“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”
I provide family and individual psychotherapy to folks struggling with birth trauma, fertility issues, miscarriage, perinatal issues, postpartum depression, anxiety, psychosis, endometriosis, maternal grief and wounding, motherless daughters, autoimmune disorders, unexplained pain, and chronic pain. I also work with siblings and mothers and daughters. I also work with women leaving domestic violence and support them in navigating high-conflict divorce.
A Focus on Women’s Issues
In my practice, I operate from a feminist, womanist, and ecofeminist social justice perspective and framework in all areas of my work. I use this framework to center an in-depth understanding of women and their lives. I examine the gender roles and expectations placed on women that contribute to mood, personality disorders, as well as body image and eating disorders.
My approach centers on women through the years and life transitions of womanhood. I address the impossible demands of family, work, and life balance.
Domestic Violence, Coercive Control, High Conflict Divorce
I specialize in working with women and members of the LGBTQ community who are leaving abusive marriages and partnerships. I am adept at helping these individuals get connected with expert family attorneys who specialize in these cases, as well as work with the court system, hearings, and restraining orders. I am also available to help you get connected with individuals who conduct assessments for family court.
Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.
Coercive control is a pattern of acts and behaviors that an abuser uses to take away your freedom and to control your life. An abuser may use fear, pressure, shame, or rules to wear you down and take over your choices. Sometimes, physical violence, sexual abuse, or other forms of domestic violence are also part of coercive control.
For additional information, resources, and legal support for survivors: womenslaw.org
Pregnancy
Management of mental health during pregnancy is of paramount importance. I work with patients during the perinatal period. Inadequate support and treatment during these times carries great risks to parent and child. I will work with you, your immediate support system, and your physicians to understand your experience and your medical needs while also prioritizing those of your child.
Treatment centers you from an anti-oppressive framework. We will work to create collaborative solutions in the face of complicated and continually evolving circumstances.
Post-Partum
Women face myriad stressors and mental health challenges during the postpartum period. Women are sent home with no resources, often having experienced birth trauma without adequate support and are expected to care for someone else. The postpartum period can be lonely and isolating when the expectation is that a parent should be overjoyed.
Preexisting mental health challenges, emotional overwhelm, and little to no sleep contribute to postpartum depression, anxiety, and psychosis. Enlisting an expert reproductive psychotherapist, a family and friends support system, and a medical team approach can help resource you during this overwhelming experience of parenthood.
Neurodiversity, Disability, Chronic Illness, and Pain
I operate from a disability justice perspective in all areas of my work. Too often, girls and women are missed and are not given what they need to succeed. Women and girls are not recognized as neurodiverse, which can lead to trauma and misdiagnosis. Too many women suffer from poorly understood conditions like endometriosis, PCOS, fibromyalgia, and others.
Women do not get the treatment they need, and their pain is dismissed or missed entirely. Pain is not managed and not treated. Enlisting the support of a mental health professional can help make sense of medical issues that are often confusing and overwhelming.
Mothers and Daughters
The mother-daughter connection is one of the most primal relationships that exists. Family therapy between a mom and her daughter is marked by huge importance and vulnerability. The mother-daughter bond is highly complex and can cause pain, abandonment, and also profound love and connection. I help mothers and daughters navigate their relationship throughout the lifecycle. Our work involves appreciating the bond and learning and respecting who each other is and accepting that. A mother needs to support her daughter’s identity and the development of her authentic self. She is not you. A mom needs to constantly maintain and pursue connection, even when that connection feels impossible or fraught. Moms need to focus on their own emotional health and should not depend on their daughters to fulfill their happiness.
Family therapy can help you understand and articulate your feelings more clearly, ensuring that your interactions, even during difficult conversations, are productive and supportive rather than confrontational or evasive. Finally, this models for your daughters how to ask for help when they need it and to learn how to become more self-aware.
It is also important to recognize and accept who your mom is and not who you want her to be. It is important to try to understand that she may have limitations like all people. It is important for daughters to work on setting clear boundaries. These boundaries are there to maintain connection and safety. Learning to listen to each other’s feelings of hurt, saying sorry genuinely, and actively repairing the bond is critical.
Motherless Daughters
Ask any woman whose mother has died at an early or any age, and she will tell you that her life is irrevocably altered; that this one fact forever changes who she is and who she will be. Gone is the caregiver, teacher, role model, and guide to being a woman. I work with women who have lost their mothers due to death, separation, illness, or abandonment. I also work with women who have experienced complicated and ambivalent loss. I am very passionate about this grief work. I know what it is like to lose the one person you loved more than anything. A daughter learns early on that safety, trust, and human relationships are temporary. Inner fragility, overriding vulnerability, and staunch independence become defining characteristics.
“My grief fills rooms. It takes up space, and it sucks out the air. It leaves no room for anyone else. Grief and I are left alone a lot. We smoke cigarettes, and we cry. We stare out the window at the Chrysler Building twinkling in the distance, and we trudge through the cavernous rooms of the apartment like miners aimlessly searching for a way out . . . Grief is possessive and doesn’t let me go anywhere without it. I drag my grief out to restaurants and bars, where we sit together sullenly in the corner, watching everyone carry on around us. I take grief shopping with me, and we troll up and down the aisles of the supermarket, both of us too empty to buy much. Grief takes showers with me, our tears mingling with the soapy water, and grief sleeps next to me, its warm embrace like a sedative keeping me under for long, unnecessary hours. Grief is a force and I am swept up in it.”
– Hope Edelman, Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss
Family Therapy for Siblings
Your relationship with your sibling will likely be the longest relationship of your life. It will supersede your relationship with a spouse, children, and parents. It is rarely given the attention it needs. I love working with siblings and helping them through transitions, strengthening their bond, helping with aging parents, and making sense of stories and differences. Therapy with siblings can also help you appreciate and understand trauma bonding, trauma shame, triangulation, and how to help support each other in recovering trust.
Academic Focus
Lief is a professor in the Psychology Department at Sarah Lawrence College in the undergraduate program. She is also a professor at Smith School for Social Work, as well as a Practicum Faculty Advisor.