LGBTQ+ Trauma Therapy in the DMV | Queer & Trans Therapist | Cushing Counseling

You deserve to be seen.

Radiance Sanneman (she/her) is a queer, trans therapist and IFS trauma specialist — now seeing LGBTQ+ clients at Cushing Counseling.

✓ Trans & Queer Therapist    ✓ IFS Level 1 Trained    ✓ CCTP-II Certified Trauma Professional    ✓ Telehealth Statewide    ✓ [OON Insurance / Private Pay]

Schedule Your Free 15 Minute Consultation

You’re not looking for a therapist who will “try to understand.”

You’re looking for someone who already does.

You’ve probably had the experience of sitting across from a provider and realizing — with that familiar sinking feeling — that you’re going to have to educate them before you can actually be helped. That you’ll need to explain your identity, your relationships, your history, and why certain things hurt before you can even begin talking about the thing you came to talk about.

You’re tired of that. And you shouldn’t have to do it.

Radiance is a queer, trans woman who has spent her career working with her fellow LGBTQ+ folx — not as an outside observer, but as someone who understands the particular weight of navigating a world that wasn’t built with you in mind. You can walk in (or log on) as your full self, from the very first session.

Some of what our clients come in carrying:

• The exhaustion of masking, code-switching, or shrinking yourself to survive

• Trauma from family rejection, religious condemnation, or having to leave communities you loved

• The grief of a childhood that couldn’t be what it should have been

• Hypervigilance, anxiety, or shutdown that makes sense — given everything you’ve been through

• Feeling disconnected from your own body, emotions, or sense of self

• Shame that runs deep — about who you are, what you’ve experienced, or how you’ve coped

• Relational wounds from partners, communities, or institutions that betrayed your trust

• Navigating gender transition and the complex emotions that come with it

• Religious or spiritual trauma — the specific wound of being told God doesn’t love you as you are

• Life transitions: coming out later in life, changing relationships, building chosen family

Schedule Your Free 15 Minute Consultation

Therapy that meets the whole of you — not just the parts that are “acceptable.”

Radiance uses Internal Family Systems (IFS) — an evidence-based, trauma-focused approach that understands the mind as made up of different “parts.” Some parts protect. Some parts hold pain. Some parts have been buried for a very long time because the world wasn’t safe enough to let them out.

For LGBTQ+ people, that experience is often deeply familiar. Years — sometimes decades — of hiding, managing, and protecting. Of developing parts of yourself that know how to survive, even when it cost you dearly.

IFS doesn’t ask you to get rid of those parts. It asks: what are they carrying? And what could they set down, if they finally felt safe enough? In Radiance’s work, feminist therapy principles — empowerment, egalitarianism, social justice — are woven throughout. She doesn’t see your struggles in isolation from the world that shaped them. The systems, the religion, the family, the culture — they’re part of the story. And healing happens in full context.

This is therapy grounded in:

• Internal Family Systems (IFS) — Level 1 trained, with ongoing advanced practice

• Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP-II)

• Feminist therapy — empowerment, social justice, and anti-oppression

• Attachment Theory

• Person-Centered and Solution-Focused approaches

Radiance specializes in:

• LGBTQ+ identity, community, and relationship trauma

• Complex trauma and CPTSD

• Religious and spiritual abuse — especially for LGBTQ+ survivors

• Childhood trauma and family rejection

• Gender transition support

• Grief and loss — including the grief of “coming out later”

• Life transitions and identity shifts

• Relational trauma and betrayal

• Minority stress, discrimination, and chronic marginalization

• Anxiety, depression, and dissociation rooted in trauma

Cushing Counseling is committed to providing genuinely affirming care for LGBTQ+ clients — not just as a policy, but as a practice. Radiance brings both lived experience and advanced clinical training to this work, and she holds herself to the highest standard of cultural competency, trauma-informed care, and client-centered practice.

Getting started — what to know

FEES & INSURANCE:

Session Fee: $210 per 50-minute session Insurance: Cushing Counseling is currently a private-pay practice. We have partnered with Thrizer to make OON accessible to everyone.

FORMAT:

Sessions with Radiance are available via secure telehealth video across Maryland, DC, and Virginia . Sessions are 50 minutes, typically scheduled weekly.

A NOTE ON PRIVACY:

We understand that for some LGBTQ+ clients, privacy is not just a preference — it’s a safety concern. All sessions are conducted with full HIPAA-compliant confidentiality. If you have specific privacy needs or concerns, please let us know during your consultation and we will do our best to accommodate them.

HOW IT WORKS:

1. Click below to schedule your free 15-minute consultation

2. Meet Radiance — talk about what you’re navigating, ask your questions

3. If it feels right, book your first full session

That’s it. No pressure. No long intake forms before you’ve even decided if we’re a fit.