“My hope is to guide clients towards expanding trust and connection with themselves through compassionate and creative exploration.”
About Me
Hi, I'm Elby, (They/Them/Theirs)
I specialize in working with LGBTQIA+, neurodivergent, chronically-ill and disabled youth, and adults, through a collaborative, affirming, trauma-centered, and harm reductionist lens.
Healing work doesn’t have to follow or uphold the ideals of dominant culture. Embracing our identities (both privileged and marginalized) is an essential part of releasing learned patterns of shame, guilt, and disconnection. You deserve a space of compassionate exploration and acceptance while expanding into your fullness.
*While I have a passion for serving the LGBTQIA+ community, I embrace and welcome clients from all backgrounds/experiences!
Experience + approach:
My foundational counseling experience comes from working at a non-profit providing group and individual therapy to LGBTQIA+ youth, adults, and their parents/caregivers. Central to this work is exploring the emotions, behaviors, and internalized shame that shows up during the processes of questioning, discovering, and/or sharing more of their LGBTQIA+ identity with themselves and others.
With parents/caregivers, I offer a safe and supportive space to express complex emotions, process grief, lean into the discomfort of the unknown, and provide educational tools/resources to help you affirm your loved one while unburdening them from more emotional labor.
In addition to more traditional talk therapy, I incorporate body-based (or somatic) awareness, trauma-informed mindfulness practices, and expressive arts techniques. I find these tools can be effective in helping clients track and reconnect to their internal, felt experiences and emotions.
Some examples of how I work with clients include: guiding them through sensory-based activities to increase self-awareness, providing space for free expression through writing and art, developing personalized support plans and/or sensory toolkits for navigating difficult situations, and more.
Identities + intention:
I am a white, gender-expansive, neurodivergent, and disabled trauma survivor with an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.
My goal is support collective liberation by empowering clients to find more self-acceptance, compassion, curiosity, and trust for themselves and others, while surviving in unjust systems that often try to steal our joy and reject our humanity.
When I'm not working, you'll find me enjoying quality time with my partner and pups, covered in mud making ceramics, playing with fidget toys, caring for plants, and exploring my many interests.
It brings me great joy to be here, in community with others navigating toward healing and building deeper connections with ourselves and our collective power.
