PSYCHOTHERAPY designed FOR WOMEN’s needs

Along with the experiences and predispositions that traditional Western psychotherapy recognizes as sources of emotional distress in all individuals, girls and women face a lifetime of exposure to gendered expectations and limitations that measurably affect our well-being. We face social pressures to conform, be pleasing, and meet unrealistic ideals of behavior and beauty. Along with being employed outside of the home, there is a cultural expectation that we will also perform the vast majority of unpaid household and caretaking labor for our families. Over half of us have experienced some form of sexual violence. Women who tell their stories or demand change are often silenced, disbelieved, or pathologized.

Rather than recognize women’s emotional distress as a natural response to these conditions, traditional therapy often diagnoses us as mentally ill. This approach not only discredits women’s experiences but also silences our voices by labelling us as disordered.

A psychotherapy specifically for women must center—and believe—women’s stories. It must empower women—regardless of race, religion, age, ability, sexuality, cis or trans—to advocate for themselves, create change in their relationships, and seek justice when possible. It must support women in making meaning on their own terms, recovering their power, and valuing their inner wisdom over external expectations.

I invite you to join me in creating this new, better therapy for women.

marriage therapy / Relationship counseling for one

For heterosexual marriages and relationships in which the woman is dissatisfied with an inequitable division of labor, sexual incompatibility, or lack of emotional intimacy, relationship therapy often can be unsatisfying. Unfortunately, most marriage therapy simply reinforces gender norms and defaults to a “both-side-ism” that minimizes the very real harm these culturally enforced roles and expectations do to women’s well-being. It may feel more helpful to explore your feelings about your relationship on your own in an environment that centers your feelings, desires, and hopes for the future.

EMDR Trauma Resolution Therapy

Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) is an approach to trauma resolution that has been backed by years of research. EMDR directly affects the way the brain processes and holds trauma and releases traumatic memories that are trapped in the nervous system. When employed within a safe and trusting therapeutic relationship, EMDR is affective in reducing the emotional distress and limiting self-beliefs that result from childhood attachment wounds (C-PTSD) as well as specific traumatic events (PTSD).

NARRATIVE THERAPY

Narrative therapy encourages us to place our anxiety, depression, or dissatisfaction within a broader external context—inequitable relationships, gendered cultural norms, lack of safety—rather than label it as something that is broken within us. This enables us to tell new stories about ourselves that align more closely with our lived experience. As these alternative stories became integrated into our understanding of ourselves, we are able to reclaim our personal authority and feel empowered to be the author of our own lives going forward.

ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY

ACT is a mindfulness-based approach to therapy that helps us be fully present with our moment-to-moment experience in a curious, non-judgmental way. ACT is especially helpful when working with anxiety and panic because it builds psychological flexibility—a skill that helps us accept, rather than fight, states of physical or psychological distress. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy puts the focus on personal values so that we define what is important to us and create a life of meaning.