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Therapy for Women’s Issues2026-06-21T19:50:43-05:00

Women’s Issues

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Therapist – Overland Park, Kansas

Women today are expected to do it all. Society can expect women to have a career and a family and excel at everything. Research shows that women are more likely than men to be the primary caregivers to children even as they continue to play a significant role in the workforce.  There is a level of perfection placed on women that can be exhausting. Women’s issues can seriously impact a women’s mental , physical, and emotional health. The impact can be from mild to extreme.

common mental health

Women’s Issues

  • Depression

  • Anxiety

  • Self-harming behaviors

  • Borderline personality disorder

  • Low self esteem

  • Post traumatic stress disorder

  • Co-parenting through and after divorce

  • Panic disorder

  • Postpartum Depression

  • Dependent personality disorder

  • Generalized anxiety disorder

  • Phobias

  • Trauma

  • Intamacy and relationship issues

common mental health

Women’s Issues

  • Depression

  • Anxiety

  • Self-harming behaviors

  • Borderline personality disorder

  • Low self esteem

  • Post traumatic stress disorder

  • Co-parenting through and after divorce

  • Panic disorder

  • Postpartum Depression

  • Dependent personality disorder

  • Generalized anxiety disorder

  • Phobias

  • Trauma

  • Intamacy and relationship issues

types of therapy for

Women’s Issues

  • Acceptance and Commitment (ACT)

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

  • Compassion Focused

  • Culturally Sensative

  • EMDR

  • Eclectic

  • Mindfulness-Based (MBCT)

  • Motivational Interviewing

  • Person-Centered

  • Positive Psychology

  • Solution Focused Brief (SFBT)

  • Strength-Based

  • Trauma Focused

benefits of therapy for

Women’s Issues

Women’s Issues

Learning coping skills and techniques to help you create a space in your life to honor your feminine energy, ebrace your multiple roles, and empower your voice.

world health organization

Mental Health Facts

Mental Health Facts

  • Depressive disorders account for close to 41.9% of the disability from neuropsychiatric disorders among women compared to 29.3% among men.

  • Leading mental health problems of the older adults are depression, organic brain syndromes and dementias. A majority are women.
  • An estimated 80% of 50 million people affected by violent conflicts, civil wars, disasters, and displacement are women and children.
  • Lifetime prevalence rate of violence against women ranges from 16% to 50%.
  • At least one in five women suffer rape or attempted rape in their lifetime.

Women’s Therapy FAQs

Women’s issues therapy is counseling built around the specific mental, emotional, and physical realities that women navigate. It is for any woman who feels overwhelmed, stuck, unseen, or exhausted, whether she is managing anxiety, burnout, relationship pain, postpartum depression, grief, trauma, or the relentless pressure of trying to do everything for everyone.

You do not need a dramatic story or a clinical crisis to qualify. Many women come to therapy simply because they are tired of feeling like they are barely holding it together while everyone around them assumes they are fine. That is enough of a reason to start.

No diagnosis is needed. Therapy is not only for crisis situations. Many women come to Blackbird Therapy not because something is clinically wrong, but because they are tired of running on empty and ready to stop white-knuckling their way through life.

If your inner life feels heavier than your outer life looks, that is reason enough to reach out. We will figure out the rest together.

A therapist who specializes in women’s issues understands the layers women carry that often go unnamed in general therapy: the expectation to do it all without complaint, the tendency to put yourself last and call it love, the way anxiety shows up differently in women’s bodies, the hormonal undercurrents of mental health, and the grief that can quietly accumulate from decades of prioritizing everyone else.

You will not need to spend your sessions educating your therapist about what it means to live in a woman’s body and a woman’s world. That foundation is already there. We get to go deeper, faster.

Blackbird Therapy works with women experiencing anxiety and panic, depression, burnout and compassion fatigue, postpartum depression and perinatal mood disorders, grief and loss, life transitions at every age, trauma and PTSD, perimenopause and menopause, low self-esteem, people-pleasing and perfectionism, relationship issues and divorce, co-parenting stress, caregiver exhaustion, chronic illness, body image concerns, and identity questions at any stage of life.

