Miriam Mikhelson, LCSW

About Miriam

I am a licensed clinical social worker with master’s degrees in social work from Bryn Mawr College and psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. At Bryn Mawr, I studied clinical social work with an emphasis on psychoanalytic therapy. My work at UT Austin focused on developmental psychology research of children’s social-emotional development and maternal mental health. After graduate school, I completed a fellowship at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute where I received advanced training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. I have worked in a variety of settings, including community mental health, college counseling, and private practice. 

I think that our past experiences and the systems we exist in create a template for how we relate to ourselves and others. While many aspects of this template are adaptive for our survival, there may be parts that interfere with our ability to live authentically and meaningfully. I aim to help you understand the parts that do and don’t serve you, which means understanding the context in which they evolved, the purpose they held at the time, and the ways in which they structure your inner world and relationships now. I believe that the more we know and can be honest with ourselves about, the more freedom and agency we ultimately have.

I practice primarily from a contemporary psychoanalytic orientation informed by relational, feminist, and queer theories. I value how unique each person’s subjective experience of the world is depending on their intersecting identities such as class, race, gender, sexuality, immigration status, body size, and disability. I hope to create a warm atmosphere where we can explore your past and present together with curiosity and compassion.

I tend to work well with people who are interested in a deeper and more complex understanding of themselves. I have enjoyed working with queer individuals, college students, and people raised in immigrant families, along with a wide range of other identities and presentations. Common concerns that I support people in are depression, anxiety, obsessive and compulsive tendencies, complex trauma, difficult family dynamics, low self-esteem, perfectionism, difficulty regulating emotions, and feeling disconnected from emotion.