Joy Ruben Welts, PhD
I have always been fascinated by the complexity of human beings: how we survive, adapt, contradict ourselves, protect what is vulnerable, and continue reaching toward growth. Long before I became a therapist, I understood that emotional experience lives in more than words. I grew up as a dancer and used art instinctively to understand and express what I was feeling. Later, teaching yoga deepened my awareness of how the body holds experience and how movement, attention, and imagination can create possibilities that conversation alone may not reach. That curiosity eventually brought me to psychotherapy and human-development research. I hold a PhD in Human Development with a specialization in adult attachment. I’m licensed as a mental health counselor, creative arts therapist, and alcohol and drug counselor, and I’m a board-certified dance/movement therapist.
First session
Our first session begins with what is bringing you to therapy and how it is affecting your life now. I’ll listen not only to the events of your story, but also to the emotional, bodily, relational, and creative ways your experience is showing up. We’ll clarify your current symptoms, concerns related to safety or stability, relevant history, strengths, supports, and hopes for therapy. I’ll also introduce you to how expressive arts and somatic psychotherapy work. There is no expectation that you perform, make art, move in a particular way, or disclose everything immediately. By the end of the session, we will have begun developing a shared understanding of what you are experiencing and an initial direction for our work.
Strengths
I bring warmth, depth, directness, and genuine respect for the intelligence within each person’s adaptations. I do not reduce people to diagnoses or assume that outward success means someone is not suffering. I can remain present with emotional intensity, contradiction, humor, anger, spirituality, and the parts of a person that may not feel polished or socially acceptable. My clinical background allows me to take suffering seriously without treating people as fragile. Over more than a decade, I have worked in inpatient psychiatric and eating-disorder treatment, addiction treatment, residential trauma care, crisis triage, drug court, community mental health, school-based counseling, and wellness settings including Canyon Ranch. I am comfortable working with complexity and with people whose competence has sometimes made their pain easier for others to overlook. My breadth of training gives us many possible pathways into the work. In addition to my doctoral and clinical training, I’m an experienced registered yoga teacher and ordained interfaith minister, with additional training in somatic therapy, Reiki, Yoga Nidra, hypnosis, Brainspotting, HeartMath, Authentic Movement, and several movement-based practices. This does not mean using every modality with every person. It means I can listen for what might help you: words or silence, structure or imagination, thoughtful analysis or attention to what your body already knows. My work is serious without being sterile, and gentle without remaining on the surface.
Ideal clients
My ideal clients are thoughtful, capable adults who have often learned to function—and sometimes excel—while carrying trauma, serious mood symptoms, self-criticism, relationship pain, or disconnection from their bodies. Some live with depression, bipolar disorder, recurring suicidal ideation, anxiety, chronic illness, or the effects of abuse and neglect. They want relief from symptoms and greater protection from major episodes of imbalance. They also want to understand and transform what they have been carrying, trust themselves, feel more at home in their bodies, and build relationships and lives that feel genuinely their own. They are looking for therapy that engages the whole person—body, emotions, imagination, creativity, relationships, and thought. No experience or skill with art or movement is required.
Treatment methods
Somatic
I use somatic and expressive arts therapies to help clients work with experience as it lives in the body, not only through talking or conscious memory. Depending on the person, sessions may include attention to sensation, movement, imagery, art, mindfulness, or conversation. This work can support trauma processing, emotional regulation, self-understanding, and greater trust in the body. My approach is grounded in extensive training, including board-certified dance/movement therapy, SomaSoul Somatic Therapy, yoga, Authentic Movement, Yoga Nidra, hypnosis, and expressive movement practices. No experience with art or movement is needed.
Polyvagal Therapy
My doctoral research in Human Development included a focus on adult attachment and polyvagal theory. This informs how I understand patterns of connection, activation, protection, and shutdown. I help clients recognize their nervous-system responses and develop relational and body-based practices that support regulation, choice, and connection.
Gender-affirming therapy
I provide gender-affirming therapy to transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive clients. I support clients in exploring identity, relationships, embodiment, family and social experiences, trauma, and social or medical transitions when relevant.
Psychodynamic
I help clients understand how earlier relationships and experiences continue to shape present-day emotions, beliefs, protective strategies, and relationship patterns. We approach these patterns with curiosity and compassion, recognizing how they developed while creating greater freedom and choice in the present.
Location
Virtual sessions
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Licensed in
- MassachusettsLicense LMHC10300