As a therapist, you may be asking yourself: "Am I competent to work with trans clients?". In this interview with Josiah Twiselton of Offbeat Therapy, we explore what it really means to offer a welcoming space to transgender people.

Key Takeaways:

• Allyship is more than the absence of hostility towards cients
• How therapists can unintentionally centre themselves while trying to help
• The small and often unnoticed ways therapy can feel inaccessible
• What therapists can do if they're not sure they are "ready" to work with trans clients
• How to think honestly about competence with this client group
• Why older transgender clients may lack social support
• The challenges faced by drag performers
• Why lived experience and community matter when working with trans clients
• How recognising trans joy is as important as recognising struggles
• The current situation for transgender people in the UK

Josiah Twiselton is the founder of Offbeat Therapy where he specialises in working with older transgender people, drag performers and queer creatives. His video-based course "Trans Allyship for Counsellors" is available for purchase from his website HERE. Use the code GEC2026 to receive a 10% discount.

If you're a cis (non trans) woman who would like to show your support for inclusion, please sign the Not In Our Name women's open letter HERE. It calls attention to the real cause of violence against women and girls and enables you to say that you, as a woman, value trans inclusion.

Setting up in private practice? Download my free checklist HERE

Need ideas for how to get clients? Download my free handout 21 Ways for Counsellors to Attract New Clients HERE

You can also find me here:

The Good Enough Counsellors Facebook Group

Josephine Hughes on Facebook

Josephine Hughes on YouTube

My website: josephinehughes.com

KEYWORDS: trans therapy, LGBTQ+ therapy, inclusive counseling, trans joy, barriers to therapy, older trans people, trans therapist training, allyship in therapy, trans mental health, queer therapy, access to counselling, diversity in therapy, community support for trans people, mental health for trans individuals, supporting drag performers, therapy for marginalized communities

The information contained in Good Enough Counsellors is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this podcast are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this podcast. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this podcast.

Josephine Hughes disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this podcast.

If you're trans and you've lost a lot of your support network at the point of transition, you're then so much more vulnerable in older age. And also this idea that people. So when I was a young person, we would really celebrate people's 25th birthdays because there was.

And I don't know where this number came from, and I think it probably more reflects the. The average life expectancy of trans women of color. But this idea of being 25 years old was like the.

You'd reached kind of beyond your life expectancy.

Welcome to Good Enough Counsellors, the podcast for growing a private practice without the pressure to be perfect. I'm Josephine Hughes, counsellor and creator of Therapy Growth Group, helping you get the clients you want and create the practice of your dreams.

Today I'm joined by Josiah Twisleton, an integrative counsellor who runs Offbeat Therapy. Josiah works mainly with trans clients, including older trans people, and also drag performers and queer creatives.

He's also developed training for therapists who want to think more deeply about what genuine allyship and inclusion looks like in the therap therapy room.

So in this conversation, we'll be talking about some of the barriers trans people can face when trying to access therapy and how therapists can think more carefully about creating spaces that genuinely feel welcoming.

Josiah, it's really lovely to have you here and perhaps the best place to start is just by asking you to introduce yourself and tell us how Offbeat Therapy came about.

Yes. So I'm Josiah Twistleton and I'm a intuitive counselor. Yeah. Founder of Offbeat Therapy. So I'm working predominantly at the moment. Yeah.

In private practice with mostly with trans clients, particularly older client. Older trans people. I do some work with drag performers and kind of different. Kind of kinds of queer performers as well.

And also a tutor working for cpcab. And I do trainings and, like, workshops and things as well on the side.

Brilliant.

So I sort of obviously been looking at your website in preparation for today, and you say that Offbeat therapy asks the question, how could things be different for those who are different? What made you sort of feel that traditional therapy spaces weren't always meeting people's needs?

I think what I see a lot is I've done a lot of diversity training has kind of been part of my career the whole way through.

And I think what I tend to see is that people are still kind of like everything we talk about with counseling is putting yourself in someone else's frame of reference.

Right.

And a lot of the Ways that people will look at diversity is this. I quote Myra Khan a lot. She talks about this experience of being the only Muslim woman in her training group.

And the way that the diversity kind of week that you get was, was set up was this idea that it was going to be for people who were all kind of quite unquote normal and weren't the diverse ones and the diverse people would be the clients who are out there and it's only clients who are diverse. And she wasn't kind of factored into the training. There was no thought that she would be this diverse person in a training setting.

And I think I see that so much where people kind of go, okay, well we'll do.

From my perspective as someone who doesn't need these accommodations, I'll do all these things that I think are going to help when actually it's systems that people need to change rather than just kind of the idea of like putting a ramp on a building and why don't you just build the building differently so that people can all get in that kind of approach to access. So I think, yeah, the difference kind of comes from essentially just looking at everything of why do we have to have some things in a certain way?

