Our Clinical Approach is Integrative & Wholistic

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Overall, our approach is to use therapy as a guide to teach you about your somatic experience. This means focusing on how your symptoms are impacting your relationship to your mind & body as a result of your lived experience. This shows up in your relationship with your Self & with others.

We do not shame your symptoms or your lived experience. We challenge societal and sexual assumptions (The Defaults) about your development and lived experience. We do this in both therapy and in documentation.  This is part of the process to decolonize therapy and healing. 

Intersectional Cognitive Behavior Therapy & Approach (I-CBT)

Our trauma-responsive approach consists of using a somatic psychotherapy system, Integrative  Cognitive Behavioral Therapy & Approach (I-CBT) and Somatic Sex Therapy. Developed by Lena Queen, LCSW, M.E.d, I-CBT is a 3-module integrative trauma-responsive healing model  informed by a person's lived experience honoring the relationship between one's identity  and systems of power and oppression (somatic psychotherapy).  One's identity could include but is not limited to race, ethnicity/culture, gender, class, ability, spirituality and power. 

 Note: The change from intersectional  to  integrative is explained by Dr. Crenshaw's clarification of the use of intersectionality and how it directs support and care, which  integrative or the synergy of mind-body-spirit and more appropriate to describe  the WHOLE-Self experience of our approach.

I-CBT, a somatic psychotherapy intervention, includes the emotional coaching system, SHIFT, which is comprised of 4 integrative care strategies. I-CBT,  is a 3-module healing model informed by a person's lived experience, their mind-body relationship interactions   When adding a 4th module, sexological bodywork (non-touch), to this framework I-CBT transforms into Somatic Sex Therapy, a justice-centredapproach to healing and wellness. These evidence-based frameworks incorporate trauma-informed comprehensive sex education with mental health psychoeducation & mind-body education.  intervention depending on the intensity of the discomfort experienced. Each has been shown to be effective for tweens, teens and adults.

For pre-school and elementary age children, I-CBT also includes the emotional coaching intervention Feel-Think-Do, which has been to be useful to younger humans in maintaining their emotional safety.  

I-CBT focuses on the embodiment of one's lived experience by addressing the question-Who Am I? We process this embodiment as it informs a person’s relationship to Self and others and is the undercurrent of their decision-making and health of those relationships.

Informed by Sandra Bloom's  Sanctuary Model, I-CBT  can be used in a variety of professional and community settings including  professional settings , life coaching settings, outpatient, inpatient, residential, community-based,  community centers, and  schools.  

Somatic Sex Therapy

Somatic sexology is not a new concept to sexology (sex education & sex therapy), but often seen as fringe because it teaches client’s how to improve their mind-body connection (experience-focus) which is unlike traditional sex therapy’s sensate focus (i.e. outcome/orgasm-focus). Like many other helping professions, sexology must undergo a transformation to disrupt and de-center dominant narratives that assume heterosexuality and monogamy and challenge research that is framed in those dominant narratives, which are rooted in Euro-centric views and values (i.e. White supremacy). 

With Black Sexual Epistemology’s The Erotic Self (Gilbert, 2019) and grounded in the intersectional pleasure-manifesto, Audre Lorde's Uses of the Erotic, Queen's brand of Somatic Sex Therapy is a 4-module decolonizing, intersectional queer and trans-affirming approach to sexology that is an integrative, healing-centered, & body-based approach to sex therapy.

Personal & Professional Development Institute

I-CBT & Somatic Sex Therapy training can only available provided by Lena Queen, LCSW. M.Ed.  

Learn more about Queen's professional development trainings and workshops, visit here.