Hello! My name is Andrea Boyd, (she, her) LCSW-C and I am a psychotherapist specializing in working with teens and young adults. I am a trauma informed therapist and I use a combination of talk therapy, mindfulness based approaches, and trauma protocols, especially EMDR, to help people cope with hard times, heal from their past experiences, and create meaning and joy in their lives. 

As a queer/pan and neurodiverse therapist, I often work with young people with marginalized identities, especially queer, neurodiverse, or disabled young people, who are navigating a world that was, in many ways, not built with them in mind. It is extremely important to me to create a welcoming and affirming space in my therapy practice, one that respects and embraces peoples’ individuality, life experience, and culture. I am trans, polyamory, and ace/aro affirming, and I practice from a body positive/body liberation/health at every size (HAES) perspective. 

 Some issues  I work with often include general and social anxiety, depression, ADHD, trauma histories, self esteem struggles, relationship issues, and chronic illness.  

I strive to integrate many different modalities of therapy depending on client needs. I find that for many young people, a combination of cognitively based approaches that start in the head, and emotionally based approaches that start in the body, is ideal–though certainly some people benefit more from one than the other. 

With all the complex tasks and decisions that young people have to negotiate, including school and career choices, approaches that target thoughts and behaviors, such as those found in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and behavioral activation (BA) can be extremely beneficial in helping identify and organize thoughts and feelings, articulate values, set goals, and make actions plans. This can be especially true for clients with ADHD brains. I love to help people find practical solutions that greatly enhance quality of life. 

And also, I find that for deeper levels of healing and for targeting underlying causes behind mental distress, approaches that focus on the body, human relationships, and emotions, are crucial. When it comes to deeply entrenched wounds and unhelpful beliefs, oftentimes being able to identify and know their causes cognitively will not be enough. Body, emotion, and relationship focused approaches enable people to directly target places where the wounds and traumas are stored and to actively engage in shifting their inner landscapes toward healing.

I am trained in EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) and I also integrate learning from  IFS (internal family systems), somatic therapies, and polyvagal theory. All of these are frameworks or methods for directly  targeting and reworking traumatic emotions or memories in the brain, body, or nervous system that create and perpetuate patterns that lead to less than ideal coping. And they also all encompass ways of working with the brain/body to create easier access to joy, peace, acceptance, and other desired states. 

Of course, also key to my approach is having a continuous and evolving social justice lens. I believe that a trauma informed approach must include a deep understanding of marginalization and its effects on humans, and I believe that a key source of mental distress for young people has to do with being told (explicitly or implicitly) that who they are or the way they are is not acceptable. These messages can become internalized and can have profound effects, especially for those with non-dominant identities, which can lead to feelings of self hatred and worthlessness.

My work centers around helping young people undo these toxic messages and claim pride in who they are, no matter their gender identity, sexuality, ability level, body size, neurotype, or any other characteristic. I believe that every individual has incredible strengths, and their own form of brilliance within them, and I strive to help young people uncover these things about themselves as they embrace healing, and use self compassion, assertiveness, relationship skills, and many more tools to create safer microcosms for themselves in which they can grow and thrive.