How LGBTQ+ Affirming Care Benefits Everyone (Yes, Even Straight Men)

In today’s political climate, LGBTQ+ affirming care is often mischaracterized. Critics claim it’s politically motivated or that it steamrolls over what individual clients believe or need. And truthfully, there are providers who offer a one-size-fits-all approach that overrides a client’s story. But that’s not an issue with affirming care itself because that’s an issue of poor clinical attunement.

As a trauma therapist and queer person, I want to share what being LGBTQ+ affirming means to me and why this approach actually benefits everyone, including straight, cisgender, or questioning people, no matter their own beliefs.

First, a note on inadequate training…

One reason affirming care gets misunderstood is that most therapists and medical providers have had very little training in gender and sexual diversity. If it’s addressed at all, it’s often limited to a basic “LGBTQ+ 101”, such as a quick list of terms, identities, and do’s/don’ts (1).

That’s a start. But it doesn’t teach us how to attune to each client’s lived experience of gender and sexuality. It doesn’t show us how these identities intersect with trauma, family systems, religion, race, culture, or migration. And it definitely doesn’t prepare us to navigate this complexity with care, nuance, and clinical skill when there is another person sitting across from us. The solution to this is MORE training and discussion, not less.

So what is LGBTQ+ affirming care?

For me, affirming care isn’t about pushing an agenda or forcing clients into a belief system. It’s about committing to three core principles that benefit all clients:

1. Attunement

In trauma therapy, we talk a lot about attunement: the ability to sense, respond to, and be with a person’s emotional experience without judgment (2). Another word for it is synchrony which means being in tune with another (3).

Affirming care starts with attunement. It means I’m not putting you in a box or constricting you to a certain label. I’m meeting you where you are. Whether you’re confident in your identity, still questioning, or feeling fearful or conflicted because of past religious or cultural messages (I’ve been there!), I’m attuning to your experience.

Even within the larger LGBTQ+ "community,” no two people have the same story. Affirming care honors that. It also means I’m paying attention to the parts of you that might feel ignored or in conflict with each other. Even parts of you that hold harmful beliefs and feelings. Because all of you matters.

2. A Systems Perspective

When people say LGBTQ+ affirming care is “too political,” I say: It is political because all mental health care is political in nature (4).

Politics is about how power is organized in society. And for centuries, gender and sexual minorities have experienced systemic oppression, from historical erasure, to legal discrimination to religious exclusion, to family rejection (5-7). That’s not a personal issue. It’s a systemic one.

Affirming care recognizes that your mental health isn’t just shaped by your thoughts, biology, or coping skills. It’s shaped by the world you live in. And if you also experience transphobia, racism, xenophobia, poverty, ableism, or religious trauma, those systems intersect in powerful ways. Affirming care doesn’t just look at your symptoms, it looks at your whole experience in context. This also requires the therapist to critically examine their own inner world and relationship to gender and sexuality.

3. Centered on Dignity

Dignity is the heart of good therapy.

Affirming care means holding your full humanity in mind and not just checking off a diagnosis or symptom list. It means asking, How is this decision honoring the person sitting in front of me? Imagine how much medical trauma we could prevent if we had systems that allowed clinicians to truly center their care on dignity (8).

And here’s the nuance: honoring your dignity doesn’t mean I avoid hard questions. I will challenge you to reflect on your values and how they serve you. But I won’t make your worth, or my care, conditional on a certain conclusion. Dignity means I support you in your complexity, your contradictions, and your process.

So... how does this help straight people?

Most straight and cisgender people haven’t been taught to think of themselves as having a nuanced gender or sexual identity at all. Since their experience fits well enough into these compulsory categories, they’ve often shut off curiosity. These parts of their identity often go unexamined because society treats them as “normal” or default (9).

But everyone has a relationship to their own gender and sexuality. It might be influenced by cultural expectations, religion, gender norms, or personal history. And when we don’t have space to explore these layers, we suffer too (10-11).

Take the growing mental health crisis among men. Loneliness, disconnection, violence, and shame aren’t just personal failings. They’re symptoms of a system that limits how man can experience their worthiness. It has taught those of us who are socialized as men that our value in society comes from how we measure up to others and our proximity to power and competence (12-15).

At its heart, affirming care meets people in their complexity. In the face of rising mental health challenges, including men, the same tools—attunement, systems-awareness, and dignity—are just as vital.

To say:

• You don’t have to prove your worth through being powerful.

• You don’t have to always hide your softness.

• You’re allowed to have a complex, evolving relationship with your identity, too.
  

That’s gender affirming care too. And that benefits everyone.

In Closing

Affirming care is not about pushing people toward a specific identity or belief. It’s about making space for the fullness of your identity, your values, your wounds, and your growth without fearing disconnection.

That’s not just good care for LGBTQ+ folks.

That’s just good therapy.

If you’d like to explore therapy with me, you can book a free 15 minute consult here or you can email me at info@michaelzuch.com.