Serving Chicago communities, families and individuals with affirming person-centered behavioral health services.
Serving Chicago communities, families and individuals with affirming person-centered behavioral health services.
Affirming person-centered care
Chicago Pride Center offers a breadth of specializations and training to tailor therapeutic process to the specific experience of each client, serving children and adults throughout the life-course. We hold social work values as an important perspective in therapeutic process and bring a depth of experience in work with clients who hold myriad identities including LGBTQIA+ and Gender Expansive folx, non-monogamous relationships as well as veterans through trauma-informed, anti-oppressive, transformative justice and strengths-based empowerment and harm reduction frameworks.
Our Services
With over thirty years of combined experience serving Illinois communities with person-centered and affirming care, Chicago Pride Center offers a breadth of specializations and training to tailor the therapeutic experience to the client. We offer individual, relational and group psychotherapy focusing on mood and behavioral issues, grief, trauma and substance use disorders with specializations in interpersonal dynamics, effective communication, relational and tri-phasic trauma work, EMDR, Cognitive Behavioral, Motivational interviewing, Mindfulness and Psychodynamic therapies in safe, affirming community. We bring a depth of experience in serving LGBTQIA+ and Gender Expansive folx with ongoing group therapy focusing on themes relating to identity, belonging and self-acceptance utilizing anti-oppressive, transformative justice and empowerment-based frameworks.
Please contact us to explore if we might be a good fit for you.
HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!
With over thirty years of combined experience serving LGBTQ and Gender Expansive folks, Chicago Pride Center staff provide a breadth of specializations and experience to tailor the treatment experience to the individual. We offer individual, trauma informed therapy for substance use, mood and behavioral disorders with specializations in relational trauma work, Cognitive Behavioral, Motivational, Mindfulness and Psychodynamic therapies. We also work with clients who want to explore identities that include gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity.
People who hold LGBTQ/GE identities sometimes encounter challenges in their relationships with concerns about communication, intimacy, boundaries, fidelity, sex, money, and parenting. Other issues may include coming out, expansive or polyamorous relational constellations or substance use. We offer our depth of experience working with these concerns in LGBTQ/GE communities.
Chicago Pride Center offers short term and ongoing group therapy focusing on themes relating to LGBTQ and Gender Expansive experience, substance use and intersectional identity utilizing anti-oppressive, empowerment based frameworks. We bring motivational and harm reduction perspectives to a client-centered, affirming and sex-positive environment of care that acknowledges the complexity of identity, and the importance of safe respectful spaces as the optimal context for healing and community. Group offerings include:
GRIEF AND THE RESILIENTS, a drop-in therapeutic support group for LGBTQIA+ adults and allys navigating grief related to bereavement, estrangement, or other losses that utilizes Wolfeldt's Companioning Model of Grief Therapy. The group meets virtually the first and third Thursdays of each month from 6-7:30pm. We accept insurance and sliding scale payment. Please contact us to learn more!
THE GROUP, an ongoing process group for older gay men meeting weekly on Monday afternoons from 3 - 4:15. Themes include adjustment to the aging process, processing the challenges specific to aging in place, stigma of ageism and the impact of these factors on mood while building a community of social supports. We accept Medicare and other insurance and sliding scale payment. Please contact us to learn more!
Our clinical staff have a depth of training, expertise and experience in client-centered, trauma informed behavioral healthcare and substance use treatment. We offer clinical consultation and supervision to individuals and organizations wishing to increase their capacities to provide affirming care as well as to CADC and LCSW candidates working toward certification and licensure.
Hugh Cole is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Group Psychotherapist with over 18 years of experience working with individuals, families and groups. His work focuses on helping people move out of stuck places, increasing relationship satisfaction and healing trauma and loss. He embodies an empathic, relational and strengths-based perspective in the work.
Hugh is a founding partner with Chicago Pride Center, LLC, and co-facilitates T-groups with Leaders in Tech in California (LIT) while teaching Interpersonal Dynamics in the Leadership track at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
He was senior clinician at Howard Brown Health Center where his leadership guided the Violence Recovery Program, Recovering with Pride and The Journey Continues, behavioral health programs focused on interpersonal violence, substance use orders and aging, respectively.
An Albert Schweitzer Fellow for Life, Hugh and Chicago Pride Center remain committed to addressing healthcare disparities at home and abroad.
Hugh's therapeutic work is informed by years of experience in the trauma consultation group at Womencare Counseling in Evanston.
He received his Master of Social Work from Loyola University Chicago with a mental health concentration and is currently pursuing certifications in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), The Neuro-Affective Relational Model (NARM) of trauma therapy and Applied Jungian Depth Psychotherapy. He comes from a large and ever-growing family from the South side of Chicago, and his personal passions include family, art, travel, cooking, music, theatre, gardening and social justice.
Lizzie completed her graduate studies at the University of Chicago in 2018 and has been providing therapy since 2016. She enjoys working with children, adolescents, and adults, and provides individual, family, and relationship therapy. Lizzie believes deeply in the importance of an empathic, relational, and strengths-based approach to therapy and her therapeutic style is warm and caring while remaining transparent and direct. Lizzie is an LGBTQ-affirming therapist with a commitment to honoring the unique cultures and identities of every person.
Lizzie has also been supervising unlicensed social workers and providing consultation for other therapists professionally since 2020. As a supervisor and consultant, Lizzie is compassionate, connected, and encouraging. She deeply enjoys working with new clinicians and is open to accepting new supervisees.
Ben completed his graduate studies in social work and public health from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has training in providing various types of therapies and works from person-in-environment and existentialist lenses. He focuses on taking a client-centered, mindfulness approach to his work, providing an environment for clients to feel safety and acceptance . Ben has experience working with a range of issues, including but not limited to: depression and anxiety, family issues, identity exploration, alcohol and substance use, sex and relationship issues, HIV and health, aging, and trauma & PTSD.
He believes that no matter what you are struggling with, therapy can be a great place to find support, and that no issue is too big or too small to seek support for. He holds that therapy can be a way to navigate relationships and life changes, explore identity, and find new ways to cope with stressors. Ben focuses on creating a non-judgmental environment for clients to gain confidence in how they want to live their lives. He also strives to make his work trauma-informed, meaning that clients are in control of the pace and direction of therapy.