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Therapeutic Approaches

AKA the approaches to therapy my practice is most informed by

  • Weight-inclusive, anti-diet approaches​

    • Body Trust®

    • Health at Every Size® (HAES®)

    • Intuitive Eating (IE)

  • Somatic approaches​

  • Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)

  • Intersectional feminist theory

  • Cognitive approaches

    • Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)​

    • Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)

    • Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

  • Compassion-focused

  • Strengths-based

  • Trauma-informed

I like to sum it up by saying that I practice using an intentional blend of somatic approaches with the most helpful aspects of the cognitive approaches.

If you are interested in more about these terms and approaches, I've shared more below.

You can always feel free to reach out with any questions. I will happily nerd out about this stuff!

Weight- and size-inclusive therapy

What does it mean to be weight- and size-inclusive in my therapy approach? 

Well, first of all, it means I understand and acknowledge the negative impacts of weight and size bias, and I work actively to combat my own biases that come from living in this culture, so that I can offer the most compassionate, knowledgeable care and avoid causing harm.

It means that I will never prescribe you weight loss, or tell you your body is wrong or needs to be changed. I identify as anti-diet as an eating disorder therapist, because I understand the science behind why diets don't work, and I know the harm that dieting can cause. My experience is in utilizing the principles of Intuitive Eating and other approaches to help clients change their relationship with food.

I also believe in bodily autonomy, so I support my clients no matter what changes they may or may not choose to make with their bodies, their eating, or their movement practices. The most important thing is that you feel empowered and autonomous.

I am a Certified Body Trust® Specialist, which means I have completed an intensive and rigorous training in the Body Trust® framework from the Center for Body Trust. Body Trust is an approach to healing body shame and disordered eating based on the clinical work of Hilary Kinavey, MS, LPC and Dana Sturtevant, MS, RD. It is both a radical paradigm shift for helping professionals and a specialized, practical intervention that addresses internalized weight stigma and moves towards resilience and liberation from individual, cultural, and systemic body oppression.

I also operate from the principles of the Health at Every Size® or the HAES® framework. You can read more about all of the principles here, but to sum it up, being a HAES®-aligned therapist means separating weight from health and prioritizing equitable access to care and support for all.

Ultimately, nothing about your weight or your size will influence the care I offer you.

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You'll notice I didn't mention body positivity. There are several reasons for this, some of which involve the ways the body positive movement has changed and been co-opted to mean something different than it was intended. I instead prefer to prioritize body respect, body neutrality, and eventually body trust and body gratitude with my clients. I also personally resonate more with fat acceptance or fat liberation than with body positivity.

Somatic or bottom-up therapy

The word somatic simply means "of or relating to the body." Somatic therapy approaches involve the use of bodily sensations, responses, and experiences as a source of information and of healing. They are sometimes also called "bottom-up" approaches (in contrast to "top-down" approaches, where healing starts in the mind).

You may be wondering if somatic approaches are in contrast or even conflict with the cognitive approaches (more on these below) - but this is not the case! Somatic approaches to therapy are actually holistic and integrative, working through the mind-body connection. Somatic therapy does not ignore or avoid your brain; after all, your brain is part of your body. They simply prioritize bringing in the rest of your body too. That way, we can work with the whole system.

Somatic therapy is about being able to process past and present experiences through the mind AND the body. It's about being comfortable with noticing and appreciating the various resources of your body. These resources include the data and information your body shares with you, opportunities for connecting with yourself and others, and various tools for healing and expression.

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In somatic therapy, we work towards:

  • Awareness and presence (vs. disconnection and dissociation)

  • Building tolerance and resilience (vs. reinforcing avoidance)

  • Making active, intentional choices (vs. always going with the autopilot or automatic response)

  • Learning the language of your body's communications (vs. misattunement, minimization, or detachment)

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Somatic therapy can be a great fit for many folks. Some who may benefit in particular include:

  • Those who have done CBT-style therapies and didn't get what they needed. Maybe it felt like you were gaslighting yourself, or maybe it felt that you understood certain things in your brain but didn't feel any different. (For example, knowing that a trauma was not your fault, but still feeling on some level that it was.)

