Saipriya Valoth 
EdM, MA, MHC-LP

Hi there! I'm Saipriya. I'm a South Asian, 2nd gen Indian American immigrant, therapist, and community organizer based in New York.

I deeply care about mental health, stories + storytelling, and collective liberation for all oppressed beings, and I appreciate that my work as a therapist intersects with all three of these.

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I have 3.5 years of experience supporting clients with trauma, anxiety, depression, shame and self-worth, racial, gender, and sexual identity development, grief and loss, loneliness  (and more broadly just figuring out how to cope and exist within the systems of oppression in which we live and how to use our relative amount of power and agency to collectively create a more liberated world).

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My education and post-grad training in internal family systems has certainly informed my approach to therapy, and I believe that my experience as a client of therapy has been the most helpful in shaping the therapist I am today. 

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As a neurodivergent only child and brown/South Asian kid going to predominantly-white schools, I often felt weighed down by experiences of loneliness, feeling misunderstood, and somehow being too much and not enough at the same time. I didn't know what to do with these painful feelings, so parts of me tried to help me hide the pain beneath patterns of people-pleasing, perfectionism, and workaholism, among others. 

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These coping strategies kind of worked and felt good sometimes, but they weren't foolproof. The painful feelings would resurface, and I often felt burned out, resentful, and still far away from the close relationships I so deeply craved. It wasn't until after I started my own therapy journey that I realized hiding the pain + seeking my self-worth from external things and people (even if well-intentioned) meant I was losing, abandoning, and not seeing myself. It was coming at the cost of myself and my authenticity, which I now see as priceless.

"Our authenticity is tied to our liberation." -Natalie Gutiérrez

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I'm still learning, growing, and healing, just like you. I'm not "fully healed" (I don't believe there's such a thing), but what I can tell you is that therapy has significantly changed my life for the better. It has helped me witness, feel, and unburden my pain + messaging from systems of oppression I internalized and cultivate the close, interdependent relationships with myself and others that I always wanted. 

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It hasn't always felt easy (more often messy), but it has been worth it. And it is an honor to help support and walk alongside my clients, to help hold​, witness, and transform their pain with them and create new stories and possibilities together.

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"and what is healing but changing your story and enabling it to go on?" - Vanessa Angélica Villarreal