Clinical hypnotherapy for gay Black men

The obvious question, answered directly

Why does a white immigrant from Moscow put this on his website?

Two reasons, and I want to give you both so you can weigh them yourself rather than take my word for it.

The first is personal. When I landed in Chicago in 2013 and started rebuilding a life from nothing, in a second language, the community that treated me as an equal human being from the beginning was the Black community. That is not a credential and I am not claiming it as one. It is the reason I do not need this explained to me as a concept.

The second is structural. There is a severe shortage of Black therapists, psychologists and hypnotherapists — the product of systemic racism, unequal access to training, cost, and a profession that was not built with this community in mind. The practical consequence is that gay Black men who want an affirming practitioner who shares their background often cannot find one, and are left choosing between waiting and settling.

I would rather be honest about being an imperfect option than pretend the shortage does not exist. And if you would prefer to work with a Black practitioner, that is completely reasonable — ask me and I will help you look.

What I actually do differently

Being affirming is not a badge. In practice it means specific things:

• You do not have to educate me first. Not about racism, not about the way it shows up at work, not about being the only one in the room. That labour is exhausting and it is not therapy.
• I do not pathologise vigilance. If you are watchful in rooms where you have learned to be watchful, that is accurate perception, not anxiety. Treating a reasonable response to a real environment as a disorder is one of the more common ways this profession fails people.
• Cultural humility, not cultural competence. I do not claim expertise in your life. I assume I will get things wrong, I make it safe to tell me, and I adjust. That is a practice, not a certificate.
• Family and faith get treated as real. Not as obstacles to be overcome on the way to a predetermined answer about how you should be living.
• The double thing gets named. Being Black in gay spaces and gay in Black spaces is a specific position, including the particular flavours of racism that arrive on dating apps dressed as preference.

What people come to me for

Mostly the same things as everyone else, with a layer on top: a partner who is drinking or using, a marriage or long relationship ending, midlife reappraisal, the exhaustion of being competent in an environment that keeps making you prove it. The work is the same work. The context does not have to be explained from scratch.