Why can't we change a lot of the systems and not just like the kind of things that people know are these accessible things that they should be doing almost. Yeah.

So not just doing add ons, just being inclusive right from the start.

So it's about kind of, yeah, just I guess building in flexibility rather than saying it's going to be this way and this will be accessible for everyone, which nothing ever will be if you take a kind of one size approach.

Well, I think the other thing is as well is that I think many of us can be quite blind to where people actually need us to respond to them in a different way. And I think it's very easy for people like myself to other people, isn't it?

And I think we don't even know we're doing it a lot of the time because we've got to have that awareness, haven't we? We need to know of the way that people from marginalized communities might experience the world.

I think, and I think that's something that's really part of what you do, isn't it?

In terms of your training is helping people to understand what it's like to be from a marginalised community so that when we are in the therapy room we can be aware of that. So yeah, so what from your experience, what are some of the barriers that transgender people can face in accessing therapy.

I think it's kind of that, what you said, like, the. The feeling of other. In kind of in someone else's world of, like, being so.

I also quote Dwight Turner a lot, who talks about this, like, the psychological experience of otherness and this idea that even though people can go to a service and it might say they're trans friendly, they might have a rainbow flag on their website or something, or a sticker on the door, there's so many things that just are kind of making people fit into a certain mold. And if you've got so many things going on that are making them fit into a certain mold, that experience in itself is a really uncomfortable one.

So kind of what I'm hoping to do in my work is just kind of, like, ease the edges of that mould a little bit so people have the space to breathe and not have to go. Yeah, they're already coming to therapy potentially to discuss something completely unrelated.

So then to not have to come in and worry about all these really kind of minute things that added up together, create this really stressful and often traumatic experience.

Yeah, yeah. Could you give me some examples, just so people can have an idea of some sort of, like, what these sort of small things might be?

So I think the. What I kind of COVID in the training is kind of some ways in which people will.

Even in trying to do really good by the community, they're almost kind of doing then the wrong thing again. So, like, if people. I think people often think that allyship is the absence of hostility. So if I'm not hostile, therefore I'm an ally.

And actually, what this. This training is saying is that there's a whole load more behind. That's like, the first step through the door is to not be hostile.

The next bit is how do you actually do allyship in a good way? How do you do it in an empowering way?

So I think quite often what I see is, like, maybe people who are just a bit too eager to please or a bit too eager to be the best ally. And actually it turns into a bit of, like, proving for themselves how great an ally they are, which is it's.

It centers themselves as opposed to.

Yeah, yeah. It's a burden on that person.

And it becomes this then kind of, like, performative thing, or clients are feeling like, well, at least they're not hostile.

So I will overlook all of these other things that are actually, you know, I'll overlook the invasive questions or the questions that are due to the therapist's own kind of, own curiosity. And I think often there's people who.

So a lot of what I talk about in the training as well is people who have advertised as an ally or they've ticked a box.

And I really would love for the directories to have a kind of separate thing for interested in working with and experienced in working with or trained in working with, because I think people will take the box.

And there was a little kind of very unscientific study that I did as part of this training where I looked locally around me and I think only one person out of the.

Can't remember how many people, but kind of many, many counselors in my local area who had ticked the box but wouldn't had never said anything else about how they work with the community. So it's kind of little things like that of going in and not even.

Maybe not even trusting that, you know, that social media post that they saw that seemed to celebrate Pride Month is going to be enough.

So kind of all those little barriers that people face in terms of like, well, I've seen this person is maybe, you know, has the right attitude towards trans people, but can they actually work with this thing I'm bringing to therapy? If you overlay a trans lens on it as well?

Yeah, because I think there's a sort of like a depth of knowledge that it takes time to build up if you're not part of the community, doesn't it?

And I guess for me, you know, I tell you what, I was particularly struck when I read on your website about your work with drag performers and your blog where you talked about your sort of history and how you have grown up in the community and how you understand about sort of queer history, really. And with the best will in the world, it takes a while to build up that sort of knowledge, doesn't it?

I mean, you know, for you, it's part of your life, it's part of your understanding.

And, you know, I'm sort of like gradually learning more about sort of trans history and stuff, but I think there's just that depth of knowledge that somebody who's not part of the community perhaps doesn't know about. And it takes. It takes time to learn that. And I think that's just part of it, isn't it? And we can tick a box, but we don't necessarily know a lot.

I think that's the thing. Yeah.

And that's where I think one of the sections of the training is to. One of the suggestions is to examine your Community involvement.

So if you're someone, there's an activity where you're kind of looking at the information you get about the community. How positive is it and where does it actually come from? Does it come from trans people themselves?

Yeah.

Is that most of what you're reading written by people about trans people?

