Leah Goldgar

Leah (she/they) aims to show up as her 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 she gets to offer this space to clients, and co-create an experience where exploration, healing, and growth happen.

Leah primarily works with adults in individual therapy looking to expand their understanding of themselves. She enjoys working with those who are motivated to increase their insight and explore where they get stuck. Leah creates 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 their inner world to deepen and expand both self-awareness and self-compassion. Leah helps clients notice what is happening for them in the present moment and explore adaptive patterns that show up in how they relate to themselves and others. She 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. Leah is an LGBTQIA+ affirming and fat-positive therapist and 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 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!