Gabriel Molinaro (they/them)

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” -Carl Rogers. Self-acceptance is not an excuse to ignore bad behavior. It is a doorway to actually help us take full responsibility for our lives - the good and bad - and move more fully into our preferred selves. A Person-Centered approach is deceptively simple, but turns out to be a lot harder than we think in that it targets the culprit behind so many of our problems: shame.

Sometimes we do not have to dig into all the shit of our past in order to achieve the kind of change we are looking for. We often already possess the skills, resources, and strengths needed to get to where we want to go, and we just need an outside witness to help us see what is already there.

We are constantly re-telling the story of our lives, often anchored on particular events and micro-stories that helps us form meaning. But the story of our lives is almost always more intricate and complex than the truncated versions that we develop over time. And somehow other people's stories can come to dominate our own - telling us who we are, who we should be, and what is important. Narrative Therapy gives us the valuable tools separate our stories from ones we don't want told anymore.

Anxiety is the most logical response to trauma, difficult childhood experiences, bullying, oppression, abuse, and capitalism. It is the warning bell that tells us something is wrong, and something definitely is wrong or has been wrong. But sometimes that bell goes off even when we don't need it to, disrupting our lives. The work we do in therapy is to help that alarm work as it's supposed to, when it is supposed to.

Exploring, discovering, and expressing your unique gender is exciting, fun, and life-giving. But doing those things in a culture and a setting like ours can also be dangerous, scary, and confusing. It shouldn't be that way, but it often is. The work we do in therapy is all about enabling you to still access the joy and fun of your gender in the midst of less-than-ideal circumstances, and sometimes changing those circumstances through community building, activism, and creative resistance.

If you are reading this, you have already done so much work already towards loving yourself, and I am proud of you. There are a lot of voices out there with many reasons why you should hate yourself, but the fact that you are actively looking for support in this area means the hold of those other voices is already starting to crack. Congratulations, you are at the beginning of a beautiful journey.