And I kind of give like a challenge to people of like, okay, go down to your local pride event or something, or go down to your local drag bar or not necessarily the same, but like, they'll get kind of crossover of community. And thinking about how do you kind of exist within queer spaces even if you're not a queer person? It's a bit more difficult.

But like, how do you exist within queer spaces and actually absorb kind of genuine community and genuine culture rather than just what you might read about and, you know, as someone who's just whatever algorithm you're on, as a.

Potentially as a CIS therapist, you're not going to get all of the kind of nuance of the community that you will get if you're actually engaging with the community. So I think one of the big things is also about. I talk about allyship being a verb rather than just like a thing that you are.

It's something you need to really actively engage with and like. And also, like, have fun doing that. You know, like, there's this.

There's this world of like, culture and history that I think people don't realize is out there. I think people kind of often think of this as like a young people's thing that has developed in the past, like 10 years. And there's so much.

There's so many, you know, there's not as many queer and trans elders because we lose people a lot, but there is that. There is history. If you go looking for it and you can enjoy being, you know, attached to that community and being. Being immersed in that culture.

There's just. I think there's. What I noticed when I.

When I talk to my daughter who's obviously in the community, is it just actually makes me realize how little I know. I think. I think that's. That's part of it. And the fact that, you know, so much of history of queer history is, is repressed really, isn't it?

It's not something that's talked about, for example, trans history and how far back we can go.

And I think that's where like, it's. It can be like.

I think what I'm saying with the training is not that everyone needs to become like this expert in things, but it's just about being really aware of. Because I think some people. So the example.

I use kind of an example of like a fake therapist and what their profile might look like to kind of illustrate the point.

So I've got the example in the examine your community involvement section of someone who is maybe a gay man who's within the LGBT community and is like, well, I. You know, I know I know people, therefore I'm good. I don't need to learn anything.

And it's this idea that even, like, queer therapists or even trans therapists who know their subsection and their friends to not necessarily extrapolate that out to everyone, because obviously, like, there's so many things that will change how our trans people's experiences are. But I think for someone just to be really aware of, like, how much they don't know, which is what we. Again, what we do as therapists.

But I think with this, people kind of feel like, well, I either.

Either they're kind of scared of, like, well, I need to know everything, otherwise I can't do it, or they kind of go in a bit if they do have some community connection. And often that's like, one person.

I think as a trans person, you also know that you're going to be someone's kind of token trans person who gets trotted out as the example every time they speak about trans people. You know, if someone knows me, they know one experience and probably not all of the experience. So I think there's. It's. It's less about.

I don't want people to have to, like, feel like they need to learn everything, but it's about being aware that that history is there. Right. And that there is this. There is this, like, deep culture and enjoying connecting to that.

That's going to be way more beneficial to a trans client than someone who assumes they know everything or backs off because they're scared because they don't know everything.

Yeah, I guess. I mean, what's coming up for me is sort of approaching it with humility, really. It's not thinking, you know, and being willing to learn as well. Yeah.

So one of the things that you talk about is centering trans joy as well as the difficulties faced by the community. Why do you think that's important?

But I think for many people the visibility that we've gained recently has meant more unsafety.

So I think what I also want therapists to remember is like, it's not just this, this kind of doom and gloom experience of being trans, particularly when there's community, particularly when there's like decent connection and a particularly decent connection with a therapist who gets it. That can be such a joyous thing. And I think the kind of like understanding.

So like, I'm thinking about like London Trans Pride this year that I know we both attended, like last year, there was as much as it was a protest and as much as it was a kind of, you know, it's, it's a serious thing, right, to kind of go and protest.

There was also like for me, as someone who transitioned sort of 15 plus years ago to see from where the protest I used to attend 15 years ago of like 10 people and knowing everybody within that community to now seeing 100,000 people, and not just trans people, but supporters who never would have been around before. It was all exclusively trans people before.

That's like a really joyous thing to see, like humor in it, to see connection, to see, you know, the fact that I'm now seeing like, you know, like trans specific life drawing classes and all these like, you know, little things that like the trans community is coming together, that for me is a really joyous thing.

And also the idea that, you know, for most people transition is this really joyous thing and it's this really life changing thing that allows you to get on with the rest of your life. For many people.

Yes.

And I think it's really important that therapists see that part as well. And not just the struggle.

Yeah. Because I think it's actually almost a trope about trans people that, that they're all really mentally distressed.

And one of the things, as somebody who monitors the not in our name women's social media, one of the tropes that's constantly repeated is, oh, they're mentally ill men, it's always about trans women. And it's just one of those tropes and they're terribly sad.

It's very difficult for them and well, yes, it is difficult for them because of the way they're being treated. But actually like you said, there's a lot of joy in it. The transition actually is a great thing.

