Kelly Oberbillig 

I employ a casual approach to therapy. Within the US, most spaces are rooted in capitalism and white supremacy which perpetuate systems of power and dehumanization, and the therapy space is not immune from that. I attempt to disrupt those practices in my sessions.

In therapy with me, you will sense my humanness. I will be transparent with my feelings, struggles, and personality. My identities of both privilege and oppression come into the room with me and as I seek to help you in disrupting internalized oppression, I try to be active in demonstrating that process as well. My practice is influenced by a commitment to challenging and dismantling oppressive structures that prevent us from living authentically and that perpetuate conflict in our relationships.

​

I honor your experience and intuition and trust you as the expert of your own lived experience. I hope I can bring my own areas of expertise to collaboratively work with you to help you achieve your goals, heal relationships, build security in self, trust your intuition, unpack oppression, explore new identities, and more. My approach includes my transparent reflections, thoughtful questions, reframing, reflecting understanding, reducing shame, increasing compassion, and healing trauma. 

​

The theories I use most often are Feminist, Person-Centered, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Feminist therapy means operating from an anti-oppressive lens and identifying structural systemic components that contribute to mental health rather than attributing blame to the individual’s functioning and flaws. Person-centered means meeting you as a human and trusting that you have the answers within yourself and that a supportive relationship can help you lean towards your own intuitive answers. IFS is a way of conceptualizing the different parts of yourself (critical, shameful, aggressive, anxious, etc) as their own pieces of you with their own stories and recognizing they are not “bad”; rather, they have adaptive qualities that are attempting to serve you in some way and there is a lot to learn from them. EMDR is a trauma-processing approach that is often effective in reducing activation around past events and disrupting negative internalized narratives.

​

My individual identities include white, aromantic, asexual, nonbinary woman (still questioning labels), neurodivergent (ADHD, autistic traits), thin-bodied, able-bodied, financially privileged, young adult, agnostic, Irish/German/Swedish/Ukrainian heritage.