Anna always comes from a Trans and Queer-affirming place, a Neurodivergent-affirming and strengths-based perspective with multicultural training and an anti-racist, feminist, disability justice backbone- specifically the writings of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Trans-inclusive Intersectional Feminist Theory, and many other Neurodivergent-affirming writers and creators with lived experience.

Anna has years of experience practicing psychotherapy with BIPOC+ folks, those with various immigration experiences and cultural backgrounds and identities. Anna is white and firmly anti-racist and an ally to BIPOC+ communities. They continue to dismantle and confront the white supremacist and internalized racial biases that are inescapable as a part of growing up to be a white person in a racially oppressive, white supremacist cultural environment and society.

Anna is firmly anti-oppression, anti-capitalist, and anti-colonial and support LandBack, climate justice, etc. They are an abolitionist, anti-carceral provider, aligned with the Mad and Neurodivergent movements, sex worker allied, fat and sex positive, kink and non-traditional relationships positive. These are all conversations Anna welcomes dialogue with clients around.

Collaborative Therapeutic Relationship

Anna values collaborative and mutual respect between a therapist and client to strengthen the bond required to do meaningful healing work, which involves embracing having meta-processing conversations to strengthen this connection where the implicit dynamics between the therapist and client are voiced.

They are a relational therapist who is open to self-disclosure and solidarity with clients on many levels. Anna practices this by encouraging/initiating conversations where you can make the implicit and uncertainty explicit to speak on and explore deeper- whether that be differences in our lived experiences, power differences or dynamics with racial or cultural backgrounds or identities, etc.

Respect for Clients and their Autonomy

Anna values and encourages feedback while prompting clients to assert their needs and goals in open collaboration on the coaching or therapeutic process. Anna gets personally, how complicated and important it is for a client to speak on how treatment is landing with them and what can be improved on.

The rights of Anna’s clients and their autonomy/agency over their treatment and therapy is of the utmost importance to Anna as a therapist who is grounded in humanistic/person-centered psychotherapy values.

ABA and Neurodivergent-Affirming Approach

Anna is staunchly anti-ABA and behavior-modification practices or approaches to Neurodivergent, especially Autistic traits or characteristics. They know firsthand, how harmful and shame-inducing such approaches are for a Neurodivergent individual to experience. With their Neurodivergent, especially Autistic clients, they encourage Unmasking safely and sustainably, working through shame, and identifying external and systematic sources of where biases and internalized ableism/stigma truly stem from. Anna has extensive training and firsthand experience on the benefits and tangible growth and improvements doing so can accomplish- often drawing on Devon Price’s Unmasking Autism.

I understand the nature of healing and recovery is not always binary or completely "healed" or "recovered" for a lot of Disabled and Neurodivergent individuals, and work with that understanding and often embrace the shades of grey and nuances of what it means to "heal" and "grow" for many of us, it's not always a straight line, but we figure it out together.

Read more on Anna’s Inclusive Therapists Profile