Nadia kim (She/her)

I am a clinical social worker who was born in Korea, grown in California, and is now based in Chicago. 

I firmly believe that healing is political and relational. In healing, we plant seeds that foster greater transformation for our people, relationships, communities, systems, and the land. Therapy is also a creative collaborative process! I am excited to accompany and partner in people’s healing journeys. While being with our most sticky parts can feel tenuous or icky, I believe that ultimately, it is in navigating these edges together where the most growth is made possible. 

My ethos of healing inspires me to support folks in broadening their capacity to love, connect, and be themselves freely.

Questions? nadia@forrealtherapy.com

INTERVIEW BIO WITH nadia Kim

What can I expect working with you?

Therapy with me looks like a playful blend of compassionate inquiry, somatic and mindfulness practices, radical vulnerability and humor. I am pulled to modalities like ACT, internal family systems, and narrative therapy. As a fluid and adaptable person enthusiastic about feedback, I seek to work with clients who are eager to explore what best works for them. This entails learning with and from each person in their own unique process. 

I work through a somatic and relational lens–I’m curious about how we tune into and work with our bodies to locate the relationships through which healing occurs. One of my main questions is how can we connect therapeutic and ancestral forms of healing? Some ideas are tapping into powerful healing mechanisms already within us as well as less Westernized forms of therapy.

Where do you think mental health is heading? What do you envision?

Many people are waking up to the fact that the medicalized model of mental health reduces people to diagnoses and symptoms. It often causes more harm than healing. I envision a world in which mental healthcare is multidimensional and incorporates holistic and diverse practices like somatics, reiki, Chinese traditional medicine, and psychedelic medicines–practices that honor the interconnectedness of our minds, bodies, and spirits. Mental health care must be accessible and attuned to everyone who needs it, such as poor and unhoused peoples, drug users, sex workers, and BIPOC and TLGBQ+ folks.

Tell me about when was the moment you noticed and realized you wanted to be in the field of mental health? 

I firmly believe that healed people heal people. My family and I engaged in our own healing reparative process after what felt like a lifetime of silence and disconnection. I witnessed how our collective healing catalyzed transformation within our relationships as well as how we moved in our own lives. None of that would have been possible had I not been able to access a culturally resonant therapist for the first time in college. 

As confusing and chaotic as living in today's world is, I am blessed to be connected to communities who’ve shown me the importance and vastness of healing work. Healing doesn't just mean going to therapy and talking about our individual problems. This work offers opportunities to heal intergenerational and systemic traumas. My vision of care is that we are not only healing generations before us, but also healing lineages to come.

What are some examples of decolonizing approaches that we embody?

From a decolonized lens, I am interested in ancestral practices and wisdoms unique to each client and their lived experiences. Bridging therapeutic and ceremonial realms can look like integration of music and movement, aromatherapy, and other modalities. Part of my vision is to serve as a psychedelic-assisted therapist who is in right relationship with the lineages and wisdom keepers of psychedelic and sacred earth medicines.

Healing is abundant. It is not reserved solely for the therapeutic space–healing takes place and comes alive in community, nature and spirituality, through our bodies and somatic senses, when we engage in pleasure and play, creativity and curiosity. My personal hope in working with clients is to securely stretch their capacities beyond our shared space. To expand capacities to think, feel, connect, embody and be more in the world. I invite and challenge us to imagine living into new ways of embodiment and relationality that ripple out into future generations and the world around us.

Even if I am not using drugs, is there benefit talking to someone who is an advocate in psychedelic assisted therapy?

I am an advocate of drug decriminalization across the board. This orientation embodies open-mindedness since substance use is so heavily stigmatized and socializes users to internalize shame and guilt. However, it doesn't matter what I am specifically interested in, in order for it to be important in the therapy space.

To be clear, I won’t advise you to do anything. I am not saying come to session faded or blasted on drugs, but I am definitely down to talk about and through it. I want our work to honor harm reduction and bodily autonomy–we decide together what safety and wellness look and feel like for you.

Loneliness seems to be increasing within Asian identified communities - Do you have any thoughts on this?

Loneliness and emotional isolation in the Asian community is hella real–we are too often culturally ingrained not to address or identify our emotions or interpersonal issues. This was at the root of my repair work within my own family. We stumbled through bridging years of silence and suppressed feelings by learning together. And that process catalyzed our individual and collective growth and expansion.

I am excited to work with people’s edges around isolation and repression, who may be learning emotionality for the first time in their lives. For example, feelings like rage are vital to play with in the therapeutic space. Rage is inherently a righteous and protective emotion. There are valid ass reasons to be rageful or angry, especially as an oppressed person surviving in modern society. Being able to consciously tap into and have that validated can be a healing and catalyzing experience. My hope is to work with emotions like rage to explore how they can be repurposed towards something more resonant and generative for clients today.

WHAT IS YOUR UNIVERSAL PIECE OF ADVICE?

Honor your peace, practice ongoing gratitude, give yourself grace. Move your body, eat yummy desserts, and call your beloveds.