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Navigating Polyamory during the Holidays

Navigating Polyamory during the Holidays

by Lauren Canonico | Nov 19, 2025 | Lee Warwick, LMSW, Thoughts & News from ATC

Join Lee Warwick, LMSW, in exploring what navigating polyamory during the holiday season can look like. Navigating the holidays in general is already a complicated experience for many. Toxic family dynamics, pressure around appearance and food, and spending time with...
Seasonal Affective Disorder Tips: Getting Through the SADs

Seasonal Affective Disorder Tips: Getting Through the SADs

by Lauren Canonico | Nov 16, 2025 | Thoughts & News from ATC

Preparing for Seasonal Affective Disorder Season November is here and so is daylight savings, which means we are creeping up on SAD season! Also known as Seasonal Affective Disorder, AKA Seasonal Depression, SAD season is the time of year when some of us might...
Coming Home to You: Exploring Eating Disorder Recovery and Body Image Injury within the Trans Experience

Coming Home to You: Exploring Eating Disorder Recovery and Body Image Injury within the Trans Experience

by Lauren Canonico | Jul 8, 2025 | Coming Home to You Group, Thoughts & News from ATC

A new group offering a space for adult trans folks (binary trans individuals as well as non-binary folks, 18+) struggling with disordered eating, eating disorders, and body image! Facilitated by ATC associate Sophie Kuhn Bedaña, LMSW, this group is built as a space to...
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Recent Posts

  • Queer Stigma and Mental Health: What LGBTQ+ People Face
  • Therapy for Neurodivergent and Trans People: What to Know
  • Sex Worker Affirming Therapy NYC | ATC
  • What’s (Romantic) Love Got to do with It? | ATC
  • Heated Rivalry and Sexual Intimacy | Affirmative Therapy

