Growing up as part of the LGBTQ+ community, Bristol-based Ky Kepner had long lived by the stance that someone who can understand an experience can validate others’ struggles. This approach translated to his passion for psychotherapy, which he hopes to use to promote empathy in therapy.
As a fifth-year psychotherapist in training at Bath Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling, Ky is also working on his own private practice that sheds a light on LGBTQ+ life, as well as living with chronic illness and the difficulties faced by neurodivergent people. While not directly specialising in Gender, Sexual, and Relationship Diversity (GSRD) and LGBTQ+ therapy, he hopes to use his platform as an openly queer therapist that primarily works with LGBTQIA+ clients, to ultimately demonstrate why it is important in the long run.
“I knew pretty early on that I wanted my career to be aiming towards serving the LGBTQ+ community as best I can,” he said. “And we're at a time now where so many people feel more comfortable exploring their sexual and gender identity that it feels a good time to really push for more therapists from the community.”
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The 34-year-old was inspired to establish his own practice based on his own experiences not receiving sufficient support as a gay man, which resulted in his fight to offer services for all to be authentically represented. He said: “I wanted to be really visibly affirmative of LGBTQIA+ people in a way that just simply wasn't there - or was barely visible - when I was younger.
"As a young gay man I didn't feel the support was there. I didn't know there were people like me out there to help me.
“When it comes to mental health services I simply wasn't offered any, even in a time when I was clearly in distress after being outed by a fellow student. Signposting was limited to a teacher attempting to hand me some leaflets.
"It was a different time, and I got the feeling that people didn't really know what to 'do' with me. After school I didn't trust anyone to try to understand my struggles and my identity.
"That prevented me from seeking my own therapy at the time. I can only imagine how things might have gone differently for me if I'd had therapy sooner."
Ky hopes that sharing his story could further help to recognise the need to prioritise mental health provisions for LGBTQ+ people in Bristol and beyond. He continued: “What I hear all the time from LGBTQIA+ people is that having a therapist who understands what it's like to be part of this often othered community would mean that they wouldn't have to keep explaining themselves - their identity, a core part of them - over and over again.
“There's a sense of kinship, of a trauma that is likely known in some sense by both client and therapist on a personal level. That's not to say non-LGBTQIA+ therapists can't connect with them, but that it's one less emotional hurdle to overcome initially.”
Through his experience as an integrative therapist with a queer-majority client base, he hopes that intersectional LGBTQ+ informed therapy can be valued in order to ultimately both understand and uplift queer identity as part of a “larger, holistic picture”. He said: “[It is] a time when we have highly publicised issues such as self-proclaimed feminist groups arguing that trans women aren’t women, with everyone from politicians, actors to fantasy authors vying to have the final say on who belongs where, gatekeeping opportunities - even gatekeeping equal treatment.
“We all bring with us intersecting identities - our ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual orientation, spirituality. These parts of us have their own relationships and conflicts with each other within us, as well as the world we live in.
“I hope that therapy can make a difference in affirming that queer people belong in these spaces - belong in society - no matter what some may say. We are people and we long to feel a part of things.”
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