Welcome, I am not accepting new clients at this time. I wish you well in finding support that works best for you.

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I partner with individuals and relationships, romantic or otherwise, experiencing both the challenges and joys of this gorgeous and tragic world. I partner with those who are seeking to thrive.

I am interested in you as a whole person, the communities you are a part of and the world you inhabit. I work with people of varying socioeconomic backgrounds, identities and relationship styles. I am poly, kink and LGBTQAI+ aware and affirming. I honor experiences, body sensations, feelings and thoughts as we explore their meaning and depths. Our interactions are made of curiosity, equity and empathy. Mindfulness and body (somatic) awareness are core to our explorations.

I have a therapeutic focus on illness, disability, chronic and new pain, grief and loss, trauma, vicarious trauma, oppression and justice, incarceration, substance use, (in)fertility, miscarriage, pregnancy, birth, traumatic or challenging births and the postpartum period, anxiety and depression.

I also appreciate working with people and relationships that are experiencing other emotions and situations not mentioned above, all with the hopes to further growth, compassion and connection.

I’d be honored to work alongside you to promote your versions of healthfulness, vulnerability, understanding and resiliency.

If you are interested to explore if this therapeutic relationship is for you, please inquire – see the ‘Contact and Logistics’ tab. 

I offer compassionate, engaged, relational and transparent therapeutic services where we are all encouraged to contribute to and impact the course of therapy. As a part of your team, I will be present to consistently promote mindful understanding, reflection, worthiness, healing and thriving. I have been a practicing therapist since 2015 and the following are some of my experiences and styles that I bring to the therapeutic relationship:

• I received a Masters in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh in 2011 and have attended many conferences, workshops and trainings by universities, foundations, and from the brilliant and creative people of my community. I find learning in a variety of environments, including especially from the individuals I work along side, to be key for my growth and am committed to this throughout my whole life.
• I have experience with trauma and resiliency. I have taken and given trainings on trauma, and have worked alongside survivors of intimate partner violence, unhoused peoples and many others who know deeply the impact of trauma. I work therapeutically with people who have experienced challenging and/or traumatic childbirth. In relation to trauma and healing in the nervous system, working towards resilience and healing with somatics, I have trained with the Community Resilience Model; Peter Levin of Somatic Experiencing; Amber McZeal of Decolonizing the Psyche; and Full Embodiment, in advanced strategies for working with sexualized trauma and sexuality somatically; and others.  I am trained in and practice EMDR, a long standing trauma treatment therapy.
• Within relationships, I use Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT). I was trained by Sue Johnson, who created a model for relationship therapy that embraces the impactful role of attachment theory. I am LGBTQIA+, kink, and polyamorous aware and affirming.
• I am currently enrolled in a Somatic Attachment Therapy Certificate program through The Embody Lab.
• Being a DONA trained birth doula since 2010, and a DONA trained postpartum doula since 2015, I have a variety of perinatal experiences, as well as assisting in healing challenging or traumatic births. I have an informed perspective as to how pregnancy, attempts at pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, birth, new children and shifting family dynamics have effects on individuals, relationships and whole families. I have trained healthcare professionals and birth support people in supporting LGBTQAI+ people through their perinatal experiences.
• I have practiced therapy with individuals who are in jail. In that context, and within others, I have worked with people who experience negative impact from substance use while using a harm reduction/benefit maximization lens.
• I have attended trainings with the Climate Psychology Alliance and have a keen interest in working with and supporting people with climate emotions, climate distress, and solastaliga.
• I am supportive of healing and moving with grief and loss and all the many different forms it takes. After running support groups through the now defunct Good Grief Center for three years, I continue to be a grief support group facilitator for people with different kinds of losses. I have been trained as a death doula and am very interested in compassionate death care.
• I am understanding of illness, (chronic) pain and disability; the cultural context, and the significance on a person and in relationships.
• I have received training in and center the Relational Cultural Therapy model, where empathy, relationships and meeting a person where they are at and recognizing the importance of their environment are all key.
• With knowledge from a psychedelic integration training with Fluence, I can support clients to best prepare for and digest their psychedelic experiences, also from a harm reduction/benefit maximization lens. I do not provide any access to the actual psychedelics or referrals, as that is currently illegal.
• Slightly separate from my therapeutic life, and still related, I have been trained and practicing conflict resolution and mediation since 2009, which offers insight into moments of conflict stress. I have particular interest in restorative and transformative justice. I have facilitated many (200?) meetings, workshops, classes, trainings, retreats and group processes since 2008. Mostly these have focused on justice work and relational dynamics. This has given me understanding of group, work, organization, and organizing processes and the impact on individuals. I currently do most all of my mediation, conflict transformation and facilitation practices within The Sacred Ground Collective.
• I am rooted in social justice and community organizing. I have a focus on promoting racial justice, health care justice, disability justice and supporting those who are incarcerated. I am a white ciswomen working with an intersectional feminist approach and from a systems perspective (basically: it’s not you, it’s the systemic devaluation and violence we are subjected to). While I live and practice in what is now known as Pittsburgh, PA, I must acknowledge that this land has been and continues to be the unceded lands of many indigenous stewards, many of whom were violently displaced or brutally killed, from the following tribes: the Adena, the Hopewell, the Monongahela, and later by other displaced peoples of the Delaware, the Shawnee, the Haudenosaunee and the Osage. Colonization continues as does native sovereignty and the fight for its recognition and justice.
  

