🏳️‍🌈 Queer-Affirming Counselling with Lived Experience

🏳️‍🌈 LGBTQ+ Affirmative Therapy • Lived Experience

Simon Vizard

Registered Member BACP (MBACP) • Dip.Couns (CPCAB)

A safe, affirming space where you never have to explain yourself or translate your life.

Why Lived Experience Matters in Therapy

Many queer people have had the exhausting experience of sitting across from a therapist and feeling like they have to educate them. Having to explain queer terminology, dating apps, relationship dynamics, or the subtle daily weight of minority stress takes up valuable session time and creates an emotional barrier.

In your sessions with me, you never have to translate your life. Because I bring lived experience as a gay man, I understand the cultural nuances, developmental milestones, and unspoken vulnerabilities that come with being LGBTQ+. You can speak freely, using your own words, knowing that you are met with intuitive empathy and genuine understanding.

Themes I Often Explore with Clients

Coming Out at Any Age

Navigating the coming out process whether in your teens, twenties, or later in life after marriage, parenthood, or established careers.

Shame & Internalised Homophobia

Unpacking deep societal conditioning and religious or family messages that tell you that you are ‘wrong’, unlovable, or not enough.

Relationships & Dating Dynamics

Exploring intimacy, dating fatigue, open or polyamorous relationships, communication, and heartbreak within queer spaces.

Sexual Health & Intimacy

A compassionate, completely non-judgmental space to discuss sex, sexual health anxiety, body image, and sensitive personal concerns.

Family Estrangement & Boundaries

Managing strained family relationships, grieving the lack of acceptance from biological family, and building chosen family networks.

Workplace & Social Authenticity

The daily mental energy of ‘how out’ to be in professional, social, and healthcare environments, and managing minority stress.

“I was in the desperate situation of having to deal with my sexuality on my own, not feeling I could tell anybody and the resulting frustration and depression was unbearable. It was difficult to see how I could ever be myself. I felt that I was excluded by society from the fundamental human right of loving whom I choose. My life was on hold and I didn't see how I could ever be happy. That all changed... Simon's help has been truly life changing for me. My progress towards happiness has been amazing. I've gone from feeling helpless and desperately alone to a wonderful situation now where I have been able to tell people about myself and feel happy about my future. I didn't ever think this was going to happen. I am so very grateful to Simon. His understanding of my situation and his considerable and considerate counselling skills have certainly worked for me.”

RichardAcceptance, Sexuality & Hope

How Sessions Work

Therapy is always shaped around what you need. I offer both short-term focused counselling (working through a specific milestone or transition) and open-ended exploratory therapy.

In-Person Sessions: In a private, quiet consulting room in Stanford in the Vale (easy driving distance from Swindon, Wantage, Faringdon, and Oxford, with discreet parking).
Online Video Sessions: Across the UK via secure, end-to-end encrypted video link from the comfort and privacy of your home.

You Are Welcome Here

If you have hesitated to reach out, please know that you are not alone. Reaching out does not commit you to anything—it is simply a conversation to see how you and I might work together.

Contact Simon