The place to deepen queer healing
Get to know our team of LGBTQIA+ identified California therapists.
Through our years at Good Nature, we have been able to support so many amazing queer clients in growing to understand themselves and their identities more deeply, in becoming more confident, and in healing from the years of trauma they have been through.
As a team, we approach therapy with a powerful combination of trauma informed therapies and social justice informed framework. Living in today’s society has so many challenges that can be incredibly traumatic, and those who have a queer identity (or other marginalized identity) are so much more likely to experience hardships. We help our clients to dive into the roots of their mental health struggles, and see beyond the stories that this heteronormative, capitalistic, patriarchal, racist society tries to sell us.
We help our clients to connect to who they TRULY are, beyond all that societal programming. We can help you get there too.
You deserve to work with a therapist who deeply understands your unique experiences.
What it’s like to work with us
We are so passionate about supporting our queer community and seek to connect with you on a human to human level.
There are no “Freudian” vibes here- we aren’t just blank canvases judging and psychoanalyzing you from across the room (or through the computer screen). We wear our empathy on our sleeves and are emotionally present with you.
We want therapy to be a cozy, safe, emotionally fulfilling experience for you to be seen and understood for who you are and show up however feels authentic to you. Some days we may be doing a deep dive into your childhood trauma, other days we might be talking about your dreams for the future. Some days we might be talking about how painful it is to live in modern society with so much prejudice, corruption, inequality, and other days we might be gushing over our shared interest.
All parts of you and your process are welcome here.
What make us unique
There are a lot of therapists out there, and there would be a lot to gain from working with many of them. The queer, trauma informed lens is just such a specific perspective that not many people have. With this lens, we see through a lot of the programming our society has attempted to convince us of, and that has allowed us to be more true to ourselves.
So often the painful experiences of marginalized and oppressed people are minimized, invalidated, sugar coated, or turned into inspiration p*rn. Having someone (including a therapist) respond to your trauma in one of these ways can not only compound the original trauma, but also fuel loneliness and emotional isolation.
The clients we work with have unfortunately experienced this way too often, and come to us wanting a more affirmative and understanding space to process their trauma and heal.
Queer trauma never ends in this society, and we are walking this path with you. We can’t stop the world from being queerphobic, heteronormative, racist, or otherwise discriminatory, but we can help you find ways to be as healthy and true to yourself as possible.
We’d be honored to support you, wherever you currently are on your queer journey.
Our Guiding values
Safe & Comfortable Spaces to Heal
LGBTQIA+ Identity Affirmation
Intersectional Social Justice
Antiracism & Collective Liberation
Our Trauma Informed
Approaches to Therapy
Compassionate Inquiry
A somatic (mind/body) approach to therapy that helps tap into implicit memory stored in the body. Think of your body as a hard drive of information- CI helps to access the earliest roots of our mental health struggles to heal them at the source.
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EMDR
Using eye movements, EMDR helps access stored traumatic memories and reprocess them. It helps lessen the charge of emotional memories and reduces flashbacks to the traumatic event. EMDR is a more intense trauma healing modality.
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Internal Family Systems
Modern society likes to think our mind is just “one thing”. In reality, our nervous system is dynamic and layered, filled with “parts” (such as an inner child or an inner critic). IFS helps to reduce inner conflict between parts and find what our parts need to be healthy.
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Letter from Founders
Along with being partners in private practice, we are also partners in life! We met and started dating during graduate school, and a few years later we started this baby, Good Nature Empowerment Center.
We chose this name because we believe that people are fundamentally good natured. After working with many marginalized communities (the LGBTQIA+ community, those in addiction recovery, those in foster care, those navigating the legal system), we have seen that trauma is the root of troubled behavior, and that trauma healing can help people connect back to their true, good selves.
To have a practice where we get to empower and serve our amazing LGBTQIA+ community, and provide care through a social justice informed, anti-racist, and pro-liberation lens is so fulfilling for us both. The intersectional queer community needs specialized places to truly be understood and served well, and we’ve built the type of practice that we would want to go as clients. At the end of the day, we just want to see members of the LGBTQIA+ community thrive and live the amazing lives they deserve.
To be able to play a role in our clients’ healing journeys is so rewarding, and we are grateful to be doing this work! We would love to support you too.
Love,
Angela and Rae
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