Hello World!
Hello, and welcome! My name's Ellison (they/them), and I'm one half of Capybara Counseling, a therapy practice focused on creating meaningful, compassionate change. Capybara Counseling tethers me--here in Massachusetts--to my incredible colleague and professional soulmate Allie in Ohio.
Our work is affirming of queer and gender expansive identities, neurodiversity, and cultural liberation. We are committed to decolonizing therapy, which means moving away from oppressive, pathologizing medical models and systems of care rooted in colonialist power structures, and moving towards more holistic ways of thinking about healing at the individual and community level, prioritizing wellness of the entire bodymind 1 rather than working within narrow bands of focus, celebrating resistance and the desire for systemic change as signs of healing, and empowering authenticity. We are passionate about cultural and systemic change, and both try to be vocal advocates of our own, our clients', and our communities' needs whenever we can.
By way of introduction, I'll list some of my pertinent identities, and hope they are adequate enough to define the shape of the whole.
- I am a therapist. I got my MA in mental health counseling at Boston College and since then have worked in a variety of settings including a group home, intensive community-based in-home therapy programs, outpatient community mental health, and most recently as the embedded therapist at a pediatric medical practice. Now I'm venturing out on my own into the frontier of private practice.
- I am queer. I typically identify as generally vaguely waves hands queer, because microlabels are hard, identity is fluid, and I have other things to do with my time than pin down a moving target. I'm nonbinary or gender nonconforming or genderfluid or genderqueer, by which I mostly mean that gender = ???. I'm somewhere on the asexuality spectrum but who can say where? Sometimes I say ace, grey-ace, demi, or aspec. I describe myself as panromantic, because I am attracted to and enjoy spending time with all manner of people regardless of gender, but I'm not sure what "romantic" attraction means separate from any other form of human connection so maybe I'm aromantic or quoiromantic? This is getting long, so I'll move on. I'm vaguely waves hands "gay."
- I am neurodivergent. If you haven't figured it out by now, sweeping categorical generalizations are not my thing. This is probably because I'm autistic, but herein lies the rub: I don't actually vibe with the rigid diagnostic categories presented by the medical model of psychology. So am I autistic? Probably. Are there other ways of looking at aspects of my neurodivergence in other ways, including ways that celebrate neurodiversity as an element of human diversity in general? Certainly. I'll write more about this in a future post. I also have elements of ADHD as well as other neurological differences that aren't fully defined by the DSM-V2 definition of autism. Similar to my relationship with gender and sexual/romantic identities, I usually just say vaguely waves hands neurodivergent and leave it at that.
I'm not sure if it's silly of me, a touchy-feely "non-scientific" type to introduce myself like a computer program.3 On the other hand I've had plenty of moments throughout my life of feeling like a computer, or a robot, or some other non-human system. I'm pretty aware now of how common it is for an autistic person to feel like an "alien anthropologist," or to be described as "robotic," but it's taken me a long time to come to terms with my identity as an autistic person and even longer to find autistic community. Because of this, I think it's important for me to be loudly, openly, and joyfully autistic--not just for the freedom to live authentically, but as a model for what is possible in this world. I think my autism helps me be a better therapist, friend, partner, and human--more on this in a future post.
I've always been bad at keeping a journal. Something about trying to get my thoughts down on paper makes them difficult to grasp, and the motivation required to keep up with the routine tends to fizzle out quickly. That said, I've been thinking about my voice, and the space I take up in the world. I've realized I have things to say, and that saying them out loud for everyone to hear might not entirely be an exercise in self-indulgence. Hopefully through compassionate self-expression and humble, human honesty I can write something worth reading.
So here I am, world, ready to yap.
https://www.capycounseling.com/