Meet David Strah | Psychotherapist & Life Coach

We had the good fortune of connecting with David Strah and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi David, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I love helping people, I love helping people heal and become more self-empowered. So it made sense to me to start my own business as a psychotherapist in service to helping people live their best lives – happier, richer and more fulfilling.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I am a psychotherapist in private practice with an office in Larchmont Village. I also see clients on Zoom from all over California. I have a masters in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University Los Angeles. What makes my work standout is that my specialization is in LGBTQ Affirmative therapy – helping my clients by looking through an affirmative lens or recognizing how homophobia. bi-phobia and transphobia uniquely impacts their mental health and trauma. I help people overcome trauma through talk therapy and a technique called EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). Lots of people have experienced some form of trauma – capitol T or small case t – and especially people in the LGBTQ community. We are living through a particularly scary time for trans and gender diverse people – they are being scapegoated and their gender affirming health care is being threatened. I see patients as young as 5 and as old as 73. Mostly I see individuals but I also see couples and families.

When I was 30, my husband at the time and I adopted our first child. This was 1998 and we were definitely pioneers in gay adoption. A few years later we adopted our second child. My younger son came out as trans when he was 14.

I am also the author of Gay Dads:A Celebration of Fatherhood (Penguin/Putnam, 2003) which features 24 different gay dad families throughout the US and tells their stories of becoming parents through adoption, surrogacy, foster-care and co-parenting with women. My book was one fo the first of its kind.

So, I have a great deal of lived experience that I get to mine and it helps me be more empathetic with my clients.

I love hearing peoples story and thinking about how I can help them live happier lives.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I love my neighborhood Larchmont Village, so I would start there at Go Get Em Tiger for coffee where I have a standing coffee date with 10-12 people everyday at 830 am. We talk about everything and its a wonderfully emotionally nutrient way to start my day. Then we would explore Hancock Park, possible Paramount Pictures which is just a few blocks from my house. I’d take them for a hike in Griffith Park and to see the views of downtown LA and the Hollywood sign. I am vegan so I love Crossroads Kitchen Restaurant on Melrose. They have amazingly healthy, delicious vegan food. Another day might be spent driving from Silverlake to Malibu through the different neighborhoods such as Bel Air, Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, Brentwood. I love the Brentwood Country Mart for food and people watching. If it was the summertime, we would definitely do an outdoor movie at Cinespia in Hollywood Forever Cemetary. Just walking up and down Larchmont Boulevard is always fun and especially on Sunday bc we have a wonderful farmers market. I also love Planta in Marina Del Ray and Brentwood – one is Japanese-Italian and the other is more Mexican – both restaurants are vegan. I love playing pickleball so that would be something I might do with a freind – on the roof of the WestHollywood Library/West Hollywood Park which also has great views.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I am very fortunate that I have had several people who I would call my cheerleaders – especially as a young gay man growing up in the 1980s in suburban Connecticut. My parents, and particularly my mother was always very supportive of my creative and artistic interests. My first therapist when I was in 8th grade really helped me to accept myself as a gay man. He was the first person I cam out to at age 13 and he inspired me to later become a therapist. My drama-dance teacher, Ruth, at my small private school in Connecticut was an early advocate of mine. She was a former professional ballerina in NYC so she had gay male friends. She was one of the first adults to accept me as a gay man. Oddly, she moved to LA a few years before I did in 2012 and we both live in walking distance from eachother. She is now 91! And finally my friend Judith, whom I shared an office with at my first job out of college. Judith believed in me professionally when I didn’t always believe in myself. And to this day, her words of support and encouragement carry weight and buoy my self-confidence.

Everyone was supportive of me as a young gay man – during the AIDS crisis when being gay was practically a death sentence

Website: https://davidstrah.com

Instagram: @gaytherapistla