  • Those who have strong insight and self-awareness, who could put together a whole PowerPoint presentation about what's "wrong" and why, but struggle with where to go from there or how to do the work of healing.

  • Those who intellectualize, believing that they can find the answer to their pain if they just think about it hard enough or do the right research (but also notice it's not working).

  • Those who have experienced anything that made them disconnect from or feel unsafe with their bodies. This includes trauma, disordered eating, body image distress, burnout, perfectionism, anxiety, or shame.

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To sum it up, somatic approaches are helpful because if you could have simply thought your way out of it - you already would have.

Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)

ART is an evidence-based, specialized therapy approach that helps with trauma, anxiety, depression, and many other concerns. ART helps change the way your brain and body respond when distressing memories or images are accessed, whether intentionally (such as trying to tell someone your story) or unintentionally (something unexpectedly reminds you of the experience). This change is accomplished through a specific protocol that combines bilateral stimulation (BLS) with guided imagery and re-scripting. ART is informed by EMDR, exposure therapy, guided imagery, somatic approaches, and more.

The BLS is done typically via side to side eye movements, similar to those that occur naturally during REM sleep when a lot of our brain's processing and organizing of information is completed. In an ART session, we facilitate BLS while awake and while intentionally bringing certain things to mind in order to process them a different way. BLS can also be adapted or added onto using auditory and tactile aspects.

I was inspired to get trained in ART myself after experiencing it as a client. Although anyone can be told that a therapy approach is helpful, it is another thing entirely to experience its healing capabilities personally. I became an ART-trained therapist in 2022 and truly love utilizing this tool with my clients.

Intersectional feminist therapy

Intersectional feminist theory is a liberatory, anti-oppression framework. When therapy is informed by intersectional feminist theory, it means the therapist is attuned to the fact that we all have a multitude of intersecting identities, including our gender identities, race, abilities, sexual identities, socioeconomic status, and more. An intersectional feminist therapist makes a point to acknowledge the complex and overlapping systems of oppression that impact our lives. Therapy from this framework seeks to center the client, contextualize their experiences within the systems of our culture, and empower clients in and out of therapy.

I believe it is important to acknowledge that many of the stories about ourselves that we adapt as true (before we even have the chance to examine them) are originally told by systems of white supremacy, patriarchy, fatphobia, ableism, healthism, homophobia, and other xenophobic systems. I seek to validate my clients' experiences within these oppressive systems and to empower them to write their own stories wherever they can.

Cognitive therapies

The cognitive therapies are the approaches that have historically received the most study, funding, and research, and those that are most emphasized to therapists-in-training. I have specialized experience with Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), so I will share a little more about some of the ways I pull from each.

DBT is an approach that can be beneficial for those struggling with disordered eating, mood difficulties, and trauma. In DBT, a dialectic is when two seemingly opposing things can be true at once, such as "I love you, and I am angry with you" or "I know this behavior is harmful to me, and I'm not sure I want to stop." I love that DBT makes space for these complexities of life; dialectics alone can be very validating and liberating for clients. There are also some excellent concepts and skills that I love to share with clients within each of DBT's four core areas: distress tolerance, emotional regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and mindfulness.

ACT's main goal is to help increase psychological flexibility through helping clients learn to accept difficult emotions/experiences and to commit to values-based action. I think it is often beneficial to let go of efforts to change or manage your emotions, and instead to learn how to work with them and move through them. I think it's also important for us to know what our values are and to regularly check in with ourselves that the choices we are making are bringing us closer to them, rather than further away.

CBT is often considered to be the therapy "gold-standard" (again, partially because it is easy to study, measure, and teach due to its structured format). It focuses on the connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and its skills are focused on changing one's thoughts in order to change behavior. I love to explore my clients' core beliefs with them, which are the deep-seated, underlying beliefs a person develops about themselves, others, and the world. I often utilize somatic approaches and/or ART to process core beliefs with my clients.

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