It helps you, you know, and yes, there are people who are suffering, but they're mainly suffering because they haven't got access to the care that they actually need. And I think if we made it more widely available, there'd be a lot more people who'd be a lot happier, actually.

Because I would say the vast majority of what I work with is people who are struggling with the world they're living in and the way they're being treated.

Yeah.

Rather than any, you know, there's, you know, obviously some kind of internal conflict with some people.

But the vast majority of my work is how do I exist in this world when the pressure is building and building and I'm being so restricted in how I live my life and I'm scared about how I might live my life in the future. Across the community, so many people are looking at, you know, the way that the States is going, fears about the way that UK might be going.

Thinking about immigration, I'm having to suddenly become really try and. Try and read up about how immigration works to various different countries.

You know, not that I'm giving advice or anything, but just kind of to understand what people are looking at doing. Because people are scared and they're trying to think about if things really hit the fan, how do we continue living. That's the cause of the distress.

It's the way people are being treated and the way the world's going to, rather than, you know, their bodies or mental health.

And I just want to say at this point that this is, this isn't Josiah exaggerating. It really isn't.

This week, for example, government's announced a review into adult services of gender affirming care and taken cross sex hormones away from 16 to 18 year olds. And it is a very, very worrying time. And you know, as, as the parent of someone who's trans, you know, I'm.

I'm worried and I think this is sort of like, for me, sort of like an experience of, of what it is to be. To experience minority stress, really. Because this is what we're talking about and, you know, this. It's just a constant onslaught, isn't it?

And this is what Josiah's talking about. So. Yeah. So having said that, Josiah, let's move on.

We might sort of circle back to it in a bit, but I'd really love to know about you working your work with drag performers and, and queer creatives. So how did that come about, working with people like this?

So I think, yeah, like that, that blog that you read, I kind of. Yeah, from, from kind of A late teenager really grew up on the. The kind of, the like trans activism scene.

The kind of the few club nights and bar nights that there were in London at that time. And I think what was really lovely. I used to hang out at bar whatever at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Well, it was else.

It was Central Station in King's Cross kind of back in the day, but we moved to Royal Vauxhall Tavern. I used to do some of the, like.

I was a theatre technician at the time, so I did some of the like tech for things and just kind of being around that community.

And I think particularly at that point because the community was so small, I think now people are probably split off into age demographics and things. I think probably younger people now won't really interact with older trans people as much as I did. Whereas because we were such a small community.

Yeah, you were just hanging out with everyone because that was your shed that you didn't have the option of just hanging out with other younger people, young people. So I, yeah, like grew up around all of these people that I probably would never have crossed paths with.

And I still have some great friends who are in their 80s. I have people who are like my age. I had, I had this real cross section of, yeah, just really lovely kind of like mentors. And there's a real.

I think there's such a problem with like a lack of elder, like having like a lack of queer elders. So a lot of the people that I interacted with were performers and particularly with bar whatever. At that time it was a real like kind of open mic.

Anyone can come and do whatever talent they want. A lot of drag performers would do kind of like regular things or one offs there. So I kind of grew up around this culture of.

And not even just kind of like the. What people now think of as like RuPaul's Drag Race esque drag, but real like queer drag that isn't.

It's not just people dressing up in wigs and heels, but experimenting with gender in weird and wonderful ways. Some of the things I have seen over the years have just been kind of indescribable.

And I think, yeah, just kind of growing up around that and also knowing how much that particularly drag performers and particularly drag queens kind of take on for the community. They've recently been the target of a lot of the kind of hatred around drag queen story hours and things.

It's now become this thing that apparently drag queens are really dangerous to kids and things like that. So they've kind of been at the forefront always of the kind of the fight for queer rights. And so I think to be able to give something back to them.

And I'm also really aware that I think within kind of performance drag circuits, there's. I mean, there's a lack of money, there's a lack of kind of access. You work weird hours, you're traveling all over the country.

Something like therapy, where it's a weekly thing and an expensive thing can be quite difficult to access. So what I kind of hope to do, so I offer free. I raise money for free, for free sessions for any of my clients, but that's also there.

And I kind of try to also operate kind of a flexible appointment structure so that like any kind of queer performers can use that because, yeah, fitting into. That's kind of where we come back to like fitting into the traditional therapy spaces is quite difficult for them.

Yeah, I mean, I think you sort of there you really light on sort of like a really important part about access, isn't it? Because there's that monetary side. It can be so difficult for people to access therapy because, you know, they're not necessary.

You know, a lot of transgender people might find it difficult to find employment. You know, they might be, you know, saving up for the next part of their transition or something. And so lack of money is a real problem, isn't it?

And I did, I did notice that as well that you do sort of like go fund me and stuff like that, don't you? To try and raise money for the community.

