Simona A. Duque, LMSW

I’m a queer, nonbinary, Colombian American therapist committed to trauma-informed and anti-oppressive care. Believing in the power of a trusting therapeutic alliance, I aim to create a warm, compassionate, and affirming container where clients feel seen in their authentic selves. Personally understanding the importance of culturally competent care, I actively engage in cultural humility in an effort to best support my clients who each come from their own unique set of lived experiences.

I work with individual adults and relationships, with a focus on gender, sexuality, sexual trauma, spirituality, and non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSCs), including but not limited to psychedelics and meditation. I have experience working with queer, transgender, and gender expansive adults, BIPOC/people of the global majority, sex workers, artists, substance users, and neurodivergent individuals.

My therapeutic approach is person-centered, collaborative, and holistic. It’s informed by harm reduction, liberation-based, decolonial, and sex-positive frameworks. My background in community herbalism, queer nightlife, contemplative practice, and creative expression, informs my integrative approach as a therapist. I draw on mindfulness-based modalities, somatic or body-based approaches, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Internal Family Systems (IFS), Motivational Interviewing (MI), Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), Narrative Therapy, CBT and DBT.

I believe healing isn’t linear. It entails practicing self-compassion and attuning to our inner wisdom which is ongoing, especially in a relentlessly painful and uncertain world. I’m honored to support my clients along this windy, bumpy, yet exquisite path of remembering and reconnecting, towards healing and transformation.

I hold a M.S.W. from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, a B.A. in Critical Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Humboldt State University, and completed the Sacred Vibes Apothecary Spiritual Herbalism Apprenticeship program. I have postgraduate training in Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration Therapy (PHRI) and Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) from Fluence.

– Simona A. Duque, LMSW