By skyforbes 
A Counselor’s View on How Immigration, Medicaid, and Anti-LGBTQ+ Policies Are Hurting Real People
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to publish something on Medium at least once per month. As July ends, I’ve struggled to find focus, not because I have nothing to say, but because the world feels heavy. I’m a counselor, and many of my clients are directly impacted by recent policy changes. Today, I want to introduce you to some of the people too often dismissed in national debates — immigrants, Medicaid enrollees, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Their stories are fictionalized, but the struggles are real.
Immigrants
Carla is 35 and the mother of two children. She has been in the United States since she was seven and speaks fluent English. She works with a relative cleaning houses and makes enough to support her children. She has never seen a counselor in the past but has recently been experiencing panic attacks and suffering from a recurring nightmare involving an ICE raid. In her nightmare, ICE agents take her into custody while her children are watching, and her greatest fear is that she will be separated from her children.