Yeah, so I do. I offer. I try to offer usually blocks of 12 sessions that are free and kind of crowdfunded. And then I do, yeah, some low cost.

And I'm also now about to build a kind of emergency fund.

So because there's been points like when the Supreme Court ruling happened last year, I felt found myself wanting to kind of do a bit of like an emergency response of like, if people need it, what can I do? But not having the time or space or money to do it myself.

So I want to kind of also build a. I've just changed my kind of pricing structure so that part of the money that every client pays is either going to the free fund or to this emergency fund where if something happens again within the community, I can then have the means to offer, you know, some maybe one off sessions or something and then, you know, be able to afford the supervision and therapy myself to then cope with that. And so it's all about, yeah, kind of feeding back in which I think kind of Emulates as well.

Like drag shows are often raising money for someone's surgery or something. Or like, that would be a lot of.

Yeah, you know, when I would go to events as a younger person would be raising money for something within the community. So it's kind of emulating that aspect of, like, our community structure as well, within my kind of business structure.

Yeah.

So would you say that one of the difficulties that sort of drag queens performers find is because they're very visible, that they come in for a lot of hate? Is that one of the impacts of the current situation?

Yeah, I think there's been a kind of a shift recently and I think how come. How kind of comfortable people feel? You know, many people will do their base makeup or something and travel to their shows on the train or something.

And I think there's been a real. Just kind of increase in how unsafe people are feeling in doing that.

I think people have always felt unsafe and have always been unsafe, but I think there is a real. Just across the board, there is a real tide change that has happened in terms of how safe people are feeling.

Even myself as a passing trans man using toilets in public is. Is now a thing that I didn't, you know, 10 years ago I wasn't fussed about. Now it's a source of fear for me if I'm out in the world.

So I think there's been this real shift. And, yeah, drag performers are the, you know, the face of that.

And also in terms of people coming into clubs and, like, stag dudes coming into clubs and things, there's just a bit more hostility, I think, that people are seeing at the moment.

Yeah.

If you're listening to this and hearing what Josiah's saying, and you're a CIS woman, something that you can do is sign our not in our name women's petition, which is women standing up for the transgender community and calling notice to. To actually what the source of violence against women and girls is, which isn't trans people.

And you can find that@notinarname.org UK all you need to do is just add your signature. So I'd love to talk to you a bit. You know, obviously you've had a lot of contact with older trans people as well.

Why is this group often less visible, do you think?

I mean, I think historically we're thinking back to kind of people who would be in. In their kind of older age now if they were within the queer community, potentially. There's the impact of the AIDS crisis.

There's also the impact of Kind of, I guess the wider impact of that time period of we've, you know, we lose a lot of people to suicide, we lose a lot of people to murder and hate crime. So there is. And I think also the kind of, what people will sometimes tend to do is the point of transition is where people are most visible.

They're most in need of support. If you're someone who has the privilege of being able to then just kind of fade into the rest of society, you can kind of disappear.

And I think often not, not always, but trans men with the effects of testosterone are a lot easier to just be able to kind of blend in. So trans men often will kind of go off and, and live a kind of quieter life out of. Out of the space, the spotlight.

And it's not always possible for everyone. So people tend to kind of stay around if they. They don't have that luxury. They don't have the. They kind of still need the support of the community.

But yeah, we lose a lot of people through violence, essentially. And there is this real. It's. It's very unusual for us to see older trans people. And they do exist.

Many of them are just living life with no one knowing because it wasn't safe for them to be out before. And I think what we are now seeing is a bit more focus on the things that any older person needs to consider.

So stuff like care and families and the way that maybe your kind of support ecosystem, as I call it, the clients kind of gets dwindled away as you get older. If you're trans and you've lost a lot of your support network transition, you're then so much more vulnerable in older age.

And also this idea that people. So when I was a young person, we would really celebrate people's 25th birthdays because there was. And I don't know where this number came from.

And I think it probably more reflects the. The average life expectancy of trans women of color. But this idea of being 25 years old was like the.

You'd reached a kind of beyond your life expectancy. And that was the understanding within the community at the time. I think it's probably a bit more kind of demographic specific.

But yeah, 25 was such an important age. There's a song by a trans musician called Izzy Heltay who talks about turning 25 and not kind of realizing that there was a life beyond that.

And so I think even though I talk about older age and I think people think people in maybe their 70s or 80s, but actually people in their late 20s. I still see having this kind of crisis of identity of going, I never thought I would live beyond this.

I never thought I would have to live a life of a 30 year old or a 40 year old or 50 year old. How do I do that? Because there's no blueprint for what being a trans 60 year old looks like, for example.

