LGBTQ+ Identity, Experience & Wellbeing

A confidential, LGBTQ+ affirming space to explore sexuality, gender, identity and belonging. Coaching and mentoring can help you consider how these experiences shape your wellbeing, confidence, relationships and sense of safety.

There is space to explore who you are without pressure to adopt a label or reach a fixed understanding of yourself. You may be questioning your sexuality or gender, noticing changes over time, or wanting to feel more comfortable expressing an identity you already understand.

For some of us, growing up LGBTQ+ meant learning to hide or monitor ourselves to feel safe or accepted. Childhood experiences can shape core beliefs about whether we are valued or important, with lasting effects on self-worth, self-esteem and confidence. Shame can become woven into how we understand ourselves, affecting relationships, sex and intimacy.

Support may be helpful if you want to:

• develop self-acceptance, confidence and pride in your identity
• explore sexuality, gender, expression or fluidity without pressure to define yourself
• navigate coming out, gender transition or changes in how you understand your identity
• reflect on growing up LGBTQ+ and beliefs affecting your self-worth or self-esteem
• recognise how beliefs shaped by LGBTQ+ experiences may contribute to avoidance or make change feel difficult, and explore ways to move towards your goals
• explore shame, internalised phobia and stigma, masking or hiding parts of yourself
• think through sex, sexual wellbeing, intimacy and relationships
• find community connection or make sense of loneliness, isolation and disconnection
• explore the impact of hate incidents, discrimination, homophobia, biphobia or transphobia
• make space for joy, pleasure and belonging, including how your intersecting identities shape these experiences

Experience and Context 

Our lives also sit within a wider LGBTQ+ history. Criminalisation and the treatment of LGBTQ+ identities as mental illness have left a legacy that can affect trust and safety. The AIDS crisis brought profound loss, often compounded by stigma and failures of care. In Britain, Section 28 reinforced silence and exclusion around LGBTQ+ lives. These experiences are not confined to the past. Hostile political rhetoric and the denial, abuse or withdrawal of rights remain concerns in the UK and internationally, including for trans people. In some countries, same-sex relationships are criminalised and punished. Historical and continuing abuses can affect our safety, confidence, mental health and wellbeing.

Community connection can offer affirmation and a sense of being understood, but belonging is not always straightforward. You may feel disconnected or excluded from LGBTQ+ spaces or find that some parts of your identity are welcomed while others are overlooked. An intersectional approach recognises that LGBTQ+ identity is experienced alongside other parts of who we are, and that these intersecting identities can shape both belonging and exclusion.

LGBTQ+ identity and experience may also be explored within clinical supervision or reflective practice. This can be relevant when your work involves supporting LGBTQ+ communities, or when your own identity and lived experience are closely connected with your professional role.

This work is trauma-informed, compassionate and person-centred. It draws on more than 25 years of professional experience delivering, developing and leading LGBTQ+ mental health, advocacy and wellbeing services, alongside lived experience and understanding of LGBTQ+ community contexts.