We recently connected with Van Ethan Levy and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Van thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

There were many moments. Starting with being in conversion therapy at such a young age then shipped all over the united states to be cured for being trans, non binary and undiagnosed autism. Being constantly kicked out of schools, internships, spaces, places, and every where for the identity(ies) I held, including graduate school programs, associateships, traineeships and so much more. The amount of ableism, homophobia, transphobia and many more forms of whyte supremacy forced me to shift into the role that I hold. I have created accessibility and training and found the loop holes to help people in my community gain access to life saving care. Here is a link to share a bit more about that:

Trans Leader Raises Awareness of Aggressions Small and Large

Van, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a queer, non binary, trans, socialized as female, nBPOC (not Black Person of Color), whose pronouns are they or elle in Spanish, who is autistic and has dynamic disabilities amongst many more historically excluded identities. I am dually licensed as a Marriage & Family Therapist and a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, I am passionate about holding space for all intersections of one’s identity(ies). I am dedicated to social justice & believe it is vital to cultivate an awareness of our own internal strengths, specifically our resilience as we continue to grow and discover ourselves. I believe it is important to trust and validate our experience(s) & journey(s). I aim to use a trauma informed lens and hope to help you learn ways to help support yourself in the best way possible. I also provide trainings on trans & non binary identities, am author of the interactive book Exploring My Identity(ies) (2020), produced a Documentary called Do Something: Trans & Non Binary Identities (2021), and put on an international conference called Do Something: Identity(ies) (2022).

I am tired of fighting organizations, institutions and the system with the ignorant and naive belief that they are broken. The reality is, they are not broken, they work exactly as they are designed, to oppress, erase and push us out. My mentor told me to take that energy I use to fight, and create ways that are accessible to fill these gaps and create a new system and challenge people to pick the right side of history. Just because the majority does not support something, does not mean it is not the right thing to do. I easily spend 6-12 hours a day, 7 days a week, unpaid to fight for my community and many other communities.

I want people to accept and hold that we all have internalized transphobia, homophobia, ableism, racism, fatphobia and so much more. We uplift whyte supremacy. Once we can accept this, then I want people to cultivate an awareness because we can’t challenge and shift behavior, language, systems and more if we are not aware of. I want people to engage, treat, and exist with others as human beings, rather than with judgement. We are all so different and there is no right or wrong way to exist, yet we have to hide so many parts of ourselves and often lack the freedom to exist how we want to be. We are oppressed by society and then oppress ourselves.

I am hoping that people can start questioning the judgements people place on themselves and each other. And find ways to exist as the person wants to and accept that others also get to do the same. It is as easy as accepting that some people may like cheese even if I don’t. Yet we can’t accept that someone whose gender marker was assigned male at birth is really female. Or accept and create space that someone needs to flap their arms around to stay regulated, be present and happy. Our judgements are limiting ourselves and others from being our authentic self. Why can we not adapt to create inclusion & safety?

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I have been pushed out of/kicked out of over 20+ schools in my life. I have constantly been told that I am “crazy”, “mentally ill”, “an idiot”, “incapable”, “you can’t be a therapist”, beaten, raped, abused, fired, ridiculed, mocked, ostracized, and so much more, in my field for the work that I do. Yet here I am, every day, working 7 days a week to make this world a little safer for someone else. Hoping that our children, youth, adults, elders are not being buried due to internalizing the hate that is constantly spewed based on one’s identity(ies).

When I started graduate school at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology I was constantly misgendered intentionally, given dirty looks, excluded, mocked, cyber bullied and when I brought this to the attention of the school I was put on a disciplinary action plan. When I requested accommodations of the additional course work I was provided to “teach me to be normal” I was penalized. When I completed all the additional course work that was mandatory only for me to force me to fit a mold of someone who is able bodied, cis gender, neurotypical, heterosexual person too quickly, I was penalized. No matter what I did, it was wrong.