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    You've probably heard "love your body" so many tim You've probably heard "love your body" so many times it stopped meaning anything. The concept might feel almost impossible to imagine. ✨️Here's the truth no one tells you: you don't have to love your body to have peace with it. ✨️A few things we want you to know: Disconnection from your body isn't a personal failure. 🤍 It's often a trauma response, a survival skill, or just what happens when the world has never made room for the body you're in. You're allowed to be in process.🌷 Neutral is a valid stopping point, not a consolation prize. Healing your relationship with your body doesn't mean "fixing" it. It means being able to exist in it.🙌🏻 This isn't about willpower. It's about safety. You don't owe your body a love letter today. You just deserve support figuring out how to get there. Follow for more like this.✨️ #HAES #BodyLiberation #QueerTherapist #AffirmingTherapy #TraumaInformed
    The thing nobody tells you about body image and in The thing nobody tells you about body image and intimacy? It is not just about how you view your own body. It is about what happens in your head the second someone else is in the room with your body. The lights stay off 🕯 You angle yourself a certain way. You are physically there but your brain is running a full evaluation of every tilt, every movement, every possible thing your partner might be noticing. And somewhere in the middle of all of that monitoring, the actual experience of being close to another person slips away.🤍 Nearly half of people with eating disorders report avoiding sexual relationships entirely. Not because they do not want connection. 🙏🏼 Because the mental experience of being in a body during sex, with someone else's full attention on that body, makes genuine presence almost neurologically unavailable. That loop is not a character flaw. It is a learned response. And it is one of the most isolating things a person can carry -- because it is nearly impossible to explain to someone who has not lived it. ✨️This is exactly the terrain Sophie Talmadge Silleck, LMSW works in. As a queer-identified sex therapist specializing in body image, eating disorders, and intimacy, Sophie understands that these things are not separate issues. They are connected at the root. And the work addresses all of it. ✨️Two ways to work with Sophie: One-on-one or couples therapy in person in Manhattan or virtually throughout New York and New Jersey. 🌷Baring It All, a virtual group for all genders 18+ across the US. $90 per 90 minute session. $50 screening session. Complete the screening form to get started. #queermentalhealth #adultcreator #affirmativetherapy #intimacyhealing #shamefree
    ✨️Being present during sex ✨️Wanting it again ✨️Fe ✨️Being present during sex ✨️Wanting it again ✨️Feeling at home in their body ✨️Relationships that don't require translation ✨️Closeness without performance You are not hard to understand. You are just surrounded by people who are working from a completely different map. The version of you that shows up at dinner.🌷 The version that edits the story before you even open your mouth because you already know how it lands. The version that laughs at the right moments and leaves out the parts that would take too long to explain. That is not you being closed off. That is you doing math. Constant, exhausting math about what is safe to say and what is not worth the conversation that follows✨ The loneliness that does the most damage is not the kind that comes from being alone. It is the kind that lives inside your relationships. Inside the spaces where you are ✨physically present✨ but never fully known. You can be loved by people and still feel like a stranger in your own story. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. And pretending they are does not make the gap smaller. There is a version of therapy where none of this requires explanation. Where the context is already in the room before you arrive. Where the work starts from where you actually are. That is what Sophie Talmadge Silleck, LMSW builds her practice around. Complete the screening form to get started.✨🌷 #queertherapist #adultcreator #affirmativetherapy #intimacy #healing
    Your best friend isn't just a placeholder for a pa Your best friend isn't just a placeholder for a partner you haven't found yet. ✨️ Normalize saying my best friend is my person 🖤 Normalize saying I don't need a romantic partner to feel complete 🩶 Normalize saying platonic love isn't a downgrade 🤍 Normalize saying my friendships are permanent, not placeholders 💜 Normalize saying aro/ace people write their own relationship rules ✨️Happy International Friendship Day!✨️ We're taking today to talk about something the culture skips: for a lot of aromantic and asexual people, friendship isn't a backup plan. It's the main relationship 🌟 and we can all learn from that, regardless of our own identity or relationship experience. And we all deserve the same respect, commitment, and celebration that we default to in romantic partnerships. Here's what that looks like: ✨ Platonic love holding the same weight as romantic love, not a lesser version of it ✨ Chosen family that shows up for the hard stuff, not just the highlight reel ✨ Friendships with no expiration date tied to someone else finding "the one" 💎 Commitment defined on your own terms, not borrowed ones. Aro/ace folks have had to build this intentionally. The rest of us could stand to be just as thoughtful ☕ The world runs on amatonormativity, the assumption that a romantic partner is the endgame everyone's working toward 🏃🏾‍♀️ Aro/ace people have been quietly proving that story wrong for as long as friendship has existed. So today, we're celebrating the friends who ARE the relationship, not the runner-up 🙌🏽 Tag the friend who's your person. No asterisks or explanation needed. Follow ATC for more affirming content that makes room for every kind of love. ... #AroAce #InternationalFriendshipDay #PlatonicLove #ChosenFamily #AsexualVisibility
    Turns out, watching two men communicate through co Turns out, watching two men communicate through consent isn't a threat to your relationship. It's a blueprint 📃 Heated Rivalry has viewers of every gender and sexuality swooning over its lead couple, two male hockey players falling into a sexual relationship built on real consent and emotional safety on screen. Sophie Talmadge Silleck, LMSW, broke down why in Men's Health: why women are drawn to shows like this, and what straight men can actually learn from it. Her take: "I love working with men and creating a space where they can be vulnerable and explore their feelings, things society says men 'shouldn't' do." 💜 For more on Navigating Consent in Sexual Intimacy, continue reading here: https://affirmativetherapycollective.com/heated-rivalry-and-sexual-intimacy/ Sessions with Sophie feel conversational, not clinical. Less power imbalance, more room to actually say the hard thing out loud. ✨️ New clients and couples welcome ✨️ DM MORE and we'll send you the screening form. · · · #MensHealth #AffirmativeTherapist #NYCTherapist #heatedrivalry
    ✨️Sophie B's✨️ caseload is full of neurodivergent ✨️Sophie B's✨️ caseload is full of neurodivergent and trans clients who've spent years masking just to survive a system that wasn't built for them. She doesn't ask you to translate yourself. She meets you where you are. ✨️Sophie TS✨️ works with adult creators navigating intimacy, identity, and stigma most therapists can't even name out loud. No need to "save you" No judgment about how you pay your bills or who you love. Different specialties. Same standard: you don't have to explain why you're worthy of care before you walk in the door. That's the whole point of @affirmativetherapycollective . · · #AffirmativeTherapist #QueerTherapist #NYCTherapist #TransAffirming #ContentCreator
    What if the shame you feel about your work isn't y What if the shame you feel about your work isn't yours? It was handed to you. Internalized stigma doesn't announce itself. It shows up as the voice that says you don't deserve a relationship that actually works 💔 The one that tells you the distance you feel from your partner makes sense because of what you do. The one that makes you wonder if the hard stuff is just... your fault🤍 That voice isn't truth. It's what happens when the world spends years telling you that your work makes you less worthy of care. Research backs this up: chronic exposure to shame-based messaging gets absorbed ✨️ It looks like self-isolation. Depression. Interpreting your own pain as deserved. That's internalized stigma doing exactly what it was designed to do 🫯 Sophie Talmadge Silleck, LMSW is a queer-identified sex therapist specializing in body image, eating disorders, intimacy, and relationships of every configuration. Monogamous. Polyamorous. Open. Kinky. Undefined. She provides individual and couples therapy for people who are done starting over every time they try to talk about something real. In person in Manhattan. Virtually throughout New York and New Jersey. Complete the screening form to get started. . . . #mentalhealth #stigma #queertherapist #telehealththerapy #NYCTherapist
    You don't have to spend the first 20 minutes of ev You don't have to spend the first 20 minutes of every session explaining your job. 5 things I watch shift when sex workers finally have a space built for them: 1. The shame gets named. Internalized stigma isn't a personality flaw. It's what happens when the world spends YEARS telling you that you're the problem. 2. The double life gets lighter.✨ Holding two completely different versions of yourself is exhausting. You don't have to justify that here. 3. Intimacy stops feeling like a contradiction. Spending your day in intimate spaces and coming home to disconnection is its own kind of exhausting. We name it here. 4. You get clear on what you actually want from your relationships. Not the version that's easiest to explain. The version that's actually true. 5. You start letting yourself be cared for. ✨I'm Sophie Talmadge Silleck, LMSW. I provide individual and couples therapy for people who are done starting over every time they try to talk about something real. In person in Manhattan. Virtually throughout New York and New Jersey. Complete our screening form in our bio to get started.🌷 ... #sexworkermentalhealth #internalizedstigma #queeraffirmingtherapy #intimacygroup
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    Affirmative Therapy Collective LCSW LLC

    Body, Sex, Trauma, Neurodivergent, and LGBTQ+ Affirmative Psychotherapy

    Eating disorder and trauma treatment done differently

     

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    Affirmative Therapy Collective LCSW LLC

    Body, Sex, Trauma, Neurodivergent, and LGBTQ+ Affirmative Psychotherapy

    Eating disorder and trauma treatment done differently

     

    80 University Pl, Suite 2G, New York, NY 10003

    admin@affirmativetherapycollective.com

    (646) 504-1615