Yeah, I think there's such a lot that you've said, just explaining that to me, you know, just sort of thinking what it must be like for you, you know, to be in a community where you just see members of your community, you know, you lose them to suicide, you lose them to violence. And that's just so outside so many people's experience, isn't it? And that thought of that, you know, 25, it's so young.

Yeah, yeah. This idea that it was. That was like the pinnacle of old age, essentially, when I, you know, as me as like an 18, 19 year old, but.

And then, like the rare glimpses you'd get. I remember meeting a woman so that. Yeah, she was. I think this was probably about 15 years ago. She was 92 years old.

She just turned 92 the night I met her. She was going in for open heart surgery the next day, and she said she was so glad that she.

She was like, you know, there's a high chance I might die on the table tomorrow. She was 92. Yeah, she was. But she was so glad that she had been able to come out, I think, like a year before.

And she said, I've had the best year of my life, like, living this life as me, because she had waited for her partner to die before she had come out because she didn't want to upset and kind of, in her eyes, ruined that relationship. But, you know, she was there going, well, I might die tomorrow. But I've had this experience of one year living as me.

And, yeah, I still remember her, you know, 15 years later. And it's this. It was such a rare thing to meet a really, really old trans person, you know, and the kind of.

The people that I do know now as well are such kind of important figures in my life because they're my only kind of roadmap for what, older.

Age, for the future. Yeah.

And my clients as well.

And I guess, I mean, because I do know sort of people more my sort of age, you know, 50s, 60s, because they've transitioned sort of later, so they're sort of relatively young in transgender, you know, in sort of like having sort of come out, but they're older in. In their age as well. But that's slightly different I think maybe from what you're saying.

Well, I think that's also another part of like trans joy that I really like. Is there.

Yeah, there is this kind of like two different age thing of like someone could be like a very new, new to being out as trans person, getting support from someone who's younger, who's been transitioned way longer. And there's this real like cross generate. It's kind of like upsets the usual generational thing.

That's really interesting. So is there anything that gives you hope when you look at the future of sort of therapy for the LGBTQ communities?

I mean, I think the, I think there is a lot of. As much as it's really difficult for people to access like therapy, it's a privilege to be able to do therapy, training to be able to afford it.

I think there are, there's a lot of trans counsellors and I think it's with any group, I think with any kind of marginalized group, I think you end up getting a lot of people who are drawn to stuff like social work stuff like counseling because people, you know, have been there, got a T shirt and want to, want to do the work.

So I think, and I think the fact that I do see a lot of people and this is kind of with my training, like what I'm trying to get across to people is like, it's really great that you're wanting to do the work and the fact that, that you are kind of taking into account this community that you don't, you probably don't have to, you may not get that many inquiries potentially.

But the fact that people are kind of starting to pay attention to it and realizing it's not just about being nice to people or treating people as you would like to be treated, that's kind of a really old fashioned view now of like diversity work.

But the fact that people are, yeah, like seeking out courses and wanting to do the work because like as much as trans people can make noise about what's going on, for example, like the not in your name project, that's going to be way more listened to 100,000 cis women talking about we're the ones that you're trying to protect with all of this legislation and we don't want it, that's going to be way more powerful than 100,000 trans people saying please don't do this to us. So I think the fact that people are mobilizing, like you're using your platform for like to Promote it. I think that's really kind of that.

That gives me hope that there's. That we've kind of got more in number than, you know, the 10 people we had events before.

Yeah. And it's. It's awful to hear you, in a sense, say, you know, people are going to listen to CIS women more than they listen to trans people.

But it's true.

Unfortunately, that's what's so awful about it, is trans people so often become the object of conversations rather than actually being at the centre and, you know, their voice being heard, being listened to. It's just a really sad, sad thing that happens really, isn't it?

But then imagine if we got 100,000 cis men signing a petition. Imagine how powerful that could be. In addition to that.

Oh, dear. It's just sort of like. Oh.

I mean, one of the things I was sort of going to ask, actually just sort of circling back to what we were sort of talking about earlier was I'm just sort of wondering how. How you cope, you know, when you have this sort of onslaught of stuff coming through.

Yeah, I think that's what my therapist asked me quite often as well.

Yeah.

I think. I mean, there's a massive part of what I do is fueling my own stuff as well. Right. For me to set up the.

I think particularly when the Supreme Court ruling happened, I.

It was like Easter last year and I was going away and so that happened and I was like, off in the Welsh mountains, like just hiking up mountains, and I just had this real, like.

All this was kind of like ringing in my head and I kept coming back to, like, all these conversations I've had with my supervisors and with my therapist about community being the most important thing. And I did the classic thing of I was really involved in the community. I sort of faded away and live life.

And then now all of this stuff started happening again. It kind of felt like time for me to kind of step back in and be a bit more visible and do more work.

But this idea that there was like, the community aspect was just like something that was ringing around in my head and something that I felt like I really needed to foster and so to. To have that. That's when I set up the community hub, which was like my space that I use.

