LGBTQ+ therapy in New York
A therapist you don't have to explain yourself to.
Not every LGBTQ+ person needs a therapist who shares their identity. But most are tired of spending the first month teaching one. Here, the queer and trans context is already understood — so session one starts at your actual life, not your glossary.
Where we begin
Session one starts at your life, not your glossary.
A lot of therapy asks you to do two jobs at once: be in the room, and also explain the room you came from. What your pronouns mean and why they matter. What your relationship structure is. Why the holidays are complicated. Who you're out to and who you're not. That teaching is unpaid labor — and you've done plenty of it already.
Here, that context is the baseline, not the curriculum. You don't have to translate "chosen family" or justify why a misgendering at work landed the way it did. We get to spend the hour on what you actually came in for.
Beyond affirming
Affirming is the floor, not the ceiling.
"LGBTQ+ affirming" has come to mean, at minimum, a therapist who won't pathologize you for being who you are. Good — that should be table stakes. But a floor isn't a destination. Being accepted in the room is not the same as the room helping you build the life you're accepting yourself into.
The arc here goes further: get to a place where you can be your true self without bracing — and from there, real connection gets possible, with a partner, a community, your own history — and from there, the goals you actually came in for stop feeling out of reach. Being your true self isn't the finish line. It's what makes the rest of it reachable.
What people bring
The specific weather of a queer life.
Coming out — the first time, or the fortieth, because it never really stops. The particular exhaustion of being the only one in the room. Family that loves you in a way that still hurts. Dating with a nervous system that learned to expect rejection. The internalized voice that got installed young and still narrates. Gender that's still unfolding, at whatever pace it's unfolding.
And often, underneath all of it: trauma that grew in the specific soil of growing up different. For that, EMDR is part of what's on offer here — trauma work that doesn't ask you to first prove the injury was real. How EMDR works →
One more thing
You don't have to be LGBTQ+ to work with me.
The practice is built around queer and trans lives, but the thing underneath — a therapist who meets you without needing you to perform "normal" — isn't only useful to queer people. If what drew you here is the sense of being met without translation, you're welcome, whoever you are.
Who you'll be working with
None of this is theoretical for me.
I'm Alex Conway, LMHC. I trained at Brown and George Washington University, did crisis counseling with The Trevor Project and advocacy work with the ACLU's LGBTQ+ project — and I've lived in queer community my whole adult life. The fluency you're reading about isn't a marketing position. It's just where I'm standing.
When you're ready
Come as you already are.
The first conversation is free — fifteen minutes, no pressure. Just space to say what's going on and see if this is a fit.