Leah Goldgar

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Leah (she/they) aims to show up as their most authentic self – warm, engaged, compassionate, and deeply invested in healing – and invites her clients to bring their full selves into session as well.  She knows therapy to be a space where we can get in touch with our innermost truths as we explore our pain and wounding, as well as our wishes, desires, and longings. Leah feels immense gratitude that they get to offer this space to clients, and co-create an experience where exploration, healing, and growth can happen.

Leah primarily works with adults in individual therapy looking to expand their understanding of themselves. They enjoy working with those who are motivated to increase their insight and explore where they get stuck in relationship dynamics, including their relationship with themself. Leah strives to create a therapeutic relationship that is supportive, trusting, and empowering, which helps clients move towards their innate knowing and access the parts of themselves that need to be held and nurtured. She works with clients to vulnerably explore longstanding adaptive patterns and assists in creating space to deepen self-compassion and a sense of choice around these patterns. Leah incorporates both systemic and body awareness, understanding that the systems we exist in are directly linked to our lived experience and that our bodies hold those stories. They are an LGBTQIA+ affirming, neurodivergent affirming, and fat-positive therapist who encourages clients to name their experience of her and the therapeutic relationship as it unfolds.  

Leah has trained and worked in outpatient settings, as well as in a Partial Hospitalization Program and an Intensive Outpatient Program. Her previous work focused on people with serious physical health conditions, their caregivers, and grieving loved ones;  eating disorders across the spectrum and body image concerns; life transitions; relational concerns; and people healing from trauma. She has experience providing individual, couples, family, and group therapy.

Education and Credentials

  • Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor
  • National Certified Counselor
  • MA in Counseling Psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology in 2017
  • BS in Psychology from Goucher College
  • Member of the American Group Psychotherapy Association and past Addictions Special Interest Group Co-chair
  • Member of the Chicago Center for the Study of Groups and Organizations

What do you like about being a therapist? I love that I get to spend my days being alongside people I care about, learning and growing together around some of the most raw and messy parts of being a human. I have always been fascinated by the unconscious and how it plays out between people. For me, one of the most fulfilling parts of being a therapist is being with my clients as they unearth and tend to the buried and protected parts of themselves, and when they courageously allow themselves to use our relationship to do so. I am incredibly appreciative of the risks my clients take to talk about their inner lives. Our society doesn’t create a lot of space to be in the here and now nor to be able to talk about intimacy as it’s happening, and it’s a beautiful and sacred thing to be in that process with my clients.

What are you excited about? What is your passion? I am passionate about helping people connect with their own experience and finding space to let it exist in a world that often tells us to push our feelings away. I love deepening my understanding of the ways we impact one another. I am particularly interested in understanding groups and systems and consider myself an ongoing student of process groups and Tavistock/group relations work.

I’m also very passionate about dogs, particularly pitbulls!

I work with

  • Adults
  • Older Adults (65+)
  • LGBTQIA+ Community
  • Fat Positive and Body Liberation Community
  • Creatives/Artists
  • Cerebral people working in helping professions, non-profits, and STEM
  • People in ongoing recovery from an eating disorder
  • Groups

Therapeutic Modalities

  • Psychodynamic
  • Relational
  • Feminist
  • Emotion Focused
  • Humanistic/ Person-Centered
  • Attachment Based
  • Mindfulness Based
  • Internal Family Systems Informed

Areas of Interest

  • Relationship Concerns (family, peer, partner, etc)
  • Family of Origin Issues
  • Life Stressors and Transitions
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Communication Patterns
  • Developmental Trauma
  • Grief and Loss
  • Perfectionism
  • Self-Esteem and Self Criticism
  • Body Image
  • Identity Exploration

What do you do for self-care?

  • Spend time at the lake
  • Therapy
  • Art (painting, singing, dancing, crafting)
  • Watch stand up comedy
  • Spend time with loved ones and animals
  • Read at a coffee shop
  • Walks in nature

Favorite podcasts, books or blogs

  • The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller
  • What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about Fat by Aubrey Gordon
  • Hunger by Roxanne Gay
  • Know My Name by Chanel Miller
  • Untamed by Glennon Doyle

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