Trauma

We believe trauma is not restricted to crisis events. We believe that ANY circumstance can be traumatizing. In the words of Gabor Mate, “Trauma is not what happens to you; trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.” Trauma is a physiological experience that has emotional and physical symptoms and complications, regardless of how seemingly “minor” the circumstance was for the person.

Additionally, we believe that (according to increasingly available trauma research assertions) trauma is very commonly handed down biologically from our ancestors. Trauma symptoms/expressions are often not simply an individual phenomenon. We respect and treat ancestral trauma symptom expressions to be every bit as valid as personal, individualized traumatic experiences.

Religion

We are a strictly non-religious practice. However, there are therapists on staff here at Evergreen who identify as Christian. We are non-religious for a very important reason: We believe the best mental health care comes from the safest, and the most expert therapeutic care, not from a shared religious background. If you prefer a certain religious background with the therapist of your choice, please don’t hesitate to let us know. All faith backgrounds are welcome here. In the intake process, you are free to make your therapist’s religious background a personal preference in seeking help here.

Spiritual Struggles

We understand and support religious questioning and painful spiritual doubts. This is a safe place to process your difficult spiritual or religious disappointments and fears. Your mental health can absolutely be difficult to manage when you are struggling with life’s meaning and morality issues. Religious background and religious culture often become a painful stumbling block to spiritual growth and change. You deserve a safe place to process what you have lost, and in so doing, perhaps find something worthy to be found.

Diet Culture

We believe diet culture and fat-phobia is an oppressive agenda that targets women to be skinny, small and weak so women don’t become powerful agents of change in their communities and families. We seek to dismantle diet-culture ideas, and in so doing, empower all people to embrace each shape and size their body comes in. Diet culture directly benefits from harming women (and some men), and is highly connected to mental health eating disorders to promote unrealistic body sizes as aspirational.

The Patriarchy

We understand that men and women are consistently harmed by the patriarchy. The patriarchy defined here as the historic, ongoing agenda to have men dominate women and children in every community and environment. In the incomparable words of bell hooks: “The patriarchy has no gender.” Gender norms under the patriarchy do not allow men to express or experience a full range of emotion, not without at least swift societal rejection and punishments for doing so. Additionally, these gender norms do not allow women to be viewed as empowered and strong for their emotional depth and breadth–or their wit and sharp intellect. The fight to create healthy emotional and balanced mental health and wellness is a fight against patriarchal norms. 

Black Lives Matter

We support Black Lives Matter and all organizations that support anti-racist policies and advocates for systemic change. We wholeheartedly reject White supremacy in all of its forms–and seek to uproot all efforts to silence marginalized groups in favor of White ideas and culture. We are committed to doing our own work of acknowledging our blindspots of privilege in this ongoing, essential work of anti-racism. The mental health needs of the Black community and People of the Global Majority in our community are essential to us—we work hard to make therapeutic treatments culturally sensitive, appropriate and accessible for those who are intentionally marginalized by White supremacy ideologies in our current mental health system.

Infidelity

We believe infidelity can be an important opportunity to reconnect and change long-held patterns of relationship neglect. It can also be an opportunity to create good boundaries that can come with divorce or intentional, temporary separation. You will not be shamed here for your choices.

Burnout Culture

Lastly, we are committed to anti-burnout practices—as a staff, and with our clients. We reject all beliefs and behaviors that enforce the ideas that sick days are to be hidden or something to be ashamed of. Instead, we assert that prioritizing rest, play and passion are far more important for mental health and living a meaningful life than grinding out productivity, day in and day out.