What is feminist counseling?

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I do feminist counseling. Feminist counseling never loses sight of the fact that women are individuals within society and that women also make up a class of people within each society. No matter what your ethnicity, race, religion, or class, you are always female. In our work together I will place you and your struggles into the specifics of your own culture and individual life experiences all the while never forgetting the various consequences of being female on your psyche and daily life.

The core self of a human being is impacted by our developmental experiences - from before birth, throughout childhood, adolescence, into the various stages of our adult and elder lives - and the society and culture in which we live.
Our personalities are influenced by birth families, class, culture, history, religion, ethnicity, story, and experience. At the center of self, we are, essentially the same person throughout our lives. Yet, we grow, learn, change and move during our lives - often by leaps and bounds, both forward and backward - based on many complex internal and external influences.

Our psychological lives are impacted by all of these factors plus the conditions of our daily lives and the people who make up our daily lives. Girls and women continually negotiate
I do not believe in pathologizing women's pain and will never blame, shame, or objectify you or your life in ways which are common in non-feminist psychotherapeutic orientations.
All too often, the consequences of this daily maneuvering are a major factor in our emotional, psychological and spiritual suffering. Along side our formative and far-reaching childhood experiences, our adult psychological lives are affected by the condition of our daily lives: Are we happy or miserable with our work? How close and loving are our relationships with significant others? What form does our relationship with our parents take (whether they are living or dead)? What is our relationships with our children like?  Our relationship with food?  Our relationship to our bodies and our deepest spirits, souls and psyches? Have we been sexually, emotionally, or physically neglected, abused, raped, or beaten as children or adults? Do we suffer from a chronic debilitating physical illness? Do we struggle day in and day out with some secret difficulty? All of these experiences have a great deal to do with our psychological lives. With what we dream at night and what we deliberate during our waking hours. With what we believe is possible. With how far we can heal and to what degree the injuries in our hearts can be mended.
I believe our psychologies are deep and vast and that western scientific and psychological paradigms do not have a significant grasp of the totality of the hearts, minds, and spirits of human beings.
I do not believe in pathologizing women's pain and will never blame, shame, or objectify you or your life in ways which are common in non-feminist psychotherapeutic orientations. I believe in the worth of temporarily "self-medicating": the sorts of things that in the ideal, may not be so good for you, but which many women do when they are in pain in order to soothe the terrible ache. As a feminist counselor, I do not embrace DSM-IV-TR categorizations. (The DSM-IV-TR, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, Text Revision, created by The American Psychiatric Association.)
These demarcations of alleged pathology and "mental illness" are inevitably political, historic and reductionist. They are intended to make our infinitely complex human psyches easily categorized. Although DSM definitions of mental disorders can sometimes be helpful and illuminating, all too often they benefit the psychopharmacological industry, insurance companies, and institutionalized "psychiatric service" industries -- and not the suffering individual. However, and this is an important "however", if you have been given a DSM-IV-TR diagnosis and this is beneficial or meaningful to you, I take this seriously, and we will proceed accordingly. Along these same lines, I will not encourage you to seek out psychotropic medications. I think the current over use of anti-depressants, for example, suppresses social (read: political) discontent, encourages self chastisement and bolsters a miss directed cultural status quo. On an individual level, prescription drugs can easily become a socially approved addiction and/or a way to avoid working through painful issues (actually going in one end and coming out of the other). Yet, I know at times these drugs are entirely necessary to help ease the many daunting inner sorrows and struggles in our lives. For some maladies there is no doubt psychotropic drugs are life saving. Therefore, I will not judge you should you take psychotropic medicines. This is just another piece of who you might be. In all cases, I will treat you with respect, gentleness, attentiveness and honor.

I believe our psychologies are deep and vast and that western scientific and psychological paradigms do not have a significant grasp of the totality of the hearts, minds, and spirits of human beings. Our emotional and psychological life should not be left to the "experts"! Each one of us has the potential to know ourselves far better than another person can know us. Other people may bring very important things to our lives: love, compassion, empathy, understanding, comfort, tenderness, friendship, wisdom, ideas, suggestions about what is going on for us and why, or thoughts about how we might want to make things better. But ultimately it serves us most to learn to become our own "best friends". Our own Wise One. Our own expert on our selves. Helping you create the tools for this journey to increasing self-awareness, self-knowledge, strength, wisdom, and independence, are some of the goals of my work with you.