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Ilana Faust, BA
Ilana provides services at our Chicago Lakeview office.
I believe that the struggle is real. Many of us have matured into functioning adults who have a hard time accepting they might need support. Life is harder than we are willing to accept, and we push ourselves to keep going, because that’s what we ‘should’ do. We strive to nurture and maintain meaningful relationships, we doubt ourselves or feel like we should already know who we are and what we want. To top it all off, nowadays, everything goes fast. We live in a time of immediate gratification and expectations of peak performance at work or in our relationships. But life doesn’t give us much room to breathe or space to take care of our mental health, which makes us struggle to live a meaningful, vibrant, and fulfilling life.
Therapy, to me, is like ‘going to the gym’ but for your mind. I believe mindfulness-based interventions are a great tool to help us connect with the present, and figure out who we want to be. My approach to providing therapy is integrative. I see the value in borrowing from many therapeutic approaches. I’m very interested in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) because of its focus on psychological flexibility. I see the world through an existential, person-centered lens, which means I favor therapies that help you explore your true self. I also believe we all have an inclination toward becoming fully functioning, and that we all have the potential to do so by becoming aware of our problems and finding the means to resolve them.
My clinical interests are chronic pain, divorce, stress management, self-actualization, body image and anxiety. I am passionate about individual work as well as couples therapy. I provide a sex-positive environment, I am LGBTQIA+, poly, and kink affirming.
In my non-therapist time, I teach movement through the Pilates Method. I enjoy doing yoga and spending time with my family and friends.
