Many of the people who come to us about gender or sexuality have already met a professional who asked whether they were sure. However well meant it sounds, that question carries a message: that something here has to be proven, that your existence is a case to be examined. At thestherapy we start from a completely different place. You did not come to prove who you are. You came so that you can live it.
Why identity is not a matter for diagnosis
Gender identity and sexuality are not symptoms, they are not diagnoses, they are not problems to be solved. They are parts of who you are. Our work is not to confirm or to question who you are. It is to help you live as who you are in a world that often does not make it easy. The difference is enormous. In one version you are under examination. In the other, you are a person who deserves support.
The practical weight of everyday life
Much of what you carry is entirely practical, and it deserves space. How you speak to your family. How you handle the comments or the silences at work. How you build a network of people who understand you, when everything around you feels isolating. How you decide what you say, to whom and when, without living in constant alert. These are not small things. They are the texture of daily life, and therapy can be a place where you work through them calmly.
- How to speak to your family, at your own pace and not under pressure.
- How to handle comments, questions or hostility in the workplace.
- How to build relationships and community where you feel safe.
- How to separate your own voice from the voices you have internalised.
- How to care for yourself when the surrounding world becomes exhausting.
Internalised stigma
There are harder, less visible things too. Internalised stigma is the voice you have heard from the outside for so many years that it now sounds like your own. The voice that tells you something about you is wrong, that you should hide, that you do not deserve the same as others. That voice can be worked with. It can soften, lose its grip, stop defining how you feel about yourself. But it takes time and a space where you are not bracing for the other person's reaction, where you are not expecting to be misunderstood.
You did not come to prove who you are. You came so that you can live it.
What specialisation means here
Specialising in gender and sexuality does not mean we know your experience. We do not, and we will not pretend that we do. It means, we hope, that we are less likely to misread it. That you will not have to educate us from scratch, nor defend your very existence before the real work can even begin.
A space that is waiting for you
We are a team of psychologists in Thessaloniki, offering sessions in Greek and in English, in person and online. If you are looking for a space where you will not have to explain or justify who you are, but simply to be, that space exists, and it is here whenever you are ready.