Glad to Meet You.
My name is Nicole. I am a queer, Swedish-German American, cis-gender woman with chronic illness and an artist’s eye. I grew up with intergenerational wealth and no small amount of religious abuse. I fucking love dragons, and could not live without tea. I have been a descendant of settlers on indigenous land my whole life, and plan to use the mind I’ve been given to fight for people’s freedom. All of this shapes who I am and how I enter my practice as a therapist, artist, advocate and author.
Because so much trauma stems from oppressive systems, my work focuses on oppression and liberation, trauma recovery and inherent/collective strength and power. I work to nurture the resources and already existing resilience of people through creativity, story, psychoeducation and trauma reprocessing. You deserve spaces that celebrate your becoming and see your strength. You deserve to have kind and safe companions alongside you, and I would be honored to be one of them.
Nicole Gehlbach-Wilson, LCSWAIC
Credentials
Masters in Clinical Social Work Associate, LSWAIC #61086093
MSW University of Washington, Latinx Specialization
EMDR and First Aid Arts Trained
Bilingual: Spanish and English
Modalities
Arts-Based Therapy, Trauma Informed Narrative therapy, Internal Family Systems (Parts work), Psychoeducation and Trauma reprocessing (EMDR). I root my work in attachment theory, mind-body connection, queer theory and systems perspectives.
Supervision
My practice is currently supervised by Faith Nielsen, LCSW.
Why I Chose Therapy
It took me years to identify who and what had hurt me, and then even more years to stand by the truth that my body knew. I was collar bone deep in conservative evangelical Christian worlds, groomed since the ripe age of two to be what they wanted and have no needs, preferences, boundaries or self. I got really good at searing myself to keep myself in line. I got really bad at protecting myself or standing up for myself. And ultimately, I got really, really exhausted. I could not flourish, or even find safety, within the psychological cage I was raised in.
I was eventually exiled, and it hurt like hell, but it gave me space. Space to scream in my journals about how much it all hurt. How angry I was. How wrong it all was. I started to get to know parts of myself that had been starved and repressed. My queer sexuality, specifically, came to the surface battered in a straight jacket.
For once, I began to listen to my body and its desires. My aching, exhausted body that was simultaneously battling Chronic Lyme disease, an autoimmune disease, and other compounding chronic health conditions. I made thousands of small, tiny choices to give her rest, to take her seriously, to trust the intuition that lived inside her. And at the end of the day, this has led me to me.
I was never made for the small, grey box they tried to mangle me into. I was made for so much more, and so are you. This is why I am here. Because the systems in place – the white supremacist, colonial capitalist patriarchy – have marred, exploited, shamed and erased so many of us. I believe you have an immense power inside of you to rise and to heal. And, I believe that society has an immense responsibility to be accountable to the ways it is not always safe for people to rise or even exist. We all deserve spacious places.