And I wanted that to be a bit different in terms of the community having access to it. And, you know, my route, like, I have. I have like, information leaflets and stickers and things and like, free stuff.

I have book swaps and things that the community can Donate to. So clients will bring things in sometimes and they can take a book or something. And I've got like a wall of artwork that's done by the community.

So even though people are coming for like individual therapy, there's still this sense of community around them. But that's massively fueling my own stuff. Right. Of like my need for community and me feeling like I'm doing something.

So I think this work, in a way, and particularly in developing like the trainings I'm doing to skill other people in working with trans clients is also that part of me, as well as all the other stuff of like switching off from things when I can, choosing when I take in social media. But yeah, being very intentional with my life that I'm not, I'm not always completely kind of exposed to it.

But also I think there's this idea that I think that people have that working with a trans client will always be talking about being trans, whereas actually like, it weaves in and out. But I think a lot of also what we talk about, we don't necessarily need to talk about being trans because we. There's that shared understanding.

We can talk about other things in life. So it's. Yeah, I guess my work is a lot about being trans, but also in many ways it's also not at all.

Yeah, it's just the back. It's just a backdrop really, to two other more important things that are going on. Clients lives. Yeah. Yeah.

I think community is so tremendously important, having that connection. Hopefully people listening will be encouraged in this as well.

You know that there are people out there who understand what it's like and, and community is really important. I'm going to ask this question. I don't know if it's going to work, but we'll try it.

For therapists listening who want to make their practice more welcoming, what's one thing they could start thinking about today?

I think the, the. Well, so the last, the last section of my training is kind of quite antagonistically worded, but don't do the work if you, if you can't do it.

And I think it's this idea that you, you can absolutely do stuff to like improve your allyship and to work with the community, but also that you don't have to necessarily do it if you don't feel ready yet.

If you're, if you're still feeling like really worried about making a mistake, maybe that's not the point that you need to do it and you can go through all the other steps of like yeah. Look at your community involvement. Explore gender for yourself. Think about your motivations for doing the work.

Think about the kind of the support structure you're going to build around yourself. If you want to do this work in the future, you don't just have to immediately accept everyone and like.

So the part of the end of this course is what I take people through is responding to people in a really honest way. And if you get an inquiry from a client to be able to say, okay, this is really honestly where I'm at with my own learning.

Happy to work with you, but I want you to understand, like, this is where I'm at and this is where my pitfalls could be, and this is where my blind spots could be to allow people to make their own decision. I think, I think when I say that to therapists, they kind of. They're like, oh, okay, I don't have to like.

And they come into a training, particularly if it's like, trainings I do with, like, a workplace, they think they're gonna have to, after this training, be experts and just do the work immediately and be fantastic. Like you said, it's a massive process of learning all the.

All the things you might need to know and all the kind of unlearning all the things that you. They're going to be unhelpful.

So I think being able to just have that permission for yourself that you don't have to be an expert immediately, you don't have to take on clients immediately. If you don't feel ready to do it, that's okay. You can, I guess, give yourself a bit of breathing space and some time to.

To also learn about these things for yourself and not beat yourself up if you don't feel ready.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's really encouraging.

And I just wanted to sort of pick up on something you said there, because we haven't actually talked about this, but you said about, you know, have you ever explored your own gender? And I think that's something that we don't even think about.

And it is an important thing to have thought about, really, to be able to understand sort of what your clients might be going through. Would that be the case? Would you agree with what I've said there?

Yeah. And so that's the first step of my, like, five things to do before you advertise in ally training is explore gender.

And it's not necessarily that you need to question your gender or anything, but it's just about realizing.

So there's a few activities I take people through to think about what beliefs do I hold about gender that I maybe never even realized were a belief about gender? I just thought that was the way that life was so about. Think kind of thinking about what was your exposure to gender in early childhood?

What gendered memories do you have? Why is that? You know, how's that formed the way you view things now? Yeah, I think it's all. It's again, coming back to that Myra Khan's idea of being.

Of not being treated as though she would ever be in the room.

As a professional, it would always be, we kind of all homogenous, like white cisgender straight therapists learn about how to deal with all these people who are different, never thinking that someone who is that different person would be in the room. So it's almost in that step. I'm saying to people like, don't just consider yourself this. This.

Yeah, this person who doesn't need to think about gender. It's not just trans people that need to think about it.

And it's, it's a very introductory little step into thinking about it, but just making people realize the messages they have been brought up with.

Yeah, just uncovering them, bringing them into awareness. Yeah. So how would people find out more about you and your course? Where would, where would they go to?

So you can go to offbeattherapy.com training and there's a link to. So this course is a video one. So you can work through it at your own pace and there's kind of activities for you to do as part of it.

