Abby Weintraub MFT 106751

Therapy for thinkers and feelers.

"I only seem defective in a world that picks up

all the earth’s wonders and asks what it’s a tool for.

I am not for anything. I just am.”

-Dr. Devon Price

All feelings welcome.

Thanks for dropping by, and congratulations on taking this step. Therapy can be a life-changing dive into your past, your present challenges, and your hopes and fears about the future. This is a vulnerable and brave undertaking, and I would be honored to accompany you along the way.

When you're a deep feeler in an emotion-phobic culture, developing compassion for yourself is like swimming upstream. Maybe you’ve been told that you’re too much to handle, that you’re over-emotional or illogical, or that you’re just doing feelings wrong. We internalize these messages, and over time, we come to mistake them for truth. And for those of us who live with marginalized intersecting identities, the impact is amplified. Our emotional adaptations allow us to survive trauma and oppression, but that survival comes at a cost.

In working together, we'll start to disentangle internalized messages and judgments from your authentic feelings. You'll recognize how your past has shaped your life, and find new ways forward. With my support, you’ll work to build the self-acceptance that makes real change possible.

I work from a relational, psychodynamic, trauma-informed, liberatory perspective that recognizes how our lived experiences and identities shape us. Relational therapy includes paying special attention to our relationship in the therapy room, how it mirrors other relationships in your life, and what meaning you make of those patterns. In the space that we share, your feelings and thoughts will never be too much or not enough.

Whoever you are, whoever you've been, and whatever has shaped your perspective, I welcome you.

Areas of focus include:

Medical trauma
Chronic or acute Illness, pain, and disability
Experiences of neurodivergence (autism, ADHD, and others)
Body image and relationship with food
Sexuality and asexuality, desire, and shame
Depression and anxiety
People of queer and LGBQIA2S experience
People of trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming gender experience
Kink, BDSM, and other outsider sexualities
Polyamory and non-traditional relationships
Trauma and grief
Coming to terms with privilege
Living at the intersections of marginalized identities

Call me:
(510) 585-4735

Email me:
thinkersandfeelers@gmail.com

Find me:
I am currently conducting all sessions online (via Zoom) or by phone, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Individuals:
$200 (50 minutes)

Relationships:
$225 (50 minutes)
$300 (75 minutes)

Some sliding scale spots may be available; let's discuss your circumstances over the phone.

I welcome individual adults, adolescents, and relationship configurations. My approach is client-centered, trauma-informed, and relational. I incorporate eclectic approaches (somatics, Gestalt, Internal Family Systems) as needed.

Below are some areas of special interest and experience.

Medical trauma, illness, and disability

If you've been dismissed, denied, or disbelieved about your bodily experience, you know how painful and disempowering medical trauma can be. Living with illness, disability, and/or pain can leave you isolated as you navigate changing relationships, inadequate medical care, stretched finances, grief for what's been lost, fear about the future, experiences of invisibility/hypervisibility, and anger about how you've been treated.

I work from a Disability Justice model, which recognizes that our world is built to accommodate only some bodies, how our lives become shaped by that lack of care and recognition, and how we can find/cultivate communities of care.

Body image, food, and size liberation

Many of us have lived with feelings that our body's size or shape is somehow wrong. But fat people, or those whose bodies are otherwise considered atypical, also deal with violent fatphobia, ableism, and medical trauma. It can feel impossible to distinguish our authentic feelings about our bodies from the forces that profit off of our self-criticism.

Together, we can explore your relationship with food, hold space for grief and anger, and build support for living in your body as it is. I hold an explicitly fat-positive, all-bodies-are-good-bodies perspective that prioritizes bodily autonomy.

Sexual and gender outsiders

As a queer person myself, I know how important it is to find a therapist who'll welcome and recognize all the parts of you. My interests include questioning gender and/or sexual identity, exploring new facets of one's relationship to sex, asexuality, navigating non-traditional relationship structures (e.g. polyamory, Dominant/submissive, etc.), kink/BDSM, sex work, couples grappling with differences in desire, the impact of sexual trauma, and coping with isolation and lack of support around these issues.

