the future, affect their ability to heal, and reduce the chance of trauma recovery."
When someone doesn't feel affirmed, it can lead to:
hesitation to seek help again
difficulty trusting providers
feeling misunderstood or invalidated
carrying the weight of a bad therapy experience long after it ends
This is why finding the right therapeutic environment matters so much — and why if you've had a bad experience before, that wasn't your fault and it doesn't mean therapy isn't for you. It means that the therapist wasn't.
Finding the Right Fit
If you're looking for an affirming therapist, one factor matters more than anything else: the connection.
"The fit — connection and safety with your therapist — is 80–90% of what makes therapy work," Deb explains.
That means looking for someone who makes you feel comfortable being yourself, respected and heard, and safe enough to be honest. It also means giving yourself permission to keep looking if the first person isn't right.
Many people don't realize this is allowed — that you can do a consultation call, notice something feels off, and choose to keep searching. Most therapists expect this. A therapist who's secure in their work won't take it personally if you're not the right fit. Your job is to find the person you can do real work with, not to be polite about a mismatch.
You Deserve to Feel Safe in Therapy
Affirming therapy isn't about perfection. It's about creating a space where you feel supported, respected, and understood — where your identity is honored, your experiences are validated, and your voice matters.
You deserve that. Not as a reward for proving you're worth it, but as a baseline.