Laura Booker, LCSW

I have been providing psychotherapy to LGBTQ and straight individuals, couples and families for twenty-five years. With offices in Manhattan and Maplewood, NJ, I work with people of all ages in a pursuit to live authentic, satisfying lives, rich with connection and meaning. With a social justice and feminist lens, my approach emphasizes understanding relationship dynamics and helping people strengthen salient relationships as a means to a happier life. I also draw on biological, psychological and social theories of trauma and attachment to help clients makes sense of their experiences and learn to manage overwhelming feelings of depression, anxiety and abandonment.

More about my practice: I work well with people who are curious about relationship dynamics as well as their inner emotional lives. My style is engaged and interactive, and my hope is to create an environment where a person feels understood, cared about and safe to bring their full self into therapy.

I have a particularly specialty in working with transgender/gender non-binary people and their families. Additionally, I specialize in couples/intimate relationship work, including for those whom their identies and relationship structure do not follow normative paths.  I work well with people who are interested in creating their own life narratives even if those narratives stray from traditional notions of who we are supposed to be and what kind of relationships we are supposed to have.  

Prior to private practice, I worked as a clinician and supervisor in both the adult and youth programs at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in New York City. I was also an Adjunct Lecturer at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. I have also spoken widely on topics including couples therapy, LGBTQ mental health, LGBTQ youth and families, gender identity and transgenderism, substance abuse, developmental and acute trauma and mental health.

My Mission

My mission is to help people feel better about themselves and to create lives that feel grounded, creative, connective, where they are not bogged down or haunted by past traumas, both insidious or acute, or internalized notions of their worth.  Growing up queer and being queer in a world that still stigmatizes varied and diverse sexual orientations and gender identities comes with unique challenges.  There is also tremendous freedom and power in being queer and my hope is to help LGBTQ people access those assets to enhance their relationships and their lives.

Education

University of Pennsylvania, Bachelor of Arts, Annenberg School of Communication

University of Southern California, Masters in Social Work (Phi Kappa Phi Honors).

Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.”

— Audre Lorde