So just to sort of like as we finish the episode, I was just thinking, you know, we may well have trans people listening to this podcast. So if they've had a difficult experience in therapy before, what would you want them to know?

I think that you can be discerning with the therapist. You. Well, if you have the means to, you can be discerning. So if you are.

I think often, and something I talk about in this training is that trans people can often be, like you said, potentially underemployed, potentially having a lot of other expenses that make affording therapy difficult. So I think are more likely to have to go through like agencies or nhs where you don't get to pick your therapist.

And I think often people will see this lack of hostility and say, okay, that's great that this is, this is a friendly person then. And actually what I'm hoping to get with my training is for therapists to understand that trans clients need more than just lack of hostility.

But I also think that trans people don't necessarily kind of think they can ask for more. There are some brilliant therapists out there and I talk a lot about the power of like peer therapy and working with someone who is trans.

I think that can be a wonderful experience.

Saying that I've worked with assist therapists for the past seven years who has been absolutely phenomenal and kind of never put a foot wrong in terms of her work with me as a trans person. So I think, yeah, like just asking for better.

Obviously that's a really difficult thing to do if you're in a disempowered situation, but you don't have the money to choose your therapist.

But there are some questions, I think I've done a social media posts on Instagram at some point about the questions you can ask when you're looking for a therapist. You can ask them about their involvement with the community. And I think that's really important.

If people look at you kind of blank, that's probably a sign that they don't have too much exposure.

But therapists, as much as they might not talk about their personal lives, they can talk about their exposure to the community, whether that's personal or so like, yeah, you can be a bit more kind of, you know, interview your therapist. Right. And, and see if they're, see if they can live up to the things that you're going to be bringing.

And another thing that I talk about is having good referral networks. So hopefully they should also be able to then give you.

Rather than just sending you to a generic website, hopefully they should be able to give you links to people who can actually help with that specific thing you're. You're dealing with. But otherwise I would say some. Somewhere like Pink Therapy would be a good place to, to look for people on their directory.

Yeah. Do there's any red flags that people should look for?

Oh, hundreds. Yeah. I think I have also done.

Yeah, there's a part of this in the training and also I've done, yeah, I've done posts for, I think on that same post for what clients can look for.

But I think the, that, that very unscientific study that I did looking at my local area, the vast majority of people had ticked so they would tick the box of LGBT issues or gender identity. They then didn't mention anything else.

So I would say potentially there could be someone who is decent at working with it, but if they haven't written about it at all, if they can't answer your questions, then I think that's a red Flag in terms of if they just look kind of bewildered or don't really give you an answer, if you're asking, hey, what is experience for the community? Because even if someone says, you know what, I don't have a great amount of experience, but here's what I'm doing, that's a really green flag for me.

It's just being, you said earlier, humility and being really honest about it.

Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because I know as a, you know, the mum of somebody who's trans.

When I've looked at therapists, you sort of seen what looked like quite a good therapist, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing about, you know, whether or not they were inclusive. And I just thought, I don't want to turn up at a therapy session and just meet some sort of hostility towards my children.

So, yeah, I think it's really important, like you say, you know, what else do people say about it? Because also, as well, you know what I thought at that point was if I asked them about it, they'd probably say, oh, yes, yes, that's absolutely fine.

Is it?

Yeah. And I think that's where the lack of hostility doesn't equal. I always say that lack of hostility doesn't equal competence.

Yeah.

Or. Or genuine. I talk about the idea of like, tolerance versus allyship.

Tolerance is like you tolerate a bad smell, you tolerate drilling going on, like there's. You tolerate a noise. You shouldn't be tolerating a community of people. That's where the trans joy comes in. Right.

Of like fully embracing the community and being able to work with all of that. Also holding in mind how important trans identity is, but not making it the sole focus. Yeah, it's a. It's a real. It's a real balance.

But I think, yeah, just. I think the more community exposure people have, the more they can get to that. And also they have to do that by working people. Right.

So there will be some people who they'll work with early on in this journey and maybe that's enough, you know, your understanding at the moment is enough for someone to. To get by on, but never assuming that you. Because you know someone that you are there for. Yeah, immediately. An ally or that's ticked off the list.

Well, thank you so much, Josiah. There's so much we could talk about. Yeah, thank you for having me, isn't there? Thanks so much.

And what I'll do is I'll pop the details as well of your website on the show notes so that people can find it. So thanks very much for coming along.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening. Do come and join my Facebook community. Good enough Counsel.

And for more information about how I can help you develop your private practice, please Visit my website, JosephineHughes.com if you found this episode helpful, I'd love it if you could share it with a fellow therapist or leave a review on your podcast app. And in closing, I'd love to remind you that every single step you make gets you closer to your dream. I really believe you can do it.