CONTACT:

Please contact me by phone at 412.407.2476 or by email at connect@lizzieanderson.com.

LOCATION:

Currently, I am only seeing clients virtually using a HIPAA protected Zoom line.

Generally, my office is located in 2840 Liberty Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, 15222 – in the Strip District. There is visitor parking, bus access and a place to lock bikes. The building, my office and the bathrooms are accessible to those with mobility impairments and those in wheelchairs. If you make an appointment or plan to attend a group, I will share more information about the office.

PAYMENT:

I accept commercial UPMC, commercial Cigna, commercial United, and commercial Highmark/Blue Cross plans.  I also accept all Medicaid plans.

If you have another insurance, I can give you an out-of-network invoice that you can turn into your insurance to be reimbursed if your insurance is open to this. We can figure this out together.

I strive to be within reach for all. For those who need, I accept payment on a sliding scale. We will work out a payment plan upon your first visit. This plan can change as your life changes.

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COMPLAINTS:

If you wish to file a complaint about an ethical violation, you can do so through the PA state board: https://www.dos.pa.gov/Pages/File-a-Complaint.aspx, under “Professional Licensing Complaint.” My social work license number is: CW020728.

This is a short list of resources I have found helpful and insightful, organized by topic. If you have resources that have been influential to your life and healing, please do share.

More immediate or crisis resources:

Allegheny County Re:Solve Crisis Network – 1.888.7YOU CAN (1.888.796.8226)

National Suicide Prevention Hotline – 1.800.273.TALK (1.800.273.8255)

Center for Victims Crisis line (Pittsburgh) – 1.866.644.2882

Pittsburgh Action Against Rape – 1.866.END.RAPE (1.866.363.7273)

Postpartum Support Warm-line (National) – 1.800.944.4PPD (1.800.944.4773)

Trans Lifeline – 877.565.8860

LGBT National Hotline – 1.888.843.4564

Casa San José (Pittsburgh) – 412.343.3111

JFCS Refugee & Immigration (Pittsburgh) – 412.521.1737

Steel Smiling– black mental health care fund

Pittsburgh Mutual Aid – connection to resources, including funds

Be Well! – Pittsburgh health care guide

A life worth living in a world worth living in…and staying alive in the meantime: care, survival, suicide and grief – the digital version of this resource guide with hyperlinked resources and image descriptors for screen readers. You can download this as a PDF and also print it (choose the ‘booklet’ option to be able to fold it into a little booklet/zine and save paper), it will just have the image descriptors and won’t have the links written out.

Below, for printing, is the actual PDF version without image descriptors and with the links written out. Go below the image and click download to download onto your computer or read it here by scrolling when your mouse is resting on the image. You can type in the page you want to view at the top [ __ of 64]. If using the table of contents, add one to get the correct page this way, since the title page doesn’t count (i.e. you’d type in 5 for safety planning, instead of the 4 it is listed as). When printing, choose the ‘booklet’ option to be able to fold it into a little booklet/zine and save paper.

Here are printable safety plans, again click the download button below to download.

