A gay Korean American therapist on what gets missed when your therapist doesn't share your culture or identity, and why it matters for healing.
Think about the last time you talked with someone whose first language wasn't yours. You understood each other, mostly. But something was missing: the idioms, the shorthand, the ease. You stayed engaged and worked a little harder, and eventually you met somewhere in the middle. You connected, but it took effort.
For many LGBTQ+ and BIPOC clients, that's what therapy with a clinician outside their community can feel like. They feel the care and compassion, but some of the nuance gets lost in translation. I hear it often:
"I think my therapist cares. I just don't think they understand where I'm coming from."
What clients tell us
Many don't have much of a choice, either. Therapists and counselors are overwhelmingly white and straight, so LGBTQ+ and BIPOC clients often have to choose a therapist who's good enough for their mental health but not for their identity or culture. Search for a gay therapist or an Asian American therapist in your area, and you may find only a handful of names, if any.
Bringing only part of yourself
One quiet result of this is that clients start to compartmentalize. Often without realizing it, they decide, I can talk to my therapist about this part of me, but not that part. They come in to work on stress, anxiety, or depression, and they leave their queerness, their family's culture, or their experiences of racism at the door. When that happens, key factors behind their struggles get overlooked or missed, and the interventions a clinician uses can feel disjointed or out of place.
Safety matters too. Someone who has been hurt by racism may find it hard to fully trust a white therapist, however kind that therapist is. Some clients simply don't feel safe with a clinician from the majority. Those feelings are real, and they shape what a person feels free to say.
We ask clinicians to be mindful of these factors, and that does help. But while a clinician is still learning, a client's healing can be delayed. For LGBTQ+ and BIPOC clients, that delay can be frustrating. Their pain, their anguish, the concerns that brought them to therapy: all of it has to wait for their clinician to catch up. I hear this too:
"I didn't come to therapy to wait for my counselor to get it. I wanted help with my problems."
What clients tell us
When the tools themselves don't fit
Sometimes the approaches themselves are part of the problem. Modern psychotherapy and counseling are still shaped by neo-colonialism, structural racism, and white supremacy culture. Take the field's focus on mindfulness, the backbone of approaches like DBT, ACT, and MBSR. Mindfulness comes from Buddhist and other Asian contemplative traditions that are thousands of years old. Western clinicians and researchers, most of them white, adapted these practices, stripped away much of their cultural and spiritual context, added "evidence-based" findings, and in many cases turned them into branded, proprietary programs. Many of the nuances and understandings get lost along the way.
White clinicians often don't notice this, or the harm these approaches can do when they're applied without that context. LGBTQ+ and BIPOC clinicians usually do, and they're careful and deliberate about not adding to that harm. Many, especially those at Rainbow Connection Counseling Collective, are intentional about offering decolonized therapy tailored to the cultures, needs, and understandings of their own communities. That makes therapy more personal, more effective, and more grounded in each client's lived experience, and it lays the foundation for truly holistic healing.
What an LGBTQ+ or BIPOC therapist offers
Clients deserve access to clinicians who look like them and have lived similar lives. These clinicians have done their own work navigating culture, identity, and mental health, which no graduate program or continuing-education course can teach. They know how to turn lived experience and earned wisdom into some of the most powerful and intimate healing tools they can offer. They understand the shared language and codes without needing them explained. Simply by being themselves, they show that healing is possible.
Why this is personal: my story as a gay Korean American therapist
I know all of this because I've lived it, both as a client and as a clinician. I was once a scared, lonely, closeted Korean American, sitting across from a therapist who was white, straight, and Christian. I struggled to talk openly about being gay, or about how I could ever come out to my conservative Christian family. Her advice, while well-intended, often felt inapplicable or impossible to take. She did the thing so many Asian American clients complain about with their white therapists: she told me to set better boundaries with my parents. For a Korean American, that felt, and still feels, impossible. I needed a place where it felt safe to bring all of me, but because there wasn't one, I made do with what I had. That's why I became a therapist.
As a clinician, I hold a trifecta of minority identities in the counseling world: I'm male, Korean American, and gay. I've shown up to networking events and been tokenized. I've gone to CEU trainings to learn new approaches and left disappointed because everything presented was built around white, cis, straight experiences. Folx like me, clients and clinicians alike, deserve counseling and therapy spaces where we feel safe and seen.
That's why I created this group practice.
Why Rainbow Connection Counseling Collective exists
Therapy changes lives. It's one of the most powerful paths I know toward healing and becoming our fullest selves. But it works best when we can walk in and be seen and treated whole, not piecemeal.
At Rainbow Connection Counseling Collective, LGBTQ+ and BIPOC clients can work with therapists who get them and share their experiences, so they can heal as whole people, not in parts. We offer online therapy across California, Oregon, Washington, and New York, so finding a gay therapist or an Asian American therapist who understands you doesn't depend on where you live.
You need that space. You deserve it.
Licensed & accepting clients in 4 states
Online therapy — from wherever you feel most comfortable and safe.
Ready to work with a therapist who gets you?
Book a free 15-minute consultation by phone or Zoom. Bring all of who you are.
Questions? Call us at 619.363.4674 or send a message
