Alicia Cohen
(she/her)
New to Grow
I am social worker who practices telehealth psychotherapy. My specialty is with neurodivergent individuals, people in ethical non-monogamous relationships, the kink/BDSM community, and LGBTQ+ individuals. I also specialize in working with adults who have been marginalized by their body, gender, and sexuality. My therapeutic style is process based, collaborative and challenging without judgment. I view psychotherapy through a sex positive, body positive, Health At Every Size®, feminist, and culturally humble lens. My focus is not on pathologizing but of discovering and embracing aspects of yourself and the way you live your life. Psychotherapy is not only for people struggling with transitions or mental illness. It is for all people, at any time of their life, who want to gain insight, discover joy, pleasure, and engage in self care.
Get to know me
In our first session together, here's what you can expect
The first session is a conversation, not an intake form. I'll ask about you, your history, your world, and what brought you here, and I genuinely want you to ask questions too. You'll get a sense of how I work; I'll get a sense of who you are and what matters to you. You don't need to arrive with a clearly defined problem. Knowing something isn't working is enough to start. By the end we'll have a shared sense of direction, even if it's still taking shape. Most people leave with some uncertainty and that's normal. What I'd hope you walk away with is a felt sense of whether this could be a safe place, and enough clarity to decide if you want to find out.
The biggest strengths that I bring into our sessions
I bring clinical fluency across neurodivergence, LGBTQ+ experience, ethical non-monogamy, kink, body image, and sexuality. Not as separate specialties, but as one integrated, non-pathologizing approach in a small, intentional practice where you don't have to explain your world before the real work can begin.
The clients I'm best positioned to serve
Clients who are curious about themselves and willing to sit with complexity. They want a collaborative relationship with their therapist, not a hierarchical one where the expert tells them what they are and what to do about it. They can tolerate some challenge; they don't just want validation, they want to actually change something. They've often had at least one bad therapy experience; a therapist who was well-meaning but ultimately worked from a normative framework that didn't fit, or who got stuck on the lifestyle element rather than the actual clinical work. They arrive with some skepticism and appreciate a therapist who takes that seriously rather than brushing it off.
Specialties
Top specialtiesADHD
Autism
LGBTQ
Men's Issues
Sex Therapy
Women's Issues
I identify as
Jewish
LGBTQ
Woman
Serves ages
Adults (18 to 64)
Elders (65 and above)
Licensed in
District of Columbia
Accepts
Cash - $150 per session
Location
Virtual
My treatment methods
Relational
Therapy is a place where you can finally be met as you are. For neurodivergent clients who have spent a lifetime feeling misunderstood, and for those in ENM and kink communities carrying shame from family or mainstream culture, a genuinely non-judgmental space directly challenges the internalized messages that have shaped how you see yourself.
Attachment-based
Understanding your attachment patterns makes your relational life more workable. For neurodivergent clients, early disruptions often came from mismatch rather than neglect, and that history is something therapy can help repair. For people in ENM or non-traditional relationships, knowing whether you lean anxious or avoidant is immediately practical. For LGBTQ+ clients who learned early that vulnerability wasn't safe or that love came with conditions, attachment work can be a direct path toward healing.
Compassion Focused
Many clients arrive carrying shame that logic alone hasn't been able to touch. For neurodivergent clients told they were lazy or broken, for LGBTQ+ clients who internalized the message that something is fundamentally wrong with who they are, and for those in kink or ENM communities who absorbed stigma from the outside world, CFT works at the emotional root of shame rather than around it. The goal is to build a genuine internal ally where self-criticism has long lived.
Feminist
Feminist therapy runs through all of my work as a lens rather than a technique. It names systemic failures for what they are, including the decades of underdiagnosis of ADHD and autism in women and nonbinary people, the social origins of internalized homophobia and transphobia, and the cultural assumptions embedded in mainstream ideas about healthy relationships and bodies. It refuses to treat non-normative lives as problems requiring justification.
Sex Therapy
Sex therapy is talk therapy that addresses the psychological and relational dimensions of sexual concerns. For neurodivergent clients, this often means tailoring the work to sensory sensitivities and communication differences, and helping detach an atypical sexual profile from shame. For LGBTQ+ clients, it means addressing concerns that mainstream sexual medicine has historically ignored. For kink and BDSM clients, the starting point is that consensual practice is a legitimate sexuality, not a pathology. For ENM clients, the focus is on the dynamics that arise across multiple partnerships, without ever treating non-monogamy as the problem.