Pandemic:

How To Survive The end Of The World – podcast

WHO Mental Health and COVID-19 page

Advice For Dealing With Uncertainty, From People Who’ve Been There

Climate emotions:

All We Can Save climate emotion resources

Gen Dread podcast

Climate Psychology Alliance

Illness, disability, pain:

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha – podcast interview

Bitch Magazine – In Sickness series

Access Intimacy: The Missing Link – Mia Mingus

Spoons – Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone

You feel like shit – An Interaction Self-care guide

Grief and loss: How to honor our losses and not lose ourselves

The Artist’s Grief Deck

Chelsea Granger has a fabulous list of death and grief resources

Uncontainable Night: Herbs for grief – Janet Kent

grief is gratitude, fear is intelligence, truth is strategic – Adrienne Maree Brown

Grief and Gratitude – Adrienne Maree Brown

grief is not linear and it is everywhere – Adrienne Maree Brown

lighting candles for orlando, and for all of us – Adrienne Maree Brown

the dark magic of grief – Rae Swersey

What Does it Mean to Hold Space – Heather Plett

Caitlin Doughty on Death Positivity and Rituals

There Are No Five Stages of Grief – Andy Kopsa

Angels By Your Side – tangible, local support while grieving

Attachment:

John Bowlby – the person who first spoke about attachment in the way we know it now. Plus some exploration of the ideas.

How Your Attachment Style Affects Your Relationship – in relation to relationships, models, building.

Hold Me Tight– a book by Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)

The Art of Wellbeing – on attachment theory

Your Attachment Style Influences the Success of Your Relationship

How to Change Your Attachment Style

EFT research

The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture – Nora Samaran

Sue Johnson: Changes in Relationship-Specific Romantic Attachment in EFT

Mind and body, somatics:

The Politics of Trauma

Generative Somatics 

Somatic Experiencing

The Charming Science of Your Gut – video on how our gut and brain interact, including how our mental health is impacted

A local somatic practitioner’s site, Tender Space Elemental Somatics

Trauma and resiliency:

The art of healing trauma – Heidi Hanson

15 Trauma Healing Goals  – Symbolic Representations

Window of Tolerance  – Laura Kerr

Trauma Stewardship – This is a book that I have found extremely helpful for people experiencing vicarious/secondary trauma

Radical mental healthcare, healing justice and activism:

Project LETS

Fireweed Collective – formally The Icarus Project

Mad In American

Inside Our Minds

California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS)

Healing Justice for the Black Lives Matter Movement – Just Healing

Medical Industrial Complex – Visual – Mia Mingus

The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture– Nora Samaran

Filling the Void – an interview with Bruce K. Alexander On How Our Culture Is Making Us Addicted

Pregnancy, birth and postpartum:

Darkside of Motherhood Therapeutic Group – Pittsburgh’s Post Traumatic Birth Therapeutic Group

Postpartum Pittsburgh  – Mental health resources for people who are pregnant or postpartum

Psychedelic use resources:

Zendo Project – psychedelic peer support

Fireside Project – peer support, education, research

Dance Safe – promoting drug use safety in the electronic music community

How to vet your psychedelic guide article

Concrete information on drugs:

Spiritual Pharmacist

Drug.com

Harm reduction/benefit maximization:

National Harm Reduction Coalition

Prevention Point Pittsburgh – “dedicated to providing health empowerment services to people who use drugs.”

Over The Influence book

Therapy:

A Therapist Walks into a Bar  – A podcast that brings therapy to you

Why We Feel Lonely and Odd– short animated video

On Soul, Character and Calling: A Conversation with James Hillman

How Therapy Works – a Deep Eddy Psychotherapy therapist writing about their practice, but with really general and helpful ideas

Parting the Clouds – Interview with psychiatrist Charles Raison on new treatments for depression

Conflict and trauma transformation:

Transforming Historical Harms – Coming to the Table

What isn’t transformative justice – Adrienne Maree Brown

Pods and Pod Mapping Worksheet – by the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective on relationships to turn towards for both support and responsibility

Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective Resources

Grief and loss support group — Open to all loss from death experiences
Generally the last Wednesday of the month from 6 pm- 7:30 pm.  Currently, the group is happening virtually through a HIPAA protected Zoom line. Please reach out to me to receive the details and to share an RSVP. You can call or email me to do so at connect@lizzieanderson.com. There is a suggested donation of $5-25/group and no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

For when we return to being in person, the group happens at 2840 Liberty Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, 15222 – in the Strip District.  The building is physically accessible. There is street parking on 29th Street, right out front, and a lot behind the building, also on 29th Street. The 54, 86, 87, 88 and 91 buses come right to the building.