You are the expert in you: Our Approach

Our work is rooted in relational therapy: We believe the most powerful aspect of therapy lies within relationships, including the one between client and therapist.

While many therapists practice a hands-off approach, you're more likely to find us engaging you in the kind of deep, personal work we've seen lead to true healing and growth. It's work that begins with a genuine, respectful and trusting relationship – and the understanding that each of us is the foremost expert in ourselves.

Our Areas of Expertise Include:

  • Eating Disorders and Disordered Eating
  • Chronic Dieting
  • Body Shame and Body Liberation
  • LGBTQ+
  • Sex and Sexuality
  • Gender Identity
  • Relationship Concerns
  • Anxiety
  • Grief and Loss
  • Shame Resilience and Self-Compassion
  • Mindfulness and Meditation
  • Trauma and PTSD
  • Substance Use
  • Adolescent Development and Parent Coaching

Practices and Modalities: Types of Therapy

Each of our therapists draws from a wide range of healing modalities in their work, including body-centered and intuitive eating practices, psychodynamic and attachment therapies, and mindfulness and meditation practices. The information below provides an overview of the areas of specialization you’ll find represented in our practice.

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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

ACT builds skills that help get folx in touch with what really matters in the big picture, who they want to be and how they want to act. We then use this understanding to help guide, motivate and inspire behavior change while accepting the pain that life can bring. The key question at the heart of ACT is: “Is what you are doing working to make your life rich, full and meaningful?”

For more information, click here.

Body Trust®

Body Trust® re-envisions what it means to occupy and care for your body. It is a pathway to acceptance of the body and an alternative dialogue to the conventional paradigm of food, body image and weight concerns in our culture. As a healing modality, Body Trust® is a way out of the predictable, repetitive pattern of dieting, disordered eating and weight cycling that is fueled by body shame. 

For more information, click here.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Dialectical Behavior Therapy promotes skills that bridge mindfulness and behavioral strategies to help build a life worth living, regulate emotions, cultivate healthy and satisfying relationships and reduce distress by integrating breathing and mindfulness techniques to nurture a sense of safety and self-compassion.

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Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)

EFT is an approach to relationship therapy that prioritizes emotion and emotion regulation in relationship interactions. This model also blends attachment and relational sciences.

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Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a powerful and effective tool for trauma recovery. EMDR incorporates bilateral stimulation to help process and release distressing memories and thoughts trapped in the mind and body. Research is growing that EMDR is also effective for eating disorders, substance use, depression, anxiety and relationship difficulties.

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Feminist Theory

Feminist theory shifts focus away from the male viewpoint toward that of women to examine social problems, trends and issues that are overlooked or misidentified by the historically dominant male perspective. Key areas of focus include discrimination and exclusion on the basis of sex and gender, objectification, structural and economic inequality, power and oppression and gender roles and stereotypes.

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The Gottman Method

The Gottman Method is an approach to relationship therapy that focuses on disarm conflicting verbal communication, increase intimacy, respect, and affection, remove barriers that create a feeling of stagnancy in conflicting situations, and create a heightened sense of empathy and understanding within the context of the relationship.

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Harm Reduction

Harm reduction is a set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with substance use. Harm Reduction is also a movement for social justice built on a belief in, and respect for, the rights of people who use substances. Harm Reduction focuses on meeting you where you are and taking a holistic approach to your recovery.

For more information, click here.

Health at Every Size® and Intuitive Eating

A radical anti-diet approach that celebrates body diversity, Health at Every Size® and intuitive eating challenge societal assumptions; promote eating in a flexible and attuned manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety and appetite; and support finding the joy in moving one’s body and being physically active. This is about respecting and honoring your body and making peace with food.

For more information, click here and here.

Interpersonal Neurobiology and Attachment Theory (IPNB)

In a nutshell, IPNB holds that we are ultimately who we are because of our relationships. Brain science and attachment research is increasingly showing that positive and secure relationships can create physical brain change and promote psychological healing. What does this mean? Healthy and healing relationships like the one with a therapist can help heal past relationship difficulties and traumas and create new wiring in the brain for continued well-being in the future.

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Motivational Interviewing

Motivational interviewing is a counseling method that helps folx resolve ambivalent feelings and insecurities to find the internal motivation they need to change their behavior. 

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Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT)

PACT is an approach to couple therapy that blends neuroscience, attachment theory, and arousal regulation. 

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Psychodynamic Theory

Psychodynamic theory explains personality in terms of unconscious wishes and desires and explains childhood experiences as crucial in shaping adult personality. It can help us find patterns in emotions, thoughts and behaviors in order to gain insight into our current self.

