Tag: Trans and non-binary
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Late-Diagnosed? The Grief, the Relief and Everything In Between
You’ve spent decades thinking you were lazy, too sensitive, scatty, odd or just “too much”. Then, in your thirties, forties or later, a diagnosis of ADHD or autism reframes everything. It’s a moment many adults describe as both a gift and a gut punch. What the research says The number of adults receiving a diagnosis…
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Kink, Attachment and the Past: Untangling a Tricky Question
A look at “Childhood Sexual Abuse, Adult Attachment Styles, and Involvement in BDSM Practices in Adult Intimate Relationships” by Maja Selič and Vesna Jug (2025) There’s an old, tired assumption that anyone into kink must be “damaged” in some way. It’s an assumption that has done a lot of harm to people who simply enjoy…
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Peers, Pixels and Healing: Online Group Support for Queer Male Survivors of Sexual Trauma
A look at “Peer online motivational interviewing and affirmative care for sexual and gender minority men who are survivors of sexual trauma: A randomized clinical trial” by Joan M. Cook, Chyrell Bellamy, Amy E. Ellis, Vanessa Simiola, Steve Martino, Nicholas A. Livingston and Maria O’Connell (2025) A gentle note: this post discusses sexual trauma in…
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Welcome to the United Kink-dom: Furries, Pet Play and Beyond
A look at “A Survey of the United Kink-dom: Investigating Five Paraphilic Interest Groups and Their Demographic and Psychological Correlates” by Ashley Brown, Edward D. Barker, Stella Friedrich and Qazi Rahman (2026) With a title like that, we were always going to cover this one. Researchers at King’s College London surveyed people in five communities…
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“Who Are You?”: Queer Co-Mothers and the Professionals Who Don’t Quite Get It
A look at “‘We carry on living in this othered world’: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of lesbian/queer co-mothers’ relationships with professional support” by Beth Levy and Amanda Middleton (2025) Picture walking into a GP surgery, a school meeting or a hospital ward with your partner and your child, only to be met with a puzzled…
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Mostly Good News (With Some Glitches): Queer Clients’ Experiences of Therapy
A look at “Therapy and counselling experiences of queer adults in Germany” by Sonja Bröning and Agostino Mazziotta (2024) After the rather gloomy picture in “‘They Must Be Sick’: How Therapists See Non-Monogamous Clients”, here’s something a little more cheering. This German study asked nearly 500 queer adults about their actual experiences of therapy. The…
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Feelings, Online and Affirmed: Trans People’s Experiences of a Digital Emotion Regulation Programme
A look at “‘You get a better idea of what you want to do with your life’: needs and experiences of transgender and gender diverse individuals participating in an internet delivered emotion regulation treatment” by Markus Byström, Hedvig Engberg and Hanna Sahlin (2026) Trans and gender diverse people experience higher rates of emotional distress. That…
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From Puberty to Menopause: ADHD Across Women’s Lives
A look at “Integrative literature review – the impact of ADHD across women’s lifespan” by Kati Krebs and Roslyn Donnellan-Fernandez (2025) We’ve touched on hormones and ADHD a few times in this series: midlife diagnosis in “The Missing Years: ADHD, Midlife and Menopause”, women’s Reddit communities in “What Reddit Reveals About Women and ADHD”, and…
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Who Cares for the Carers? LGBTQIA+ Caregivers and Mental Health
A look at “Assessing sexual and gender identity interaction with the relationship between caregiving and adverse mental health outcomes” by G. Thomas Wilson II, Gilbert Gimm and Rodman Turpin (2026) Caring for an ageing parent, a poorly partner or a friend in need is one of the most loving things anyone can do. It can…
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Not a Trend, a Survival Strategy: LGBTQIA+ People and Family Estrangement
A look at “Relatively not speaking” by Alix Fox (2026) Scroll through the headlines and you’d think family estrangement was the latest fad, fuelled by celebrity feuds and TikTok “estrange-fluencers” urging everyone to go “no contact”. This Therapy Today feature asks whether that’s really true, and points out that LGBTQIA+ people have been navigating family…
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“I Couldn’t, I’m Way Too Jealous!”: How Polyamorous People Really Handle Jealousy
A look at “‘How Do You Manage It? I Couldn’t; I’m Way Too Jealous!’ A Qualitative Research on How Polyamorous People Deal with Their Partners’ Relationships” by Natalia Spada, Marco De Vettor, Nicola Carone, Arianna Feligioni, Gabriele Lo Buglio, Vittorio Lingiardi, Guido Giovanardi and Tommaso Boldrini (2026) Tell someone you’re polyamorous and there’s a good…
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Double the Stress: Trans People of Colour, Paperwork and Mental Health
A look at “Centering transgender and gender nonconforming people of color in the study of minority stress, transition-related factors, and mental health” by Michelle R. Dalton, Scott Secrest, Aline Araujo Hoffmann, Maria Nash, Divya Patel, Joanne Salas, M. Paz Galupo and Katie Heiden-Rootes (2026) Much research on trans mental health has focused mostly on white…
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The Missing Years: ADHD, Midlife and Menopause
A look at “Women, ADHD and the missing years” by Rachael Martin (2026) Picture a woman in her late forties who has spent decades holding it all together: job, family, ageing parents, a calendar like a game of Tetris. Then perimenopause arrives and the whole thing topples over. For a growing number of women, this…
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How to Find a Therapist Who Truly Affirms Your Identity
Looking for a therapist can feel like speed-dating, with higher stakes. For LGBTQIA+ people, there’s an extra layer: will this person understand me, or will I spend my sessions educating them? Worse, will they quietly see who I am as the problem? Here’s how to find someone who’ll welcome the whole of you. What “affirming”…
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Cycles and Concentration: Periods and ADHD
A look at “Menstrual health and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms: A scoping review” by Gabriela Kennedy, Megan Baran-Goldwax and Sarah Lippé (2026) Many ADHDers who menstruate will tell you that some weeks their brain feels like a well-oiled machine, and other weeks like a shopping trolley with a wonky wheel. Medication seems to stop working,…
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Minority Stress Explained: Why It’s Not “All in Your Head”
If you’re LGBTQIA+, you may have heard well-meaning people say that queer people are “just more anxious” or “more sensitive”. The research tells a very different story. It’s not that something is wrong with us. It’s that living in a world that isn’t always kind takes a toll. Psychologists call this minority stress. What the…
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What Reddit Reveals About Women and ADHD
A look at “Symptom expression and coping strategies in women-focused attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder communities: a comparative natural language analysis of Reddit” by Joohee Seo, Youngsoo Kim, Sohyeon Ryu, Sunjoong Kim and Lidia Zylowska (2026) If you want to know what living with ADHD is really like, you could read a diagnostic manual, or you could spend…
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The Elephant (or Unicorn) in the Therapy Room: Why Research Forgets About Sex
A look at “Bridging the blind spot in psychotherapy research on personality disorders: a proposal for sexuality-related outcomes as indicators of therapeutic change” by Agnieszka Izdebska, Marta Elżbieta Szymańska-Pytlińska, Jerzy Bandel, Michał Marcin Sieński, Joanna Agata Franczyk and Monika Olga Jańczak (2026) When researchers test whether a therapy works, they measure all sorts of things:…