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.

Everything I see I view through the lens of being a lesbian woman in a changing but still extremely sexist society. It impacts the dynamics of everyone's lives. I see empowering women as my purpose for this practice as well as my soul's mission for being here at this time on the planet. Feminist therapy for me has always been about fighting all the "isms" we face. It won't do to be progressive about women but not recognize race, class, gender identity, disability or immigration status.

My approach with feminist theory is primarily focused on understanding how the client's identities influence their experience in the world as well as within the therapeutic space.

Let's be honest, systems of oppression are to blame here. I love supporting my clients in healing from systemic racism, sexism, fat-phobia, ableism, and queerphobia. You may not have control over these systems, but you do have control over how you show up for yourself in this sometimes fucked up world.

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

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.

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.

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.

I view the treatment of gender-based violence, intimate partner violence and sexual assault through a feminist theory lens, meaning these experiences are the result of gender oppression and the cultural and societal attitudes and beliefs that support gender oppression. Therefore, my therapeutic orientation incorporates an empowerment approach as well as supporting clients in identifying how they have been impacted by gender oppression.

Nova Mental Health Services creates a unique treatment plan for our clients but use these three treatments often. Feminists' therapy is loosely used as a way to explain how society and it being built for cis, white AMAB (assigned male at birth) people, effects us in our daily lives. We use it to question our perspectives and explore new ways of navigating life that is not as based in outdated and often harmful thinking. We do this in a way that all genders can be responsive to.

My practice and approach are deeply rooted in Feminist Therapy theory. I believe that transparency, shared power, awareness of oppression, and intersectionality are non-negotiables.

My approach is built on a foundation of feminist, anti-oppression values. I believe therapy is ineffective if the greater social context a person lives in is not examined critically; most of the time, doing so is empowering for all genders.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Relational-Cultural Therapy, we believe that our stories and images about who we are and what we can expect in relationship have transformative power. Intersectional feminisms and abolitionist liberatory praxis look at the ways in which the dominant worldview reinforces the stories of distrust and harm that we've experienced, and offers a vision of radical transformation, joy, and possibility. Training: Jean Baker Miller Training Institute; PISAB; Boston Liberation Health

Working from a liberation, mutual aid, and restorative justice frame.