Teasing Apart The Complexities Of Gender Identity, Neurodiversity, Substance Use And Mental Health In Young People, With Sean Garcia

ABOUT THE EPISODE:
If there's a perfect storm of complexity and confusion for parents of adolescents and young adults it's the intersection of a mental health condition, neurodiversity, substance use and gender identity. It's overwhelming to know which aspect of these to address first, or do you address them all at once?

Sean Garcia is a licensed therapist in Northern California and is one of a handful of trans-identified clinicians in Silicon Valley. He is extremely passionate about supporting transgender people and their families and we dove deep into how he does that, in particular with young people. 

Sean shares his own experience of coming out to his family and painfully delayed transition,  which caused him to spend many years chronically ill, and overachieving in order to validate to the world that he was "ok."

In this episode, you'll hear so much that will help if you're the parent of a young person struggling with any, or all of these life challenges including:

• the extra challenges of neurodiverse individuals when it comes to gender identity
• Sean's challenge to parents who believe their child's sexual or gender identity is a trend and the popular thing right now
• how he decides what issue to explore first in therapy when there are multiple factors involved
• how a parent's fear often matches a teen's fears around sexual identity, and that they have their own coming out experience 
• common mistakes or missteps parents make that can negatively impact their LGBTQ kids
• one simple question parents can ask their children as they explore their gender and/or sexual identity 
• risk factors parents might not think about when they have a neuro-diverse child with gender identity struggles and/or substance use and mental health issues
• the first things to do, and not to do, when your child comes out (A-T-A)
• what an affirming home environment might look like
• and tons more

This is a do-not-miss episode for parents of these complex kids, and will give you actionable ideas of how to help your son or daughter regardless of their current struggles.

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