How LGBTQ and EMDR Therapy in NYC Can Help You Stay Grounded in Political Chaos

Living Through the Political Now: A Personal and Communal Strain

Political stress hits different when your identity is on the line. For LGBTQ+ individuals, staying grounded isn’t just self-care—it’s survival. LGBTQ Therapy in NYC offers space to hold the anger, the grief, and the call for justice.

Photo by Clay Banks; Uploaded from Unsplash on 5/21/25.

Political stress isn’t just a headline—it’s an embodied experience. In today’s polarized and often hostile environment, many LGBTQ+ individuals are feeling that stress deeply in their nervous systems. Whether it’s disrupted sleep, constant muscle tension, emotional exhaustion, or that creeping sense of helplessness, the impact is real. The current moment demands more than just resilience—it calls for groundedness. And therapy, especially LGBTQ Therapy in NYC and EMDR Therapy in NYC, can help you find your footing again.

As a gay therapist, I’ve experienced this political climate not just conceptually, but physically. I’ve lost sleep over it. My muscles carry tension from what feels like an ever-present fight-or-flight response. I’ve needed to be more intentional with my media intake, my body, and my breath. I’ve leaned on mindfulness, and even something as simple as savoring a morning coffee has become a kind of spiritual practice—an act of reclaiming calm. If you’re reading this and feeling tense, overwhelmed, or numb from today’s political landscape, you are not alone. This post is for you.

When Political Stress Disconnects You from Your Center

For LGBTQ+ individuals, today’s politics aren’t just stressful—they’re destabilizing. Every new policy, ruling, or media headline seems to carry an implicit or explicit threat to our dignity, safety, or rights. These aren’t just ideas up for debate. These are lived experiences, and they often stir up emotional and physical pain from past wounds that were never fully healed.

Living under these conditions is exhausting. Many LGBTQ+ people carry the weight of minority stress—an accumulation of microaggressions, systemic injustice, and a lifetime of messages that our existence is controversial or unwelcome. When political discourse dehumanizes you, it isn’t a philosophical disagreement—it’s trauma activation. You may feel this as looping thoughts, tight shoulders, shallow breath, disconnection from joy, or a feeling of emotional flatness. Groundedness disappears.

This kind of stress doesn’t resolve on its own, and it’s not something we can simply power through. What many people need is space to slow down, to feel, and to be supported in reconnecting to their nervous systems and their sense of internal safety.

Why LGBTQ and EMDR Therapy in NYC Helps You Stay Grounded

Groundedness begins with noticing what’s under your feet. LGBTQ and EMDR Therapy in NYC helps you reconnect with your body and find steadiness—even when the world feels shaky.

Photo by Clint McKoy; Uploaded from Unsplash on 5/21/25.

Therapy isn’t about fixing you. It’s about freeing you—from fear, from shame, and from the emotional patterns that keep you disconnected from your agency and your community. LGBTQ and EMDR therapy offers a sanctuary, a practice, and a process of returning to grounded presence.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a therapeutic approach especially useful for trauma. When political anxiety feels overwhelming or irrationally intense, it’s often because old experiences are being reactivated. EMDR helps you reprocess these events and reduce their emotional grip. In doing so, it creates a clearer separation between past and present, and helps you return to your body in the now.

Therapy also reconnects us to what Internal Family Systems (IFS) calls "Self energy"—our innate capacity for clarity, calm, and curiosity. In my practice, we use this energy to gently meet the parts of you that are triggered by politics, grief, and fear, and help those parts feel accompanied, rather than overwhelmed.

Not sure if you’re dealing with unresolved trauma? Ask yourself: What happens when you sit quietly with your feelings? Do you avoid that silence, or feel panicky in the stillness? These could be signs that something deeper needs tending.

And if you feel centered and clear about something meaningful you can do? Then do it. Action matters. But action rooted in integration—not panic—is where transformation happens.

Therapy as a Place to Regulate and Reclaim Your Body

LGBTQ therapy provides a rare kind of space—especially in NYC. Here, you don’t need to prove your worth or argue your validity. Here, you get to get to experience in a real relationship what it feels like to feel already worthy in the eyes of another person. And the therapy room, even virtual, becomes a space not only for talking, but for remembering. Remembering how to breathe, how to feel, and how to reclaim your nervous system from chronic threat.

One metaphor I often share with clients is this: you are not the waves of your panic or rage. You are the ocean. The waves come and go, but your deeper Self holds it all. When clients remember this, their whole bodies often exhale. We build resilience not by eliminating waves, but by deepening our contact with the ocean.

From Helplessness to Creative Fidelity

I often return to the work of existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel, who coined the term "creative fidelity." Marcel recognized that while we don’t choose the era or nation (or family, or anything else) we’re born into, we do choose how we organize meaning. Creative fidelity is about choosing to show up, to care, to be present, even when everything around you feels chaotic or unchangeable.

In a world that often encourages despair or detachment, choosing creative fidelity is a kind of activism. You can show up for a cause, but also for yourself. Sometimes, that’s loving boldly, refusing to hide, or protecting your rest. Sometimes, it’s choosing not to argue online. Sometimes, it’s lighting a candle and reminding yourself: "I am here."

And sometimes, it’s simply learning to sit with yourself—as you would with a trusted friend over tea. In this way, self-respect and self-soothing become rituals of resilience.

Grounding Practices for Political Stress

Staying grounded in political chaos isn’t about escape—it’s about rooting in your Self. Meditation, therapy, and compassionate awareness can bring you back to center.

Photo by Márton Szalai; Uploaded from Unsplash on 5/21/25.

You don’t have to white-knuckle your way through this. While there are many options out there in time like these, these are some practices that can help.

Compassion meditation is one. Start with yourself. Offer the words: “May I be safe. May I be free from suffering.” Then extend it outward—to loved ones, to neutral people, and yes, if you’re ready, to those who challenge you. This doesn’t condone harm—it frees you from carrying hate in your body.

Other practices include writing down your fears and burning them safely, or creating a movement ritual to help you release emotional charge. For some, dancing helps. For others, prayer, or time in nature. What matters is intention: that you are choosing to unburden, not ignore.

Joy, too, must be named as a grounding practice. It’s not frivolous. It’s how we survive. Joy reminds you of who you are beyond the news cycle. It reminds you that your life is more than the crises that surround it. And when trauma makes joy feel distant, therapy can help you reconnect with the parts of you that long to live, create, and connect.

You Don’t Have to Carry This Alone

You don’t have to collapse in hopelessness. And you don’t have to push through as if you’re unaffected. You can pause. Feel. Reflect. And build.

LGBTQ and EMDR Therapy in NYC offers you a space to come back to yourself. Whether your stress is manageable but wearing, or overwhelming and all-consuming, therapy helps you center what’s true: your resilience is still within you. And it can grow.

If you’re ready to take that first step—whether to simply feel less alone or to do deep healing work—I’d be honored to walk with you. Click the link the below to schedule a free 15-minute consultation to see if we’d be a good fit or learn more about me and my practice.