Tanya Gaum, MEd, MA, LMFT

08/16/2025

08/06/2025

What an absolute delight to FINALLY spend time IN PERSON with my dear friend and colleague, Barbara .bshabazz after three years of magnificent conversation. And such a treat to meet her wonderful husband, Yardan .shabazz
We even made a pitstop to check out some Zeus and I woke up early enough to catch the sunrise 🌅
The perfect finale to a whirlwind week of travel - bouncing around from Detroit to Ann Arbor to Buffalo to Virginia Beach to love on family and friends.
Happy to be home in LA with a filled up heart 💗

07/31/2025

A little Detroit. A little Ann Arbor.
Just bouncing around the east coast for a minute to hug some folx I love…and eat paella 💫❤️💫

07/28/2025

Have you?

07/28/2025

Do you?

07/26/2025

📗💗📙
HEY MICHIGAN!!

What are you up to this Wednesday? How bout spending a little time in reality with some super real folks talking about some super real issues?
Join my friends (and respected colleagues) & .politicized.practitioner at their Ann Arbor visit on thier book launch tours.
I’ll be there too! Come say hi!

Repost from .politicized.practitioner
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📚✨ Two Books, Two Authors ✨📚

Join us Wednesday, July 30, 2025 (6:30–8:00 PM) at in Ann Arbor for a free, in-person event featuring two compelling new releases from — The Mental Health Guide for Cis & Trans Q***r Guys by .politicized.practitioner and Healing from Parental Abandonment and Neglect by .

Moderated by , this dialogue will explore the deeply personal and political themes of healing, identity, and building trust with ourselves and others.

These books overlap in their commitment to compassionately unpacking the psychological wounds many of us carry from systems, families, and formative relationships. They diverge in focus: Healing from Parental Abandonment examines how childhood trauma and insecure attachment shape our adult selves, while The Mental Health Guide for Cis & Trans Q***r Guys zooms in on how q***r and trans men navigate stigma, internalized shame, and heteronormativity. Yet, they beautifully complement each other by offering evidence-based, affirming tools—ACT, DBT, CBT, Gestalt, and more—for reclaiming power, connection, and authenticity.

🌈 Whether you’re working through loss, exploring your q***r identity, or supporting someone who is—this evening will leave you with insight, solidarity, and inspiration.

📍 RSVP now: https://rahimandkayteetalktoshanna.eventbrite.com

🎟️ Free & open to all.

***rMentalHealth ***rHealing

07/16/2025

Ok, so I am FINALLY writing the book. It’s almost there…almost ready to send out to my peeps for a first read. And it is 🔥🔥🔥

07/08/2025

For the past 5 years, I’ve been doing a deep dive into the concept of “narcissism” in order to build my argument (and my book) on why the term and concept of “narcissism” is absolute trash. Nothing more than a deflection, a red herring…pure trumpery—useless nonsense ( thank you for teaching us this 🔥 term!).
This journey has been a process of decolonizing the lens I use to interpret and scrutinize early analytic theorists, as well as decolonizing my lens on psychology, therapy, trauma, survivorship, and what it truly means to hold space for our clients.
These are some of the books that have been informing my lens on this deep and difficult work. I believe that the best way to describe the process I’ve been undergoing is “colonizer’s collapse” - not the collapse of the systems we are under but rather the collapse of the colonizer within us that we’ve all internalized (I’ll credit Frantz Fanon here but his legacy of theory lives on in the books I’ve shared).

07/04/2025

Are we all awake yet?