Feminist Therapy

Specializing in feminist therapy, I use an approach that addresses the challenges marginalized individuals face due to oppression, discrimination, and intersecting identities. My approach empowers individuals to regain control over their lives, helping them understand their strengths, values, and personal power. I focus on embracing strengths, validating feelings, and utilizing techniques like self-disclosure, psychoeducation, power analysis, and social action outside the therapeutic space.

Feminist therapy for me functions as the lens in which I understand client's presenting concerns and then use various interventions from other orientations for treatment. Basically this means that one of the goals in every session with me is to empower the client in front of me and help them find their internal power.

I specialize in feminist therapy, a framework rooted in gender equality and empowerment. I address societal influences, power dynamics, and how they impact mental health. By acknowledging the intersectionality of identities, I help clients explore and challenge oppressive norms. Together, we work to foster self-acceptance, autonomy, and resilience, promoting positive mental health from a feminist perspective.

I am able to discuss and process systems of oppression that we all live in and how to change the systems. I will not discount your lived experience and will provide a safe space for you to tell your story.

I am a big supporter of women, and I firmly believe in the power of helping them connect with themselves and their voices and making themselves heard. I am trained in women's issues and feminist psychotherapy, and am passionate about walking with women through the journey of dismantling patriarchy and questioning beliefs that continue to make us feel we need to conform with the status quo and stay quiet.

Feminism is going through growth spurts. As the therapist and nutritionist to women and femmes, I am constantly reading and educating myself on how to best, and most respectfully honor the multitude of identities that each person inevitably carries as well as attend trainings than emphasize social justice and activism. Anne Balay is credited as saying, “If your feminism isn’t intersectional, then it isn’t feminism.” Our work together will help you liberate not only your body, also your mind.

I am well-trained in feminist psychotherapeutic practice with members of the queer community, racial/ethnic minority populations, and with women/womxn.

Feminist therapy isn't just for women! It is a modality that focuses on client issues through the lens of the client's experience and context, both personal and social/political/cultural; therefore it works well for clients of all kinds of identities! Diverse perspectives are encouraged/supported and the therapy relationship is more egalitarian to minimize the power differential. In other words, I work alongside my clients to help them work through their difficulties in a strengths-based way.

Identifying as female in our culture comes with so many landmines. Navigating relationships, work/life balance, parenting, misogyny, and so on. If you've clicked on this specialty, you know. I like to work from an feminist perspective to see how gender underlies other stressors. Feminism is intersectional, and if you identify as female (or on the feminine side of the spectrum) this space is for you.

Feminist therapy is a strength-based framework that is cognizant of power, bias, prejudice and systemic oppression. The problems the client brings to therapy are viewed in relationship to society at large. Rather than the problem being intrinsic to the person. In feminist therapy, we work diligently to foster an egalitarian relationship. This is the idea that you are the best expert of yourself and your problems. The therapist is bringing all their skills and training but doesn’t assert to be the expert of you. In this context, therapist and client collaborate as equals to help the client heal. Feminist therapists may use a variety of tools to help validate and normalize the client’s experiences. This includes analyzing how the social construction of gender has influenced the problems they are bringing to therapy – if at all. We may look at how power, unequal power, or the abuse of power impacts your well-being and capacity to thrive. Feminist therapy is particularly useful when considering experiences of inequality, race-based or gendered traumas, such as domestic and sexual violence.

In my work, I focus on reworking gendered power dynamics with individuals and couples and addressing social inequities that keep partners form being collaborative with one another.

I promote an egalitarian relationship with my clients, acknowledging they are the experts of their lives. I work with all clients, regardless of gender or sexual identity, on identifying areas of their life they experience oppression, and how it impacts their overall wellbeing. One of my greatest joys as a counselor is witnessing individuals become empowered to make choices and take actions that promote wellbeing, regardless of whether those choices are congruent with societal norms.

What forms of gender expression feel safest, most comfortable, or fun for you? Which forms feel unsafe or unavailable to you? Gender-based expectations and norms impact people of all genders, and may be holding you back from being yourself and feeling empowered. We will explore the ways that your gender impacts your life, including your values and any limiting beliefs that you may be internalizing from your upbringing, environment, or culture about yourself or others.

I believe societal pressures and constructs impact every individual, and therefore, every relationship. Feminist therapy and feminist family therapy acknowledge how societal expectations, gender constructs, and personal biases can influence an individual's ability to connect with others and prescribe how they do so. As a feminist therapist, I can help you understand and examine how expectations from those around us influence our sense of self and how we show up in our relationships and lives.

I love feminist therapy because it is for all genders and all people: It analyzes power structures and their effects upon people. Each person's intersectional identity, along with their unique lived experience, is differently affected by the current politics and systemic structures. This model helps frame issues to show that they are likely externally caused, which can remove the feeling of self-blame. It also uses education, advocacy, and strength-building to encourage self empowerment.

Mental health is a feminist issue! As a feminist therapist, I focus on helping my clients build on their existing strengths, explore intersecting identities, and break out of oppressive expectations and societal pressures that aren't serving them. My work recognizes the impact of the systems we live within, and honors the ways we've learned to cope and survive, while creating space to grow towards the lives we want. My clients are women and nonbinary folks who want to thrive at work and home.

In my time as a counselor I have become only more convinced that the root of many- maybe most- of people's presenting concerns in therapy are the result of systems of oppression. I believe that white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism are inextricably linked to stress, trauma, anxiety and depression. I believe that one's environment (society, culture, systems big and small, etc) plays a huge role in a person's mental health.