MY STORY

I am Benjamin Toubia, LMFT- an LGBTQ affirmative Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist based in Los Angeles - here to guide you through all the complexities, adventures, adversities, and opportunities life hands you. I truly care about my patients’ well-being and guarantee top of the line counseling and psychological services catered to their specific needs. As a member of queer man and person of color myself, I am here to offer my services from a place of deep familiarity, empathy, compassion, and patience. 

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I was born and raised in LA, and as I embarked on my own journey of self-discovery, I realized the powerful need and pull inside myself to want to be able to help people on their own journeys. Each and every single person is unique, making their individual paths just as unique. As human beings, we are a deeply complex, multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, and often oddly contradictory species.

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While observing this individuality in people over the course of my path in becoming a therapist, I noticed something else: A lack of diversity, cultural considerations, ethnic and racial considerations, sexual identity considerations, gender identity considerations, and the like. As the field grows larger for mental healthcare, I not only feel, but am absolutely certain that it is fundamental that as clinicians, we take these inherent aspects of our prospective clients into consideration when providing care. Especially when it comes to minority communities.

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Over the last decade, my research expertise as an academic professor and as a professional
therapist serves as a strong background for my role as a senior subject matter expert to the
BHWET program development for UCLA Extension’s program submission for the HRSA grant opportunity. Given my strong background and practice in providing services for and teaching students about LGBTQ-affirmative treatment.

As a Marriage and Family Therapy doctoral student and SAMHSA Minority Fellow, I
participated in research that sought to identify the prevalence of co-occurring chemical addictions in LGBTQ youth. Simultaneously, I published an article critically analyzing and
rebuffing the heteronormative bias in contemporary clinical literature. In so doing, I concluded that there was a significant imperative at hand for more research on the complexities of LGBTQ relationship formation and maintenance.  

Moreover, my research and clinical practice have illustrated the importance of research on LGBTQ-specific issues as foundational for sustainable addiction recovery in the community. As a doctoral student, I received the Baden-Wurttemberg Stipend distributed by the Federal Republic of Germany to explore the relationship patterns of gay men in Berlin, Germany, and concluded that several key factors lead to substance use and relational distress among gay men in Berlin.

As an Intern, I worked in several community mental health
agencies specializing in treatment for LGBT individuals who suffered from substance use disorders. Often, I was the primary intern providing best practices training for junior clinicians on counseling services for these specific individuals. Throughout my clinical and academic experience, I honed in on the specific obstacles and opportunities LGBTQ and BIPOC individuals faced when seeking treatment services for addiction recovery and relationship maintenance. My passion for helping these specific clients led me to a career in academia where I felt I would make the most impact training future clinicians, researchers, professionals on how to provide clinically appropriate, ethically sound, and culturally sensitive services for these communities.  

My professorial experience at UCLA Extension, The Chicago School of Professional
Psychology, Alliant International University, Antioch University; my clinical experience at
Cross-Cultural Expressions Community Counseling Center, Passages Addiction Treatment and Recovery Center; as well as my experience in private practice have fortified me as an expert on the prevention and treatment of addictions and addictive behaviors. As a result of my experience, I am focused on broadening the acute and direly needed understanding of specific issues in the clinical treatment of LGBTQ youth and addiction prevention and treatment.