“Female authority is the ability of a woman to validate her own convictions of truth, beauty, and goodness in regard to her self-concept and self-interest.”
Women deserve therapy designed specifically for us.
Women live beautifully diverse lives but we all have similar experiences that affect our well-being. We might feel pressure to be “nice” or to meet unrealistic standards of beauty and behavior. Many of us feel trapped by the expectation that we’ll do most of unpaid labor and caregiving for our families even if we work outside of the home. Over half of us will experience some form of sexual violence, coercion, or harassment. When women tell the truth about our lives or demand change in our relationships we’re often disbelieved or told we’re exaggerating or ungrateful.
Rather than recognize women’s emotional distress as a natural response to these conditions, traditional therapy tells women we have a mental illness. Women are often diagnosed with anxiety, depression, postpartum depression, or sexual dysfunction without ever acknowledging how our health and well-being are affected by the roles we play in our communities, our workplaces, and our families. We deserve therapy that challenges assumptions about our ability to know what’s best for us and that encourages us to unapologetically reclaim our personal authority.
A psychotherapy specifically for women must center—and believe—women’s stories. It must empower women to advocate for ourselves, to demand equity in our relationships, and to seek justice when possible. Good therapy centered on women’s lives supports us in identifying our resources, making meaning on our own terms, and trusting our own self-knowledge over external expectations.
Fortunately, there’s a place on the west side of Madison where women speak with the sole voice of authority about their lived experience. There is no gaslighting, no undermining, no “what-about-isms.” Women are believed without qualification or the need for justification, and they are encouraged to center their dreams, desires, and needs in the story of their own lives.
It’s a place where women are encouraged to expand rather than to shrink. To assert rather than defer. Defiant non-compliance with unreasonable expectations is celebrated with much fanfare (and sometimes even a little singing and dancing).
It’s a place where women learn the joy and freedom that comes with claiming the authority to decide what’s best for themselves. They learn that it’s ok to stop working so hard to improve relationships that don’t make their life happier or easier. They are not gaslit into believing that they just need to communicate their needs more clearly when they require help or care. They are supported in saying no to unwanted or uninspiring sex and unreasonable demands for emotional labor.
The conversations that happen here make women unruly, ungovernable, emboldened, and hopeful.
Creative, liberatory therapy for women includes:
NARRATIVE THERAPY & THE POWER-THREAT-MEANING FRAMEWORK
Narrative therapy and PTMF encourage women to locate our dis-ease within a broad context—relationships that may be inequitable, cultural norms that limit our choices, the authoritarian political climate—rather than diagnose it as something that is broken within us. We claim the right to tell the truth about how these systems affect us. We create meaning from our experiences that makes sense to us even if it makes others uncomfortable. We assert our right to make changes that center our happiness and well-being. And we do it all without asking permission or offering apologies.
Individual Marriage therapy & Relationship counseling
For heterosexual relationships in which the woman is dissatisfied with an inequitable division of labor, sexual incompatibility, or lack of emotional intimacy, couples counseling is often an additional source of frustration. Unfortunately, most marriage therapy simply reinforces unfair sex-based norms and minimizes the harm these roles and expectations do to women’s well-being. It may feel helpful to explore your feelings about your relationship on your own in an environment that centers your feelings, desires, and hopes for your future.
EMDR Trauma Resolution Therapy
EMDR is an approach to trauma treatment that has been supported by research. When employed within a safe and trusting therapeutic relationship, EMDR can be effective in reducing the emotional distress and limiting self-beliefs that result from childhood abuse and neglect, adult relationship trauma, or specific traumatic events that posed a threat to your life or safety. Beliefs such as, “I’m not in control,” or “I’m not worthy of protection,” become “I can handle whatever challenges come my way,” or “I have a deep well of resources that I can rely on.”