Finn Klinger

06/02/2024

Happy pride month all! I'm so incredibly grateful to be able to be an out and proud pansexual transmasc counselor and so incredibly grateful and proud to be able to work directly with my community.

I will always stand with you. I will always advocate for you.

04/24/2024

Recently there was a massive survey conducted by and for transgender people. You can find that here: https://transequality.org/.../2022%20USTS%20Early...

Some highlights:

The survey included over 92,000 respondents with a little under 10,000 being minors. 94% of respondents said that they were either a lot more satisfied with their life (74%) or a little more satisfied with their life (15%), 98% said HRT made them a lot more satisfied with their life (84%) or a little more satisfied with their life (14%), and 47% said that they were considering moving to a new state because of anti trans laws with 5% reporting that they had already moved.

What does this mean to me? Trans joy is real, despite constant barriers and hardships.

We as professionals need to abide by WPATH standards of care and check ourselves for bias frequently.

The National Center for Transgender Equality is the nation’s leading social justice advocacy organization winning life-saving change for transgender people.

03/29/2024

Telehealth days call for telehealth attire (˵¯͒〰¯͒˵)

03/15/2024

There is no bad reason to stay alive.

If spite is keeping you alive, hold on to it.

If your Friday check and the thought of getting to restock your favorite snack is keeping you alive, hold on to it.

If your pet is keeping you alive, hold on to them.

There will be time to find something deeper to hold on to later. Today, hold on to what you have.

03/01/2024

Something I have learned during my own journey to health is that getting treatment for an eating disorder can feel impossible. It can be a slow and lonely journey seeking help.

Despite knowing that eating disorders are one of the most deadly disorders sitting with the 2nd highest mortality rate of any mental illness, our research on it is comparatively scarce.

We have some therapeutic methods that can help like CBT, DBT, and mindfulness-based therapies and many people with an eating disorder do make a partial recovery, but a full recovery is significantly more rare.

For now, the best thing we can do beyond encouraging more research is to be as thorough as possible. We as professionals need to try to work collaboratively with physicians and obtain those ROIs. We need to seek out continuous education, personalize treatment plans as much as possible, utilize tools outside of the therapy room, and look beyond surface level symptoms.

02/22/2024

02/18/2024

"Why do you openly advertise yourself as transgender/neurodivergent?"

We deserve to have diversity in the field of mental health. We deserve to have the choice to work with professionals that look like us, share experiences with us, etc.

Therapists can have a background that is different from yours and still be a wonderful therapist, but choice is important regardless of whether that choice is based on feelings of safety, feelings of understanding, or something else.

Usually, though, that question is asked in relation to who I am advertising myself to and whether or not that limits who I reach. The answer is no, and even if it did, I would be okay with that.

We talk about cultural diversity and multicultural competence a lot in this field, but we rarely talk about what it will take for the field as a whole to change in a progressive way.

The most basic answer is accessibility; increasing accessibility into the field as a professional, and increasing accessibility to therapists.

I am excited to see the field evolve to be more inclusive and more effective with a wider range of diverse voices having a say in the future of psychology.

02/13/2024

Something to know pre-therapy: applying coping skills can feel stupid and awkward, especially at first.

Sometimes that's because they're so simple and small that it feels like it's just a time vampire, and other times its because they are, in fact, incredibly awkward.

But a lot of times they end up achieving exactly what you wanted to achieve.

So keep being awkward 🤙