If you are not sure whether what you are experiencing fits any of those categories, reach out anyway. It likely does, and even if it does not, the right support can still make an enormous difference.

Sessions are tailored to you. There is no scripted agenda or checklist you have to follow. We might explore what is happening right now in your daily life, dig into patterns that have been showing up for years, work through a specific event or relationship, or focus on developing tools you can actually use when you leave my office.

What we talk about is guided by what you need. Some women come in knowing exactly what they want to address. Others come in feeling foggy and just knowing that something is off. Both are completely valid starting points. My job is to help you figure out what matters most and work toward it at a pace that feels right for you.

Completely normal, and honestly expected. Reaching out for help is one of the hardest things to do, especially for women who have spent years being the ones other people lean on. The idea of being vulnerable in front of a stranger can feel uncomfortable before it feels like relief.

The first session is about getting to know each other. You are not committing to anything. You are not obligated to share everything at once. We move at your pace, and you stay in control of what gets explored and when. Most women leave their first session surprised by how much lighter they feel just from having said things out loud in a room where no one is going to judge them.

There is no one-size answer, and anyone who gives you a fixed number before knowing your situation is guessing. Some women come in with a specific, recent issue and find meaningful resolution in a handful of sessions. Others are working through layered, long-standing patterns and find that a longer-term relationship with a therapist allows for deeper, more lasting change.

At Blackbird Therapy, the goal is never to keep you in therapy longer than you need. We assess together regularly, and you are always part of the conversation about pacing and direction. The question is not how many sessions you have to complete, it is what you actually want your life to look and feel like.

Blackbird Therapy draws from a range of evidence-based approaches, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness-Based approaches, Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, and Strength-Based and Trauma-Focused frameworks.

The approach is not rigid. It is shaped around you, your history, your goals, and what actually tends to produce results for the issues you are bringing in. Research consistently shows that the quality of the therapeutic relationship matters as much as the specific method used, and that is something I take seriously from the very first session.

Yes, and this is one of the most common things women bring into my office. The exhaustion of being everyone’s person, of managing the emotional labor of an entire household or workplace, of saying yes when every cell in your body is screaming no. It shows up as irritability, numbness, resentment, and a quiet grief over the version of yourself you remember feeling like before all of this.

Therapy helps you identify where those patterns started, what keeps them in place, and what it would actually look like to build a life where your needs are not an afterthought. Setting boundaries is not selfish. Learning to receive as well as give is not weakness. We work on that together, at your pace, without judgment.

Yes. Postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety are among the most undertreated conditions women face, largely because of the shame and stigma that can surround them. The idea that you should feel nothing but joy after having a baby makes it nearly impossible for women to ask for help when the reality is much more complicated.

Postpartum depression is not a character flaw or a failure of love. It is a medical and psychological reality that affects approximately one in five mothers. Therapy provides a safe, completely judgment-free space to talk about what you are actually experiencing, including the thoughts you may be afraid to say out loud. You do not have to perform happiness here. Healing is possible, and you deserve support.

Absolutely. Perimenopause and menopause are not just physical transitions. For many women, they bring on anxiety, depression, mood instability, brain fog, sleep disruption, and a disorienting sense of loss around identity, body, and what comes next. These experiences are real, they are significant, and they are often completely dismissed by the people around you including the medical system.

Therapy during this transition gives you a place to process what is happening without being told to just push through it. We can work on managing the emotional and psychological dimensions of this phase, on understanding what your body and mind are communicating, and on building a relationship with this chapter of your life that feels grounded rather than frightening.

Postpartum depression is not a character flaw or a failure of love. It is a medical and psychological reality that affects approximately one in five mothers. Therapy provides a safe, completely judgment-free space to talk about what you are actually experiencing, including the thoughts you may be afraid to say out loud. You do not have to perform happiness here. Healing is possible, and you deserve support.

Yes, and trauma recovery is a significant part of the work done at Blackbird Therapy. Trauma can look like a single catastrophic event, but it can also look like years of emotional neglect, an abusive relationship you minimized at the time, a childhood in which your needs were never quite met, or medical experiences that left invisible scars.

