Emma Hirsch

Emma Hirsch standing outdoors

Graduate Level Therapy Intern

I believe that sharing our story — with all of the joy, pain, and every emotion in between that illustrates our lives — is one of the most vulnerable and brave things we do. As a therapist, I am committed to compassionately witnessing my clients as they share their story with me and providing collaborative support to help them unlock their innate inner resources needed for growth. I see my clients as the ultimate expert on their lived experience, and that my role is to help them identify the patterns of behavior and unexamined emotions keeping them from their desired change. This process is an exchange of mutual wisdom between myself and my clients. I believe healing is non-linear, and that therapy involves continual rediscovery, challenge, and insight into past and present moment experience.

My approach with individuals, couples, and families utilizes perspectives from attachment-based, emotionally focused, internal family systems, and mindfulness-based therapies. I also find immense value in the wisdom of poetry and other forms of creative expression as tools for healing. Additional areas of current therapeutic interest include self-compassion, sex therapy, relationship challenges, somatic therapy, LGBTQ+ issues, body image, intergenerational trauma, grief, and anxiety. I have five years of experience working in suicide prevention on a teen crisis line, and am currently a graduate student in the University of Oregon’s Couple and Family Therapy program.