Jay Herman (they/them)

I work with people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and relationship structures. This may or may not be the primary focus of therapy depending on each person's needs. I follow WPATH Standards of Care and provide letters for medical transition when necessary for both on-going clients and single-session assessments.

I work with clients of various racial, religious and cultural backgrounds, utilizing training in collective trauma, intergenerational trauma, and the adaptive survival mechanisms historically oppressed individuals must use to survive under a system and culture of oppression. Discussing the intersecting identities between myself is critical to the therapeutic relationship, whether that's working with a cis parent as a trans therapist or a BIPOC individual as a white therapist.

My five-year career before beginning clinical social work involved working with teens and adults experiencing interpersonal trauma including child abuse and neglect, bullying, dating violence, sexual violence, human trafficking, and identity-based violence. Abuse takes many forms, not just physical but also includes emotional, mental, sexual, legal, financial, and technological. Like all forms of trauma, it can get stuck in the body and/or we may use maladaptive coping that impacts us today.

Talk therapy doesn't work for most people. Expressive arts modalities help people access information about how their thoughts, feelings, emotional states, and get unstuck from an event or pattern. I specifically draw on psychodramatic and expressive writing techniques. I have attended 50+ hours of training in these modalities and safely using them, however, I am not a licensed clinical art therapist.

Trauma causes fragmentation within our true Self and develops parts of us that do not trust us and/or others. While this process happens to protect us from any future trauma, it also can produce shame, self-criticism, and push others away when what we want is to feel safe. IFS allows us to engage these (often younger) parts of ourselves, approach them with curiosity and love, and help regain trust and self-confidence in our true Self. It is a pathway to building self-esteem and self-compassion.

"The body keeps the score." - Bessel van der Kolk Unresolved trauma is often stuck in the body and can show up as fears of intimacy, reactive behavior we are unaware of the cause, feeling stuck, and even physical pain and illness. Safely approaching somatic integration allows for the release of this trauma that is holding us back from our highest self.