We’re glad you’re here.
Our Approach
We’re firm believers that you don’t need to wait until things get really bad to start therapy.
Every person is unique, and therapy should be the same - that’s why we take a tailored, individualized approach that’s flexible to meet your needs and goals. The foundation of our work is a multicultural-feminist perspective that positions you as the expert of your own experience. We take a warm, collaborative approach to help you get clarity about who you are and how you want your life to look. We also integrate evidence-based interventions from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and relational frameworks. Our goals involve helping clients move upstream to identify and resolve systemic and personal patterns that keep them stuck and working together to find more joy.
We also believe that the personal is political. More often than not, sociopolitical systems of oppression like racism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, ableism, and more directly impact mental health. As a result, we take an actively anti-racist, intersectional, identity-affirming approach with clients across a broad spectrum of marginalization and privilege.
We specialize in working with college students, graduate students, young adults, and professionals in Massachusetts on a variety of common issues including: mood (anxiety, depression), identity development, life transitions and adjustment, ADHD, relationship issues, academic and career issues, and burnout.
Why Upstream?
There’s an old story in the field of prevention science that asks how we can prevent problems from arising before they even occur.
Imagine you’re at the river one day relaxing. All of a sudden, you see a child in the river struggling. What do you do? You try to save them.
As you’re saving that child, you see another one coming downstream. What do you do? You try to save that child, too.
Soon, you see five more children coming downstream, all struggling to stay afloat. After trying to save those five, you decide to go upstream to the river’s source to see what’s causing kids to fall in the river in the first place and how you can stop it.
This approach is what we do at Upstream Mental Health to get to the root of issues that are symptoms of a system. By exploring how societal, environmental, and individual systems contribute to distress, we help clients resist oppression, find self-compassion, and experience more joy.
