Lisa Wenninger (she/her)

This is my keen interest. I am currently in a doctoral program studying ways for counseling to help white people to change how we think, in order to free ourselves and others from the traps of racism. I am on this journey myself and I am very motivated to help other white people who are ready to move past the guilt and shame and experience a new awareness that makes room for greater love and joy. The way we change the world is by changing ourselves. We can do it together.

I first entered the counseling field in order to support people who are experiencing the grief around loss of a pet. That is still of interest, yet I have broadened my view and I welcome clients suffering all kinds of losses. I am deeply moved by the sorrows of the world and have worked with clients with compound, complicated grief, long-denied grief, and fresh, overwhelming grief. There is no way to hurry the grieving process but you do not have to go through it alone.

People often seek help when they get stuck. I am skilled at supporting my clients through big changes in the early 20s where you're trying to find your way with career and love, through questions of life planning around possible marriage or wanting kids, through the anxieties and stressors that come later in life when you're looking at retirement. Navigating these upheavals and turning them into transformations and growth is possible. Let's do it together.

My education and training have been primarily psychodynamic, which for me means depth work, where we meet consistently (once every week) for a period of time to establish familiarity and safety together, in order to begin exploring your inner experiences and recognize what is true. Despite this foundational training, I reject a lot of psychodynamic ideas as sexist, elitist, and exclusionary. I am working to decolonize psychodynamic theory within my own practice.

I am working every day to learn more about people who are different from me. I seek to understand your own experience as you have it, not as I think you should or how I assume it must be. My work as a white person involves constantly checking my assumptions and bias. I will not assume that your identities are the reasons you want help in therapy (if you're trans, you might just want help because your boss is a jerk), yet I will invite discussion of them so I know what it is like to be you.

Many of us have not received the love, comfort, and understanding that we need. This often occurred early in life, and that has set us up for pain in the ways we try to relate to others and get our needs met in relationship. You may have heard of the "anxious attachment style" or the "avoidant attachment style." My interest in working with you would be to create a safe place to be authentically you, no matter what. I do this by listening to you as deeply as I can, tending to you, being with you.