With a particular focus on women and nonbinary folks in the industry.
Tech jobs come with a specific cocktail of stressors that people outside the industry don’t always get: the always-on culture dressed up as “flexibility.” The performance review cycle that turns your worth into a rating. The layoff waves that hit whether or not you did everything right. The whiplash of being told you’re essential and disposable in the same quarter.
And if you’re a woman or nonbinary person in tech, there’s often another layer running underneath all of it.
The “only one in the room” tax
Maybe you’ve gotten very good at calibrating — how assertive is too assertive, whether to correct the person who talked over you, whether flagging the bias is worth becoming “the one who complains.”
That constant calibration is work. Unpaid, invisible, exhausting work. Over time it feeds:
- Imposter feelings that persist no matter how much evidence you stack against them
- Hypervigilance in meetings, Slack, code reviews — anywhere you’re being evaluated
- Difficulty telling the difference between “I’m underperforming” and “I’m under-supported”
- Resentment you feel guilty about, because on paper this is a good job
- A quiet erosion of the confidence you walked in with
None of this means you’re too sensitive. It means you’ve been doing two jobs, and only one of them is in your job description.
What we can work on
Burnout and chronic overwhelm. Tech’s pace plus the extra layer above is a reliable recipe for it. (More on how I approach burnout here.)
Anxiety that follows you home. Rumination after meetings, dread before standups, rehearsing conversations at 2am. If social evaluation is a big piece of it, my work with social anxiety applies directly.
Identity, gender, and work. For nonbinary and trans clients: navigating pronouns and presentation at work, deciding what to disclose and to whom, transitioning while employed. This is core territory for me — I’ve spent years providing gender-affirming therapy and training other clinicians in it.
Layoffs and what comes after. Whether you’re bracing for one, recovering from one, or realizing you don’t want to go back to the same thing.
Figuring out what you actually want. Sometimes the answer is better boundaries in the job you have. Sometimes it’s a different team, a different company, or a different life. Therapy is a place to figure that out on purpose instead of by attrition.
Why me
I’m not going to pretend I’ve written production code. What I bring is a long history of working with people navigating high-pressure environments while also navigating gender and identity — and a practice built around the belief that your struggle usually says more about your context than your character.
I see clients in Portland and via telehealth anywhere in Oregon, which means you can do sessions from the same desk you work at, though I’d gently suggest at least closing Slack.
Reach out today — or read the fees & FAQ first if you’re a researcher by nature. Most of my clients are.