Experiences of neurodivergence

Many of us had the childhood experience of feeling different in ways we couldn’t pinpoint or describe fully. Perhaps this left you dealing with shame, anxiety, and/or depression; maybe you found ways to mask your difference so as to fit in socially, academically, or familially. The process of uncovering, untangling, and de-pathologizing your authentic experience of neurodivergence can bring a newfound sense of freedom and self-acceptance, alongside grief for all the ways that you’ve been punished for that neurodivergence. You may find yourself now fully identifying with a particular neurodivergence (e.g. autism or ADHD), or you may find yourself more in the intersections and hidey-holes of various neuro-differences; either way, I welcome you, and am here to support you in your self-discovery.

A note about diagnosis

I do not provide formal assessment/diagnosis for autism or ADHD; if we work together, and you become interested in pursuing formal diagnosis, I’m happy to support you in finding professionals who can provide that.

As I often say to my clients, diagnosis is only helpful if it’s helpful to you; some people want a diagnosis to navigate managed care, to access disability accommodations at work or school, or simply because a formal diagnosis is personally meaningful to them. I hold this alongside the caveat that DSM diagnosis criteria are rooted in narrow (white, straight, cisgender, masculine, etc.) experiences of neurodivergence, leave many of us out of the picture, and are often used in oppressive and ableist ways.

If you’re looking for ways to understand yourself or your relationships better in light of neurodivergence, we can use newer, more expansive self-assessment tools in our work. I believe in self-assessment as an important and empowering tool, and that your lifetime of experience is the best possible evidence.

Fees

I offer 50- or 75-minute therapy for individuals and couples, with some sliding scale fee availability. (Many of my sliding scale spots are currently full, but I'm happy to discuss your circumstances over the phone.)

I don't accept insurance at this time, but I can produce records of your sessions (superbills) that you can submit to your insurance company as needed.

Individuals: $200 (50 minutes)

Couples/Relationships: $225 (50 minutes) $300 (75 minutes)

Workshops and Trainings

I've offered trainings and guest lectures for beginning therapists and volunteers at the California Institute of Integral Studies, the Pierce Street Integral Counseling Center, the Wright Institute, the Kol Haneshama Hospice Volunteer project at the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center, and The Psychotherapy Institute (TPI). My trainings are experiential, relational, and usually very popular! Fees and workshop length are negotiable. Please contact me at thinkersandfeelers@gmail.com for more information.

Some training topics I offer:

So Many Ways to Have a Body: Working with Fat and Body-Diverse Clients
Working with Sexuality and Shame
Radical Bodies: the Gender and Sexuality Spectrum in Psychotherapy
Food, Family, and Trauma
Working with Disenfranchised Grief
Relational Therapy and its Problems

About me

I’m an East Coast transplant who loves the Bay Area (weather, nature, produce) and misses New York (humor, culture, bagels). I graduated from the California Institute of Integral Studies with a Masters in Integral Counseling Psychology. I work full-time in private practice, and formerly served as Clinical Director of the Integral Counseling Center at Pierce Street, a CIIS training and therapy center.

I’ve worked in the field of sex education, in varying capacities, for over twenty years, and am available for consultation and/or facilitation around this. In the therapy room, I bring openness, radical acceptance of your sexual self, and a great depth of knowledge around sexual difference, desire, and expression.

I believe in showing up authentically in the therapy room with you, and am guided in my work by principles of social justice (and how the lack of it affects us as communities and individuals), self-determination/bodily autonomy, and a deep empathy for all the ways in which we experience pain and trauma.

I believe everyone’s pain is real.

I believe you.

How to Get in Touch with Me

Feel free to contact me at 510-585-4735, or at thinkersandfeelers@gmail.com. I'm happy to do a free 15-minute phone consult before meeting.

I am currently doing all sessions via Zoom or phone, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

I applaud your bravery in taking this first step, and I hope to have the chance to work with you.

“Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist; there are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact.”
-The History of Love, Nicole Krauss