Blackbird Therapy uses trauma-focused approaches including EMDR and Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), both of which are specifically designed to help your nervous system process and release what it has been holding. You do not have to retell your story in painful detail for healing to happen. Many clients are surprised by how much is possible without re-traumatizing themselves in the process.

Yes, and this is deeply important work. The inner voice that says you are not smart enough, thin enough, patient enough, successful enough, or simply not enough, is not telling you the truth. It is telling you a story that was written for you by your experiences, your environment, and often by people who projected their own fears and limitations onto you.

Therapy helps you examine that story. Where did it start? What keeps it running? What would it actually mean to live from a place of genuine self-worth rather than constant self-monitoring? This kind of work changes not just how you feel about yourself, it changes how you show up in every relationship and decision in your life.

Blackbird Therapy uses trauma-focused approaches including EMDR and Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), both of which are specifically designed to help your nervous system process and release what it has been holding. You do not have to retell your story in painful detail for healing to happen. Many clients are surprised by how much is possible without re-traumatizing themselves in the process.

Now is one of the best times. Major life transitions, including divorce, career change, empty nest, loss of a parent, remarriage, or a health diagnosis, create a specific kind of disorientation that therapy is uniquely positioned to help with. The ground shifts and suddenly you are not sure who you are outside of the roles and relationships that used to define you.

Therapy during a transition is not about holding yourself together until it is over. It is about doing the work now, while the door is open, so that what comes next is built on something real rather than just recovery mode. Some of the most meaningful growth I see in clients happens in the middle of the hardest chapters of their lives.

Yes. Tara Tooley, LCSW is licensed in both Kansas and Missouri, meaning telehealth sessions are available to women throughout both states. Whether you are in Overland Park, across the Kansas City metro, in a smaller Kansas or Missouri community, or anywhere in between, you can access quality women’s therapy without the commute.

Telehealth sessions are held via a secure, HIPAA-compliant platform and are just as effective as in-person sessions for most concerns. In-person sessions are available at 9290 Bond Street, Suite 112, Overland Park, KS 66214 for those who prefer to meet face to face.

For the most current information on fees and accepted insurance plans, please visit the FAQs page at blackbirdtherapykc.com or call 913-557-0123. Superbills are available for clients with out-of-network benefits, allowing you to submit for potential reimbursement from your insurance provider. Health savings accounts (HSA) and flexible spending accounts (FSA) are also accepted.

Investing in your mental health is one of the most practical things you can do. The cost of not getting support, in strained relationships, lost productivity, physical health impacts, and the compounding weight of unaddressed pain, often far exceeds the cost of therapy itself.

The most important factor in whether therapy works is the relationship between you and your therapist. You need to feel safe, understood, and like you are not performing or managing someone else’s emotions in the room. That is the foundation everything else is built on.

Tara brings her own lived experience to this work, including surviving cancer twice, navigating what it means to rebuild an identity in the aftermath of something that tried to take everything from her. She is direct, warm, and genuinely invested in her clients, not in keeping them in therapy longer than they need to be. The best way to know if it is a good fit is to have a conversation. Reach out, ask your questions, and trust your gut.

Blackbird Therapy is located at 9290 Bond Street, Suite 112, Overland Park, KS 66214, in the heart of Johnson County. In-person clients come from Overland Park, Leawood, Lenexa, Olathe, Prairie Village, Shawnee, Merriam, Mission, and surrounding communities throughout the Kansas City metro.

For women throughout Kansas and Missouri who cannot easily make the in-person commute, telehealth sessions bring the same quality of care directly to wherever you are. Kansas City, Missouri clients, those in Lee’s Summit, Blue Springs, Liberty, or anywhere else in the metro are welcome to connect virtually.

Mental Health Advice from a Therapist

INTO THE LIGHT OF A
DARK BLACK NIGHT

INTO THE LIGHT OF A
DARK BLACK NIGHT

INTO THE LIGHT OF A
DARK BLACK NIGHT

Contact Information

Mental Health Advice from a Therapist

FAQs

Have questions? Check out my FAQs page for answers to the most common questions I receive.

  • Who do you work with?

  • How are cancellations handled?

  • What insurance do you take?

  • Do you have weekend availability?

Therapist – Overland Park, Kansas

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