Identity & authenticity
Affirming care for LGBTQ+, queer, trans, and gender-expansive people exploring who they are and how they want to move through the world.
Identity-affirming therapy in Virginia
Therapy rootedin who you are.
A grounded, collaborative place to understand your experiences, reconnect with your own wisdom, and grow practical tools for the life you want to live.
In-person in Falls Church, Virginia · Online across Virginia
Pre-Licensed ProfessionalEllen Orsi
Come as you are.
Grow at your own pace.
The work we can do
Care grounded in identity,
meaning, and practice.
Therapy with Ellen is integrative and collaborative. Your voice and lived experience guide the process; thoughtful reflection is paired with tools you can carry into everyday life.
Anxiety & transitions
A steady place to work with uncertainty, self-esteem, family conflict, school concerns, chronic stress, and seasons of significant change.
Relationships & emotion
Support for emotional intensity, relationship patterns, personality-related experiences, and building skills that hold up outside the therapy room.
Meaning & belonging
Space to explore spirituality, religious trauma, racial identity, neurodivergence, grief, and the stories that shape your sense of belonging.
Narrative & existential
Make room for complexity, authorship, choice, and the meanings beneath familiar stories.
DBT-informed
Practice concrete skills for emotion regulation, distress tolerance, mindfulness, and relationships.
Intersectional & affirming
Understand distress within identity, culture, power, systems, and the realities of your lived experience.
Based in Northern VirginiaAbout Ellen
Clinician.
Scholar.
Fellow human.
I’m Ellen, a counselor and interdisciplinary scholar whose work bridges mental health, Black feminist theory, and decolonizing practice.
I believe therapy can be both intellectually honest and deeply compassionate—a place to understand how identity, relationships, history, and systems shape us, while making grounded change in the present.
My work is especially close to queer and gender-expansive people, women, neurodivergent clients, young adults, and anyone looking for care that does not ask them to leave part of themselves at the door.
Beyond the work: two black cats and an unapologetic love of Taylor Swift.
Colleague endorsements
How Ellen’s work is experienced.
Selected phrases from verified Psychology Today endorsements.
“Thoughtful, trauma-informed therapist.”
Kimberly Anderson, LPC
“Affirming and deeply empathetic.”
Grace Bomar, MEd
“Making therapy practical.”
Hana Liu
Professional résumé
A practice shaped by
many disciplines.
Counseling, feminist scholarship, group facilitation, public speaking, and a prior career in relationship-centered technology roles all inform how Ellen listens, collaborates, and communicates.
Education
2024—2026
George Mason University
M.A., Women & Gender Studies
Black feminist theory, critical race theory, and transnational gender and race · 4.0 GPA
2023—2026
William & Mary
M.Ed., Clinical Mental Health Counseling
Military & veterans counseling concentration · Chi Sigma Iota · 3.97 GPA
2014—2018
University of Virginia
B.A., English & Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Gender studies concentration · Religious studies minor
Clinical & facilitation
Dementia Caregivers Support Group
Designed and facilitated a psychoeducational group integrating relational, trauma-informed, DBT, and mindfulness practices.
Neurodivergent Family Psychoeducation
Co-facilitated weekly education and skills sessions for parents of autistic toddlers and children.
Curriculum & public scholarship
Designed an independent study on decolonizing therapy and delivered a George Mason guest talk on race, gender, and the 2024 election.
Earlier career
Salesforce
Business development, public-sector relationship building, mentoring, training, and equity-focused hiring initiatives.
Oracle
Complex stakeholder communication, needs assessment, facilitation, presentations, and LGBTQ+ workplace advocacy.
Writing & scholarship
Questions that continue
beyond the therapy room.
Ellen studies how truth, imagination, culture, and racialized power shape therapeutic encounters—and what liberatory, accountable care asks of practitioners.
Master’s thesis & book project
Dear White Women [Therapists]
A working archive toward decolonizing clinical practice, bringing Black feminist thought into conversation with therapeutic ethics.
Conference paper
Radical Honesty in the Face of the Supremacist Collective Wound
Accepted for presentation at DAKAM Humanities ’25 and developed as part of Ellen’s longer thesis research.
Cultural studies paper
Taylor Swift’s Immortal Trinity
Research on authorship, feminine resurrection, and performance, accepted for SWPACA 2026.
Article in development
Racism as a White Issue
Re-reading Ellen Pence through contemporary decolonial counseling frameworks.
Practice at a glance
Start where you are.
- Formats
- Individual, couples, and group therapy
- Location
- Falls Church, VA · Telehealth across Virginia
- Fees
- $85 individual · $185 couples · Sliding scale available
- First step
- Free 15-minute phone consultation
Get in touch
A quieter path
can start here.
If Ellen’s approach sounds like what you’re looking for, reach out for a free 15-minute consultation or an initial appointment.