Lauree Akhtar, LSWAIC (she/they)

Approach

It can be difficult to find a therapist, especially if you’re a multiply-marginalized individual who must cope with not just day to day stressors, but also the stressors of living within systems of oppression against multiple parts of your identity. If you’re in that situation, you may wish to find a therapist with an amount of lived experience, if only to lessen the burden of “explaining” how these systems affect you, and I’m passionate about helping people like you receive services that will more deeply understand the impacts of your environment on you, even if we do not have the exact same identities. My care is intended to be strengths-based, whole person focused, and outcome oriented towards your desires and ambitions. I will always endeavor to practice from my values, which are:

  • Decolonization and anti-racism

  • Client expertise in your own experience

  • Imagination, exploration, and experimentation

  • Transformation and transformative dreaming

  • Love

I will work with you to determine the best modalities for you and may incorporate pieces from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT), Motivational Interviewing (MI), and Solution-focused Brief Therapy (SFBT). I also utilize attachment based, humanistic, narrative, psychodynamic, and somatic modalities.

I am queer, gender, and polyam affirming; sex worker, sex, and kink affirming; neuroaffirming; and practice from a perspective of disability, queer, racial, and fat liberation. My practice framework is primarily rights-based, wherein I believe that when we have access to realize our fundamental human rights, we are most able to make the best choices for ourselves.

I have clinical experience with adolescents and adults, and my focuses are:

  • Healing from trauma and shame, particularly from childhood experiences or from societal oppression

  • Intersectional identity development, especially for multiply-marginalized people

  • Neurodiversity, particularly autism and ADHD

  • Relationship building and relational skills

  • Eating disorders- inclusive of those related to neurodiversity

About me

In Urdu, my first name means Lullaby, and in Arabic my middle and last names mean Faith and Star. At the same time, I grew up in a white household whose predominant religions were Latter Day Saints and Judaism. This is not an uncommon story for mixed-race and multicultural individuals, who can sometimes struggle to understand and differentiate their own identity. While I have bounced around the country – from Utah to New Jersey to Massachusetts to Georgia – much of my current life is ingrained in my identities as a queer, disabled, and autistic Seattleite of 9 years, who has spent time in not just the mental health industry, but also in the technology and video games industries. I am, at my core, an academic, who is invested in reading research, and integrating knowledge from many different fields into not just my work but my day to day life, and the stories I create and tell.

In my spare time, I run multiple D&D tables, play video games, intentionally connect with my communities, make resin art and dice, over-index in linguistic debates, provide agile consultation for organizations, and am writing a (few) book(s). If you wish to solicit my clinical services but also wish to listen to my D&D podcast, please avoid doing so until we can discuss clinical implications in session.

Training

I received my Master’s of Social Work from Fordham University in 2021.

I am certified in Motivational Interviewing for Family Therapy and Recovery, as hosted by King County. I have received additional training in Dialectic Behavioral Therapy from Evergreen, and Suicide Intervention training for both teenagers and adults. I am a certified Fearless Leadership Facilitator for psychological safety assessments and conversations.