LGBTQ+ affirming therapy in Atlanta, where you are not the case study
Affirming should mean you can use the hour on the actual problem instead of bringing your therapist up to speed on your own life.
Dr. Aaron J. Kimble · PhD · MA · MBA · LPC · NCC · Georgia #LPC014380
In person in Midtown Atlanta, or by secure video in GA, FL, VT, SC and NY.
Eight years in practiceMore than 5,000 direct client hours with individuals, couples and families.
Affirming means the work starts in session one
A lot of people have had the experience of paying for therapy and spending the first several sessions doing unpaid education. Explaining what your relationship structure is. Clarifying pronouns more than once. Watching a well-meaning clinician treat your identity as the interesting part when you came in about your job.
Affirming care means none of that is the price of entry. Your identity is context, the way anyone's is. It is not the presenting problem unless you say it is. That single difference is usually what people mean when they say they want an affirming therapist, and it is worth being specific about rather than putting a flag on a website.
Which means two things are equally welcome here. The work that is about being queer or trans: coming out at whatever age it is happening, family who have responded badly or not at all, the exhausting arithmetic of who knows what, transition and the decisions around it. And the work that has nothing to do with it: anxiety, grief, a job you hate, a relationship in trouble for reasons any couple would recognize.
I work with individuals, couples and families, including relationships that do not fit a standard template. My practice draws on person-centered and relational approaches, feminist therapy, and family systems work, and I have eight years and more than 5,000 client hours behind that.
You might be here because
- You are out to some people and not others, and the managing is exhausting.
- Therapy has previously meant explaining yourself before you could start.
- Your family has responded to who you are with silence rather than words.
- You are figuring something out about your identity later than you expected to.
- You want couples work with someone who will not treat your relationship as unusual.
- You are trans or nonbinary and want a therapist who is not learning on your time.
- Religion was part of how you learned to be ashamed of yourself.
- You are tired, and it is the ambient kind rather than about any single event.
- You came out years ago and something about it is only surfacing now.
- You want to talk about something entirely unrelated to being queer.
What we work on together
Identity, at any stage
Working it out at nineteen or at fifty-four. There is no schedule this is supposed to follow, and arriving late to it is not a failure of nerve.
Coming out, and not coming out
Including the decision not to, which is sometimes the right one. Weighing safety, family, work and timing without being pushed toward disclosure.
Family of origin
Parents who are working on it, parents who are not, and the particular grief of a family that is polite and absent at the same time.
Relationships of every shape
Couples work for partners, including consensually non-monogamous and chosen-family structures, using Gottman-based repair work the same as for anyone.
Trans and nonbinary clients
Transition-related decisions, dysphoria, and the accumulated cost of being asked to justify your existence in ordinary rooms.
The rest of your life
Anxiety, depression, grief, work, ageing parents. Being queer does not exempt anyone from the ordinary difficulties, and those are welcome here too.
If someone spends their first three sessions educating me, I have taken their money and given them homework. Affirming means the work starts in session one.Dr. Aaron J. Kimble
How it works
A $25 consultation
Fifteen minutes, and a fair place to ask me direct questions about how I work before you commit anything.
You define what this is about
If your identity is the subject, we work on it. If it is context for something else entirely, that is what we do instead. You decide which.
In person or by video
The Midtown Atlanta office on Peachtree, or secure video anywhere in Georgia, Florida, Vermont, South Carolina and New York.
What you can expect from me
- No education tax. You should not have to teach your therapist the basics before the work can start.
- Your identity treated as context, not as the case study.
- Relationship structures other than monogamy treated as structures rather than as symptoms.
- Honesty about my own limits. I will tell you what I am less familiar with rather than improvise around it.
Fees & Insurance
$185 / individual · $220 / couples
Initial consultation $25. In network with Aetna, Anthem, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, CareSource, Cigna, Optum, and UnitedHealthcare. Sliding scale available.