More Than Safe: Therapy as Sanctuary for the LGBTQIA+ Community
Erin Bratsky, June 2025
June is Pride Month, a time of visibility, resilience, celebration, and resistance. At Brighter Sky Counseling, we honor Pride by reflecting on what it truly means to create space for healing in a world where being LGBTQIA+ is still politicized, debated, and, far too often, unsafe.
As a cisgender, heterosexual woman, I don’t pretend to speak for the LGBTQIA+ community. But I do know my role, as a therapist, as a practice owner, and as a human, is to speak with and stand beside this community. I consider myself an ally, and I’m proud to say that everyone on our team at Brighter Sky Counseling is either a member of the LGBTQIA+ community or a committed ally.
In a time of increasing hostility, fear, and legislative attacks targeting queer and trans lives, it’s not enough to be “inclusive.” We must offer something deeper. In our therapy rooms, we aim to offer safety and sanctuary.
Where Mental Health and Identity Intersect
Queer and trans clients do not seek therapy because of who they are.
They come to therapy because of how the world responds to who they are.
The impact of systemic discrimination, political unrest, social rejection, and personal loss often shows up in the therapy room. Not as weakness, but as the emotional residue of long-term survival in an unsafe world. We see it in the form of:
- Hypervigilance and chronic anxiety
- Depression shaped by shame, grief, or disconnection
- Exhaustion from masking or explaining
- Trauma from rejection—by family, faith communities, employers, or even healthcare providers
- Grief over what was never safe to express
These experiences don’t occur in isolation. They are shaped by identity, power, privilege, and belonging. They deserve to be honored and held—not minimized or pathologized.
What Allyship Looks Like in Therapy
At Brighter Sky Counseling, allyship is not a buzzword. It’s a lived commitment. One that we carry into every session, every supervision conversation, and every policy we create.
We aim to provide:
- Affirming care rooted in trauma-informed, LGBTQIA+ competent practices
- Curiosity without assumption, and support without centering ourselves
- Space for all parts of a client’s identity—including the parts the world has tried to erase
- Repair, when harm has been done (by families, systems, or even therapy itself)
- Respect for the emotional labor clients often carry just to be understood
We believe therapy should be a place where clients can take off the armor. Where identity is honored, not questioned. Where safety is felt, not just promised. And where the therapist isn’t another person a client has to educate to be seen.
Therapy as Sanctuary
We’re intentional about the word sanctuary.
Sanctuary is where you are free to be.
It’s where your story is not too much.
Where your grief is welcome, and your joy is protected.
Where your identity is not only allowed, it’s celebrated.
Especially in a climate where laws and rhetoric threaten basic rights, our job is to make sure the therapy room feels like a place of refuge. A place where healing is possible and connection is safe.
Because mental health support that doesn’t consider the impact of oppression isn’t comprehensive support.
Our Commitment, This Month and Every Month
Pride Month reminds us that celebration and protest go hand in hand. That joy is an act of resistance. And that affirming therapy can be a tool of liberation.
At Brighter Sky Counseling, we’re not perfect. But we’re committed.
We will keep learning.
We will keep showing up.
We will keep holding space for every client who walks through our doors to be exactly who they are with no need to shrink, hide, or explain.
To Our LGBTQIA+ Clients, Friends, and Community:
Your identity is not a diagnosis. It is not a debate.
You are worthy of joy, of rest, of softness.
You deserve to be supported by therapists who affirm you, respect you, and care deeply about your wholeness.
You belong here.
Always.