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Queer Theory

Queer Theory challenges the notion of defined and finite identity categories, as well as the norms that create a binary of “good” versus “bad” sexualities. Queer Theory aims to address inequalities and disrupt binaries by asserting that there is no set “normal,” only changing norms that people may or may not fit into. 

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Relational Cultural Theory

Mainstream western psychological theories generally depict human development as moving from dependence to independence. In contrast, relational–cultural therapy is built on the premise that, throughout our lifespan, human beings grow through and toward connection, and that we need connections to flourish.

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Shame Resilience Theory

Shame is a universal emotion that can have serious negative consequences if left unchecked, including feeling trapped, powerless and isolated. Shame Resilience Theory, SRT, explores the strategies people use to acknowledge and overcome feelings of shame to experience empathy, connection, power and freedom. 

For more information, click here.

Social Justice Theory

Social Justice Theory is rooted in the idea that all people should have equal rights, opportunity and treatment across all aspects of society. To creat equality, social justice efforts focus on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination and other forms of social injustice, and seek to promote sensitivity to and knowledge about oppression and diversity. 

For more information, click here and here.

Somatic Healing

Somatic healing uses body-centered techniques that connect mind, body and spirit to help heal the nervous system from distress. This is a practice of attuning to the sensations of the body and building inner resources that provide a greater sense of stability. We utilize techniques from somatic experiencing, sensorimotor, and breathing and meditation practices.

For more information, click here and here.

We Believe

At Ample + Rooted, we believe it is our birthright to inhabit, trust and honor our physical and emotional selves without shame. We believe in cultivating a healing home for the whole you and that this healing and belonging is profoundly vital in creating a more equitable and just world. We believe compassion, pleasure and embodiment lead the way toward healing and liberation.

Our Commitment
to Social Justice

As an inclusive and radical therapy and training practice, we aim to cultivate a safe and welcoming space of compassion and connection. We embody the ideals of social justice through a strong commitment to the dismantling of oppression, ongoing anti-racist action and the relentless pursuit for the liberation of diverse lived experiences. We recognize and welcome all types of identities, including the diverse and intersectional experiences of race, gender, size, age, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, citizenship status, ethnicity, spirituality, religion and ability.

We honor that we are located on the unceded land of the Jumanos, Tonkawa, Lipan Apache, Coahuiltecan, and Comanche people and we are committed to justice for Indigenous Peoples.  

Our practice is rooted in Health at Every Size®, Body Trust®, fat-positive, sex-positive, LGBTQ+ affirming, harm reduction, trauma-responsive, and anti-oppressive frameworks. We are consensual non-monogamy, polyamory and kink-affirming and allied with those engaged in sex work.

In our aim to be fully inclusive and have an effect on dismantling systemic barriers, we  work to acknowledge and account for intersectional experiences of systemic oppression, including our own implicit biases and prejudices. Because systems of oppression are woven into our language and social systems, we commit to actively using strategies, theories, actions and practices, on an ongoing basis, to challenge and change the factors that contribute to oppression as we work toward social justice and equity.

In our work, we also strive to recognize where unearned benefits and entitlements give us privilege and how we ourselves contribute to oppression. We actively address binary, normative hierarchies that support privilege and the entrenchment of accepted norms, and we recognize that marginalization, discrimination and racism can be experienced across aspects of each person's identity. To be effective in our anti-oppression work, we must account for intersectional experiences.

While we commit to working toward social justice and change, we also recognize we will encounter our own limitations and biases. However, we will continue to listen, learn and recommit to this work by looking to and partnering with Black, Indigenous and Persons of Color, marginalized groups and individuals, and anti-racist educators and facilitators. Because we are dedicated to dismantling the oppression caused by diet culture and weight-centric models of healthcare, we honor, celebrate and learn from the experiences of those who have been affected by the thin, cis, white, able-bodied ideal that reinforces trauma, shame and self-blame. As therapists, we commit to listening and learning with, for and from the experiences of our clients and one another within our practice.

We value transparency and accountability and want to share steps we are taking to further embody our commitment to anti-oppression:

  • We commit to reparations and quarterly redistribute 1% of our income to BIPOC led grassroots organizations. As a startup company, we seek to increase this percentage as we grow and will continue to prioritize reparations in a sustainable manner.
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  • All team members are required to commit to engage in their own anti-oppression work. We will provide opportunities for the team to learn and unlearn together by hiring anti-racism educators and centering marginalized voices in any ongoing training.
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  • We will continuously seek feedback, and in instances where we cause harm, we will seek guidance from a consultant to engage in an accountability and repair process, when possible.
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  • We aim to ensure all Ample + Rooted services are accessible and provide equity-based pricing.