My Approach

Anya would like to be a part of my therapeutic approach, but unfortunately she cannot legally practice therapy because she is a cat.

Anya would like to be a part of my therapeutic approach, but unfortunately she cannot legally practice therapy because she is a cat.

I work with adolescents, adults, and couples. My particular clinical interests include adult ADHD and autism, complex trauma, mood disorders, and borderline personality disorder.

I won't bore you with the acronyms here, but I incorporate any and all types of therapies into my practice--as long as they are based on sound scientific evidence.

My personal favorite is Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, or ACT. (It's pronounced "act" to avoid confusion with a certain college prep exam.) ACT is based on the idea that if we learn to sit with and observe our painful thoughts and feelings rather than trying to escape them, and if we focus on doing things that align with our values, our symptoms won't bother us as much and will decrease over time. If you've ever had a therapist try to get you to change your "irrational" thoughts into "rational" ones and found that to be completely unhelpful, you may like ACT a lot better.

One of my passions is working with the LGBTQ+ community. Queer? Pansexual? Ace? Nonbinary? Intersex? I identify with some of these myself, and I love learning about all the shades of our beautiful rainbow. In our work, you will always be able to use the name, pronouns, and labels that fit you best.

Another of my interests is working with clients, including couples, who identify as non-monogamous, polyamorous, or kinky. Unfortunately, it can still be difficult for members of these groups to find knowledgeable mental health providers who won't view these practices as the causes of clients' mental health concerns. I want to be a part of making that better.

If you are an atheist, agnostic, or otherwise nonreligious or questioning religion, you may have had a hard time finding a therapist who accepts your beliefs (or lack thereof). As a secular Jew, I know what that's like. I have years of involvement in the secular community as a writer, speaker, and activist and acknowledge that religion can be a tremendously positive force in people's lives--or a tremendously negative one.

Due to my background in community mental health, I've worked with people from all kinds of racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. You may have heard the term "cultural competence" from other mental health providers. I prefer an approach called cultural humility, which acknowledges that therapists from privileged groups can never presume to be "competent" when it comes to race. Rather, it's our responsibility to do the work of unlearning our biases and learning how race and ethnicity impacts others without expecting our clients to teach us.

Aside from that, I take a few deeply-held principles with me into my work--for instance, that Black lives matter and that no human being is "illegal."

If you have any questions or want to learn more, please get in touch with me at miriam@miriammogilevsky.me.