They held a disciplinary meeting with multiple faculty & staff and when I provided evidence, as I always did of emails, incidences, recordings and more. They refused to look at them because I did not follow protocol. A protocol that was not communicated to me and when I asked prior to for assistance in preparation, I was denied. I had over a 4.0 GPA, the disciplinary committee met months before the last quarter of my first full year (2 year program) and then the school informed me 2 weeks prior to the quarter ending that I was kicked out immediately. They failed me which directly impacted my grades. Yet I still continued on Antioch University where I was embraced and allowed to be who I was.

Antioch university used my name, my pronouns. Made accommodations for me to have a standing desk or lay in class due multiple back procedures and so much more.

Back track to undergraduate school. When I was 16 years old I was accepted in SFSU. I was brutally raped by a man in his 30’s and the schools response was to kick me out of the dorms because they did not want to deal with the liability. Knowing that someone under the age of 18 cannot legally rent an apartment and I had no family or friends in San Francisco so I was forced to leave. My professors were kind enough to accommodate me and allow me to take my final early so that I could not lose my credits that I worked hard for.

I had internships (you need to get over 3000 clinical hours to get licensed as both an LMFT & LPCC). One of my internships which I cannot name because we settled out of court with a non-disclosure agreement. I challenged the anti-Blackness, the racism, the transphobia, the homophobia, the ableism. The response was lying and attempting to create ways to look as if I messed up. Some examples, locking me out of my email accounts and accusing me of lying about mileage, but they couldn’t fire me because I forwarded my emails to my personal email account to provide evidence. Refusing to provide me any training on clinical documentation yet both penalizing me for improper documentation as well as going into my notes and changing the notes, which I had evidence and was able to prove. At that same job, I was robbed. Someone left the door open to our office and a person came in and stole my wallet, it is on camera. I was the one who got in trouble for having my items robbed even though I locked the door behind me, there was evidence on camera that the last person out (not me) did not lock the door.
These are just some of the horrific gaslighting experiences I had.

Another internship I had was in a private practice where I was told that I could not list my pronouns or that using they pronouns would be “too confusing for the clients so I needed to just pick binary pronouns”.

There is not accessibility in this world, in my field, and much more. Yet, here I am, still fighting every single day.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

Being a human and not using your understanding of the world as the basis to how the world works. Truly trusting the person across from you and holding that even if the person’s reality feels like a lie, impossible and/or whatever gaslighting oppressive judgmental language that comes to mind. Immediately challenging this distortion with the reality that it is our own privilege that prevents us from being aware of another person’s reality. We do not get to have an opinion on a reality that we do not experience.

There is no such thing as reality. Our experiences and understandings is what make up our realities. Each are equally as valid as someone else’s. We are only problematic when we are invalidating another person’s reality and imposing our own beliefs. Ex: Mental health providers are more likely to diagnosis trans people with diagnoses based on our being emotionally dysregulated. There is little to no room for the therapist to hold that as a trans/non binary person we live in an invalidating world and often times our own body is invalidating. How can one stay regulated when we are constantly told we are not who we are or misgendered, or kicked out of homes, or not hired, or fired, or not rented to, or people won’t date us, or we are being killed.

The average yearly salary of a trans person is 10k. 1 in 3 of us will attempt to die by suicide before the age of 18. 1 in 2 of us will experience sexual violence before the age of 18. When you rent a place, buy, get a job, etc… it asks you “Have you ever used a different name” this immediately outs us. We have to exist in this world on hard to extra hard mode depending on the identity(ies) we hold and embody. Trust the person trusting you enough to share or not share the person’s reality.

I hope your day is kind.

Contact Info:

• Website: VanEthanLevy.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sktrvan/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vanethanlevy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/van-ethan-levy-11549459/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sktrvan2
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@vanethanlevythey1178
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sktrvan VanEthanLevy.com/providers VanEthanLevy.com/documentary VanEthanLevy.com/book VanEthanLevy.com/conference VanEthanLevy.com/resources