Grace Silvia, LCSW

Grace Silvia, LCSW (she/her)

Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Deeply Respectful. Gentle & Empowering. Core Transformation.

Client Status

accepting clients

Contact

503-929-0326

314 NE 19th Avenue

Portland, OR 97232

At a Glance

Me

Rate: $60-$140

Provides free initial consultation

Provides telehealth services

Practicing Since: 2011

Languages: English

Services

  • Individual

Insurances Accepted

  • Out of Pocket
  • Out of Network

My Ideal Client

I will support you in developing curiosity, compassion and mindfulness in the exploration of your inner and outer worlds. All of you is welcome--heart, body, mind, soul. My practice is client-centered, relational, and strengths-based.

My Approach to Helping

I help you become allies with your unconscious. I will support you to listen to, have compassion for, and honor what your symptoms and problems are trying to tell you. There are gifts in your challenges, and together we will find them and bring the exiled parts of yourself home. This work is creative, sacred, and changes your life from the inside out. There is never forcing an agenda or pace, or pushing past "no." Our deepest selves want to grow and heal--we just need to re-learn how to follow that impulse.

My Personal Beliefs and Interests

I trained 2-1/2 years through the Hakomi Institute in body-centered, experiential, mindfulness-based psychotherapy. Eduardo Duran's work inspires me--he's a Native American psychologist who validates historical trauma and spiritual healing. My work is also informed by having experienced years of deep depression and a time of "cracking open," and through both was able to find profound meaning. I support people healing through grief; depression; hearing voices; anxiety; mania/spiritual emergency; childhood sexual abuse; acute and chronic experiences of oppression; historical trauma; activist burnout; compulsive eating; and people wanting to reduce or stop taking psychiatric medications. Special sensitivity to Jewish, women's and LGBTTSAAQQ+ (Lesbian/ Gay/ Bisexual/ Trans/ Two Spirit/ Androgynous/ Asexual/ Queer/ Questioning) identity and oppression.

Techniques I Use

Specialties

  • Hakomi External link

    Hakomi is a body-centered, mindfulness-based approach. Hakomi uses body awareness to access the unconscious. Both trauma and brilliant, creative healing wisdom are stored in the body. By learning how to listen to and follow your body's cues, you will find a depth , ease and aliveness that working in ordinary consciousness can't access.

  • Feminist External link

    As a radical feminist, I believe my work must: > deeply honor each person's inner wisdom instead of pathologizing doctrine; > recognize the deep soul wounding that chronic and acute oppression, systems of injustice, and planetary pain cause; and > orient deep personal healing in service to becoming an empowered agent of change, rather than adjusting to being a cog in the machine.

  • Experiential External link

    Whether talking about what happened yesterday or in your family growing up, we will work with what you experience as you explore it in the moment. That way the work is fresh, not a stale re-hashing of an old, stuck story. Using basic building blocks of gentle curiosity, compassion and honoring both what shows up as well as resistance to what shows up, deep transformation happens.

Issues I Treat

Specialties

  • Anxiety External link

    How do we find a way to sit with anxiety, when it makes us want to crawl out of our skins? But it's likely desperately trying to protect us on a core level. Can we find a way to have compassion for its desperate work? It can become an ally if we can listen!

  • PTSD External link

    Therapy should not be re-traumatizing! If you find yourself dissociating during or after therapy or dreading it, something is wrong. Working in a trauma-informed way means I will help you learn the signs of when you are beginning to re-experience the trauma, and how to bring yourself back into safety. The work must go at your pace, guided by your body's subtle cues and your inner 'no' and 'yes.'

  • Depression External link

    Deep sadness. Can we stop pushing it away, even for a moment, and listen to what it is desperately trying to tell us? This is no easy task in our culture of 'Produce!' and 'Be happy at all costs!' Yet there is so much to be sad about personally, societally and planetarily. Pushing it away makes it dig in deeper. But by honoring it, we can find its meaning, our passion and our unique call to action.

  • Schizophrenia External link

    Many people hear voices, see things others don't, or have unusual beliefs. It's only a problem when it makes your life hard. What is labeled schizophrenia can be a brilliant response to trauma, a spiritual sensitivity needing a container, or....? It is for you to find your own meaning. I would be honored to support you on this path.

  • Bipolar External link

    Deep lows and intense highs can wreck havoc on your life. But they can also be gifts of exquisite sensitivity, a response to trauma, or/and a spiritual awakening. I am learning from friends, clients and colleagues what can be helpful. I would be honored to share what I am learning and learn from you on this journey.

Contact Grace

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