Finding our Way/s Together
Life is too short to live by someone else's story
Hello there.
Welcome. To tell you a bit about myself as a practitioner and therapist today, I'd like to take you through a bit about where I have come from. For the first five years of practicing psychotherapy solo, I focused predominantly on trauma healing. I trained at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy's Trauma Studies Program, at the Internal Family Systems Institute and from EMDRIA, all after six years of intensive work as a clinician for folks who have been impacted by intimate partner violence. For the most part, I spent my career working in a pretty normative way for a trauma therapist for 11 years.
And then in the summer of 2022, I followed a strong whisper in my belly as well as deep guidance from my community and I took a severance from my practice. This led me to embrace on a 3-month sabbatical, including a deep reconnection with the land I was born to, as well as major shifts to my life and work. Since honoring and inviting in a new kind of attention to intuition, flow, connection and the collective, I allowed myself to be pulled out of the pot of individual trauma therapy, and have since been tending my raw roots in fertile soil of the unknown. Some of the energy that has been reverberating through my bones are shifts from:
professional towards relational
individual towards collective
giving towards sharing
hierarchy towards circle
pushing through towards honoring
understanding towards intuiting
healing towards tending
all towards a different kind of knowing, being, holding
I share this here for two reasons. First, if you're browsing my website, chances are that you may be looking for someone to hold space for you in a particular kind of way, and I want you to know that I am not a typical therapist. I have specific training around listening and a deep capacity to hold what is hard, but I am also a wild and messy human and don't particularly believe that the best kind of healing always happens in the therapeutic relationship. Know that if we meet for a consultation, we can talk about and experiment with what working together might actually look and feel like, and that our consent process will be ongoing.
I also tell you this because as much as I believe in therapy, sometimes even trauma therapy can become a very heady space, and the biggest healing and transformation that I have undergone was when I have followed the intuitive whisperings in my belly that my practical brain isn't always caught up to understanding. I will say when I have allowed myself to stop doing what I have always done and experiment with something new while being supported by my community, I began feeling into and breaking some of the social contracts I had been subconsciously following. In saying no, my yeses have emerged. They still are.
Who I love to hold space for:
-
folks who know, or want to know, what it's like to exist outside of the binary
-
folks who are in the middle of some deep shifts
-
folks who are longing to break some social contracts and break out of some boxes
-
folks who are hoping to reconnect to a larger whole undefined by the limits and burdens of capitalism and individualism
-
activists and lovers of humanity on the frontlines of liberation movements and culture shifting, including for a free Palestine
Some work I'm excited about right now:
-
Therapy: over-the-phone sessions at a pace and schedule that works for both of us for folks who give a fuck about the collective
-
Consultation/Supervision: holding space for radical-leaning and social justice-oriented therapists in group or one-on-one.
-
All Things Money: individual sessions with folks with generational wealth and social justice values.
If you are interested in any of these offerings, please let me know.
If we haven't met before, emailing me is the best way to reach me.
I shifted to defaulting to phone sessions:
-
when I realized that my deepest listening can happen when I am free to move around, drink water, & get my needs met
-
after I realized that video sessions all day left me with chronic headaches
-
when I noticed a part of me distracted by performing listening on screen, a phenomenon that completely disappears when I can close my eyes, lay back with my hand on my heart and listen deeply to the folks I hold space for over the phone
-
to increase my capacity for the occasional video sessions when it is exactly the correct thing that is needed by my beloveds who I hold space for.
I honor the devotional work of humans and organizations
who have offered my soul, wisdom
and my body, home.
My parents who fell in love from different sides of the planet
My Phupo and Dadi who keep me connected
Internal Family Systems, for giving me words for multiplicity
Intimacy From the Inside Out, for extending multiplicity to my beloveds
Tarell Kyles: Race-ing Consciousness to Raising Consciousness
Jen Lemen: The Path of Devotion
Dr. Shawna Murray-Browne: Therapy that Liberates
Jules Perkel, my partner and a certified badass in a storm
Original photography by Taimur Sajed
If you are looking for more traditional psychotherapy...
While I am not taking on folks for more traditional individual psychotherapy over zoom or in-person, there are so many folks and organizations out there that I highly recommend:
Therapy the Liberates directory
Internal Family Systems directory
Intimacy from the Inside Out directory (for couples)
For more resources like this, my partner Jules Perkel, LCSW has a fantastic resource page on her website.
Finding a therapist right now is not easy across the board, and if you're having trouble getting in touch with folks who have openings, feel free to reach out, and let me know as much as you want about what you're looking for. I have no problem using all of my connections and networks to share some options.
©2023 :: Baby Bird Design
Maryam Sajed, LCSW
:: Finding our Way/s Together::