In this Plutopia News Network interview, Dallas, Texas counselor and longtime LGBTQ advocate Candy Marcum reflects on more than four decades of providing affirming mental health care, her activism during the AIDS crisis, and her belief that LGBTQ people need support in accepting themselves amid discrimination and social pressure. She discusses growing up gay in West Texas, the influence of her medical family, and her path into counseling, as well as the continuing challenges faced by LGBTQ people, especially transgender people, during periods of political backlash. Marcum also explores common relationship issues such as communication, sex, finances, divorce, parenting, and family acceptance, explaining how counseling can help couples either repair their relationships or separate more constructively. She describes the importance of trust in therapy, professional boundaries, medication when appropriate, and virtual counseling, while emphasizing that a therapist’s role is not to fix clients but to help them understand themselves, manage their lives, and make their own choices.
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There are difficult things if you’re gay or lesbian, but there’s difficult things for a lot of things. And it gets better, and it’s character building. But we somehow have an idea of what a perfect person is, looks, and does. We try to put that on other people. I could tell people like to talk to me. And so I kind of put that together as I evolved and matured, and came to the conclusion that gay people need to feel good about themselves, need to feel good about being gay, and need to talk to someone about that. That’s how it all came together for me, was exactly, you know, what I am made of. I wanted to help other people, and knew I could do that through counseling.
