Tate Benson

Hi! I'm an LCSW who works with individuals, couples, polycules, friends, and families. I came to this work after years of intergenerational youth organizing and recognizing the ongoing need for mental health support. I also come to the work through full-spectrum doula practice and have been trained in navigating medical systems. I have seen and experienced firsthand the impact of affirming care and the space to identify how the systems we live in affect change. My sessions tend to be creative but grounded, collaborative, explorative while also focused on client centered goals.

I work extensively with LGBTQIA+ individuals, couples, and families, particularly during periods of transition, exploration, and change. I am particularly adept at supporting those who are unpacking relationships to normativity and internalized shame, and who are in search of empowerment. I help individuals develop intentional relationship structures that align with their values rather than relying on assumptions or inherited relationship scripts.

I also work with LGBTQIA+ individuals and families navigating surgery, pregnancy, birth, post-partum, abortion, and family planning - those who experience the ways in which there can be neglect, limiting gendered language, acknowledgment, or imagination for the nuances needed in care. I offers a space to make sense of experiences, workshop advocacy, and to be met with support as you explore what agency can look like.

A bit more about me is that I am a mixed-race Korean American, queer, trans/non-binary, polyamorous, neurodivergent person who brings that lived context to my clinical work. Outside of sessions, I can be found nerding out about queer cartoons and drumming in the park with their Korean Queer and Trans Puungmul group.

My approach draws on psychodynamic, relational, narrative, and systemic therapies. I believe that when given the chance to contextualize broader social and intergenerational factors and history, it can lead to identifying our own ability to shift the patterns. I work collaboratively with clients to build relational trust to understand and identify what may be needed to enact the change they want to see.

We'll start with an introductory session which allows me to get to know you and what you might need to start the work together, this includes what is bringing you to therapy and the goals you have. From there we'll get to build out the space together that centers the goals you have shared.