As an openly queer and trans-identifying therapist in Oakland, I offer a compassionate, playful, and expansive healing space to deepen the authentic connection with your gender identity and lived experiences shaped by gender.
Affirmation is the baseline.
Whether we meet for online therapy across the San Francisco Bay Area and California, or in person at my Lake Merritt office, I practice from the belief that therapy needs to do more than simply affirm your gender. We, as gendered beings, live with complexity. Our gender experiences shape, and are shaped by, sociocultural forces that impact our self-esteem, intuition, relationships, sense of belonging, and connection to our bodies.
In my inclusive, gender affirming practice, I embrace your complexity—we are far too unique and dynamic to be reduced to a singular narrative or label. There’s space here for the fullest, freest version of yourself, with all of the joy, pain, suffering, grief, and celebration that comes with it.
Gender exploration invites abundant possibilities to deepen play, creativity, intuition, and self-knowledge.
Exploring your gender identity and lived experiences can open the body and mind to deeper pathways not yet explored or understood.
In our therapy, we may explore:
Early messages about gender socialization
Identity terms & pronouns
Questions around social & medical transition
Internalized transphobia
Social rejection & sense of belonging
Self-doubt about identity
Cultural expectations that might not include, or directly reject, being trans, non-binary, or gender nonconforming
Coming out (or not)
Anxiety about being openly trans in this current political climate
Coping patterns of over-achieving, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and codependency
Connection with your body in ways that affirm your gender
Advocating for yourself in your relationships, communities, work, and school settings
Sex & pleasure practices that feel right for you, including before and after medical care & surgeries
“Continue to write, speak, exist, live. Not just to show the world that we’re here. But to show one another that we are. That gender non-conforming life is possible. And beautiful.”
Alok Vaid-Menon
Our complexity as trans, nonbinary, genderfluid, and questioning folks gives me life!
As an Oakland-based trans therapist deeply committed to supporting people with their gender embodiment, I have nearly a decade of experience working with trans and genderqueer folks of varying ages and multicultural backgrounds. I love the work we get to do together to return to our inherent sense of intuition and purpose.
In my San Francisco East Bay and online practice with LGBTQ+ adults and adult children of immigrants, there is abundant space to celebrate who you are and who you will become.
Bring your love, confusion, chaos, vibrancy, flamboyance, rage, and grief. You don’t need to hide any part of you here.
-
Gender affirming therapy is therapy where you don’t have to defend, justify, or explain your experiences of being trans, non-binary, gender-confonforming, or gender questioning.
As your therapist, I meet you in the full truth of how you relate to your gender. I accept your reality instead of try to change it or convince you otherwise. I celebrate the ways your gender experiences offer opportunities for creativity, play, and resiliency.
-
In Oakland and online throughout the East Bay and California, I love being a T4T therapist. I feel passionate about working with trans, genderfluid, and non-binary adults who have been deeply harmed by the medical industrial complex and the current political administration’s attempted erasure of trans freedom.
While I do not assume the role of expert simply by virtue of being a trans therapist who works with trans clients, I understand how meaningful it can be to work with someone who understands the fundamental challenges faced by trans individuals and their loved ones.
When working with me, you don’t have to justify or prove your experience. You don’t have to shy away from speaking truths that other people might not understand. I’m right here in it with you.
-
Yes, I write letters for gender affirming medical care for adults in Oakland and online throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and California. I only write letters for clients when we are in an existing therapy relationship, as opposed to one-time assessments. I can refer you to other therapists who do one-time assessments.
-
No, I do not charge for writing letters for gender affirming medical care (e.g, surgeries).
-
As an integrative therapist in Oakland and online throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, I use a combination of approaches.
With relational psychodynamic therapy, we explore how we relate to each other. Some clients have never talked to a trans provider before. They notice that they can be less filtered and more direct about the language they use without having to explain. Therapy with an openly trans person can be a space where fear, ambivalence, excitement, and curiosity about being trans is shared and acknowledged.
With Internal Family Systems (IFS), I help you explore parts of you that carry certain thoughts, feelings, and ideas about gender. Some parts might feel more masculine, feminine, both, or in-between. Some parts want to change quickly or move slowly, and some are scared of change altogether. We can have parts that are excited to explore gender, and parts that feel unsure about going deeper.
With somatic therapy, I support you with connecting to your body in ways that feel safe, consensual and affirming for your gender. We may choose to focus on areas of the body where there’s dysphoria or not. You get to decide.
-
For trans and non-binary adults who are about to go through a gender affirming surgery or have already done so, I offer somatic therapy to help you reconnect to your body after surgery. Surgery can be validating and life-affirming for those who seek greater alignment between their physical bodies with their inner worlds.
In response to surgery, the body might need extra support with integrating medically-induced changes. Somatic therapy in Oakland and online in California can be especially helpful for trans and non-binary adults who experience numbness, nerve pain, or dissociation around their body pre- or post-surgery.
Regardless of whether or not you have surgery, gender embodiment is at the heart of my practice as an openly queer and trans therapist in Oakland. I support you in relating and connecting to your body from a place of safety, comfort, and compassion.
-
Yes! My culturally responsive practice is inclusive of clients from diverse backgrounds.
A GENDER JOYFUL LIFE IS POSSIBLE
Book your free 20-minute consultation to get started. If none of the times available work for you, then please don’t hesitate to email me directly at lucachangtherapy@gmail.com. I’m sure we’ll figure out something that works for both of us.