Therapist
She/Her/Hers
cshea@wearehelpful.com
(312) 883-4352
I am a creative, nature and people loving person who loves to travel, laugh, splash in the ocean and ride my bike. Like everyone else, I am on a healing journey and so as you commit to your own therapeutic process, so I am committed to my own. As a white woman of Irish descent growing up on the lands of the Erie, Huron and Wyandot peoples in northern Ohio and since living in many places nationally and internationally, I am committed to my own growth and anti-racist, anti-oppressive training, seeking to use any positions that I am in to un-do the systems that actively oppress, abuse and disconnect people from the individual and collective thriving I seek to foster through healing practices. On the healing side of things, I’ve been shaped through my work as a equine-assisted psychotherapist- a modality in which people have the opportunity to work with horses as part of their therapeutic process of healing. I have worked at an addiction and abuse recovery center, illuminating different ways to me how systemic and generational oppression can inhibit people’s thriving. I am also an art teacher and am interested in the ways in which things such as painting, drawing and writing can provide people with spaces to communicate and express themselves while also contributing to their growth and healing.
“Individual healing processes support the collective and vice versa; our personal thriving is rooted in communal thriving. Healing is perhaps one of the most creative, powerful and fulfilling forms of activism we can engage in.”
How my lived experiences shape my work
What does it mean to you to thrive? What do you dream about? How do you enjoy rest, connection and life? Sometimes the responses to these questions can get clouded by the stressors of life, trauma we have experienced, or a lack of resources like time to even be able to ask. Through therapy from a trauma informed, somatic and integrated lens, we can begin exploring what thriving and healing could look like for you, through the creation of a creative and safe therapeutic space. Trauma can show up in a lot of different ways in our lives- through our emotional experiences of things like anxiety or depression, cycles of abuse we find ourselves in, patterns of thought, or even represented by diagnosis. Together, we can create a trauma informed therapeutic setting that fits your dynamic needs and pull from a variety of perspectives such as emotionally focused therapy, family systems therapy, relational therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and somatic practices. I do not believe that our journeys are linear, or that healing or thriving represents a set end goal to achieve or attain. I am LGBTQA+ affirming, believe that relationships can be healthy in many forms, including monogamous and polyamorous, and am ADHD and neurodivergence affirming.
The clients I work best with
I consider it an honor to support people in their therapeutic processes, on both individual and collective levels. Through supporting the healing and thriving of individuals, I believe that collective change and liberation can be brought about through the powerful and unique contributions each individual adds to their community and larger society. Specifically, I have experience working with people who are working through the challenges related with anxiety, depression, mood disorders, addictions, intergenerational and systemic trauma, learning disabilities, attachments, relationships and self connection. I am building my somatic practices as a way to support people’s holistic wellbeing and also love to integrate different forms of art and creativity into sessions as another way of supporting therapeutic processes.