What is Therapy?
Therapy is a space to be in relationship with a healing practitioner who is trained in psychology at the individual, interpersonal, communal, and structural levels. The term psychotherapy may be used, to indicate that it is distinct from other healing practices such as physical therapy or occupational therapy. There are several kinds of therapy practitioners, such as clinical psychologists, counseling psychologists, counselors, and social workers, who may each approach therapy from a different lens. I am a counselor trained in counseling psychology, which means that my work is less clinically (diagnostically) focused and takes a more general approach, considering the whole person and their life circumstances. Many providers who are licensed to practice therapy may provide similar care to what I offer, and I encourage you to consider who and what modality will best work for you.
Psychotherapy, born in a medical model, is traditionally known as a form of treatment for “mental disorders.” Typically, patients are diagnosed from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and then provided therapy (and sometimes medication) designed to address the diagnosis. I believe that mental health care includes more than treatment for a diagnosis. Diagnosis can be helpful (e.g., for finding language for shared experiences, for navigating the medical and mental health treatment system, for finding community, and for identifying forms of care that have worked for others that might work for you), but it has taken on a much larger role in therapeutic practice than I believe it should. Therapy from a counseling psychology perspective offers the opportunity to discuss concerns without pathologizing them. We can then consider the whole of you - your social and cultural context, career, relationships, identity, and values. Ultimately, my goal is to help you determine the relationship you want to have with your own mental wellbeing.
Potential benefits of therapy:
Positive changes in your beliefs about yourself, your life circumstances, and your behavior that provides relief, spaciousness, and healing
Increased insight and understanding of yourself and your worldview
Greater knowledge of the roots of your current problems, including how your individual history and the collective and inter-generational history of your community and ancestors has affected you
Increased sense of ease in relationships, including greater confidence in setting boundaries with others, asking for what you need and want, and receiving and giving sustainable care
Potential risks of therapy:
Changes to the relationships you have with yourself and others, which may induce feelings of loss and grief
The possibility of experiencing feelings and emotions that may be difficult to cope with
Opening psychological wounds with the potential outcome that you are not be able to fully process and heal them
The inherent risk of psychological and interpersonal harm that comes with entering into a meaningful relationship with another human being
My approach to therapy
My approach views therapy as a form of care work, providing support and guidance as you explore your psychological space (thoughts, beliefs, emotions, behavior, etc.) with the companionship of a helping professional. Together, we establish a working relationship that can help you hold some of the harder parts of being human, while you face the transitions and turbulence of life. I am highly informed by Humanistic, Existential, and Emotionally-Focused therapies, which emphasize client personhood, the therapy relationship, and the therapeutic process itself (rather than any specific intervention). It is client-directed, with support and input from the therapist.
I use a collection of philosophies, techniques, and healing modalities in my work as a therapist. I can help you process the harm that was done to you, I can provide assistance and encouragement as you advocate for yourself, and I can invite you to honor where you have agency. I do not rely on any one method of therapy to do so. This can sometimes be confusing, as there is not one linear path to healing that I lay out for my clients. We are exploring together, finding our way through the forest, each bringing our experience and insight to our wanderings.
What guides us in our work together will be determined collaboratively, and we may or may not develop specific goals for therapy. Often, I find that the goals of therapy emerge organically throughout our work. One of my primary goals from the outset of therapy is to help you feel as connected and secure in our relationship as is possible. Good boundaries, clear expectations, and authenticity are the core tools I use to help us get there.
Note that therapy cannot and will not immediately (or even necessarily quickly) solve all of the concerns you come to therapy with — it's a process! In short, that process involves: establishing the relationship, exploring what you'd like to work on, taking time to build insight about the factors in your life that affect the issue you'd like to work on, and finding creative solutions and approaches that you can implement in your life. It can sometimes take a long time to do all of that, and it is not necessarily a linear process. Often as therapy progresses, new situations and factors come up that also need to be processed and addressed. The therapy space is co-created by the client and the therapist, recognizing that ultimately we are human beings talking with each other about life. “We're all turkeys in the same turkey soup,” as psychotherapist Sue Johnson has said.
Why Defiant Therapy might be (or not be) for you:
At Defiant Therapy, I practice radical therapy for defiant people. We all have the capacity to be defiant. Every day, queer people and indigenous people and people of color defy the norms of a hetero-patriarchal and white supremacist, colonial society, simply by existing. When we insist that the trauma we experience(d) was not our fault, we defy patterns of violence meant to keep us small. By embracing our support needs and advocating for ourselves and our communities, we defy the ableism that pervades our capitalistic economic system.
Part of how I view my job as a therapist is in helping people identify the influences of political forces (such as those named above) on their experiences, beliefs, and sense of self. This helps relieve the burden of thinking our healing is something we have to do all by ourselves, and opens us up to the possibility and project of collective healing. When we look to the root of our problems, we are often surprised to discover all that has influenced our growth and prevented our flourishing. While I will hold space for your personal political beliefs, I will challenge you to see how the politics of race, gender, disability, etc. have impacted your life.
This is not to say that our problems are entirely external. Our inner systems reflect and take on the burdens of our external systems, creating patterns that only we can choose to break. Defiance, ironically, is an act of accepting the way things are — so that we can move forward with agency and make choices that embrace our power.
If this framework doesn’t align for you, there are many forms of therapy that might. I encourage you to explore multiple modalities and practitioners.
More specifically, I have specialized training and experience in working with clients who have lived experience of: traumatic experience(s) and/or complex trauma; mild to moderate depression; generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and/or panic; mood dysregulation and/or hypomania; suicidal ideation; self-injury; neurodivergence (autism, ADHD, OCD, etc.); questioning gender identity or embracing gender expansiveness; sexuality and relationship concerns, polyamory, and kink; family dysfunction; adolescent development concerns; the effects of marginalization and colonialism; disability and chronic illness; substance use concerns; workplace and career concerns; experiences of pregnancy loss and abortion.
If you have received diagnoses from past providers that do not feel helpful and fitting for you (such as for a personality disorder, schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, etc.), I encourage you to reach out — sometimes this can be a result of misdiagnosis of neurodivergence and/or trauma responses and this is something I unpack with many of my clients. Some of the suggested treatments for these disorders - such as medication or more intensive outpatient therapy - may still be helpful, and I will encourage you to explore all options while also respecting your autonomy and agency.
I encourage you to find a provider with more training and experience in the following if it is your primary concern coming into therapy: OCD and looking for targeted treatment such as exposure therapy or I-CBT; persistent psychosis and/or delusions; Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID); severe disordered eating; severe depression or manic symptoms that are unmanaged with medication or other treatment; significant family conflict; substance dependency with active use; menopause and peri-menopause; peri-natal and post-natal mental health; adoption concerns. There are other therapists who specialize in these concerns, and if you need help in your search please feel welcome to reach out to me.