“Once, when I was in a state of mind, she said, ‘I love women either because I adore my mother or because I think my father failed.’
“When I had an affair with a woman, my psychologist said, ‘I do not love my girlfriend. I was just projecting because I lost my mother who lived in another city.”
“I still haven’t told my psychologist that I’m a lesbian. I’m afraid of rejection or worse.”
The above three explosions are just a few dozen Psychologist Angelica Gloria Received every day on Instagram. On her social network, which has more than 17,000 followers, she produces extensive content about lesbianism and answers a wide range of questions on the subject.
Angelica is a lesbian woman with a degree in Clinical Psychology from Flumens Federal University and a postgraduate degree in Social Psychology from Rio de Janeiro State University.
“A therapist led me to believe that I had secretly turned to men”
Before becoming a psychologist, she was patient, and in this position, she felt in her skin the unpreparedness of some professionals to deal with clients’ sexual orientation. “I have already seen a therapist who led me to believe that I was secretly to men who harassed me and made me upset or angry,” he reveals.
“It’s been a long process of realizing myself as a lesbian. I’ve come to understand myself as bisexual, but over time, I have come to realize that my interest in men is closely linked to the cult of so-called ‘masculinity’. I did not care, I learned about forced transgender people and re-focused on things there, from a young age. “
Representation is important
Angelica says that when she was about 22, she realized that what she saw as friendship or adoration for women was actually sexual attraction. “That’s how I noticed other lesbian women in the media and in different places, and I began to notice that I recognized myself. Getting to know more lesbian women made all the difference.
The first book on clinical care for lesbian women
According to Angelica, author of her first book on caring for lesbian women, Caring for Lesbian Women: Clinical Practice in Psychology, she chooses this professional path based on an urgent need. Until then his field of work was quite different.
“Previously, my work focused on mothers and caregivers with autism, but when I saw them reporting on my life on the net, advising psychologists, and reporting experiences with friends, colleagues, and psychologists from the lesbian environment, she told the professionals that she did not know what she was doing in the clinic.”
Psychologists, for the most part, do not know how to deal with lesbian women, and there was no literature in psychology to talk about the subjectivity of lesbian women. When I realized that, I realized I could not do anything else and had to return my clinical and research work to it.
The book, which is divided into 14 chapters, addresses issues such as forced heterosexuality, illicit relationships between women, self-loathing, acceptance, and the question of whether or not to come out.
In this final step, the psychologist emphasizes: “Psy, if you’re trying to ‘get your lesbian patient out of the closet’, stop now! You can do more than just help. Ends up promoting.
According to the psychologist, wanting to receive your patient is not a bad thing. But ‘coming out’ is not always what the patient wants or is able to do. “Furthermore, life choices in the clinic should be based on the patient’s own wishes — even if her motivations are excellent.”
Angelica explains that each chapter in the book begins with a short story about an imaginary woman, whose story is based on technical analysis. “Either it’s a lesbian woman going to therapy, or a woman who finds herself a lesbian, or a therapist who sees a lesbian. I think it can be used in style.
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