Alex Altman Therapy LLC

Alex Altman Therapy LLC I embrace the Health at Every Size approach and offer telehealth services. Welcome! I’m so glad you are here. Please reach out if you could use some support!

Individual therapist in the DMV area, focused on healing anxiety, perfectionism, depression, disordered eating, negative body image, and adoption and identity-related concerns. If you’re looking for more information about the services I offer, please visit my website, www.alexaltmantherapy.com, or check out my Instagram page, , to learn more about how I practice and what it’s like to work with me (I also blog on my webpage, too!). I know looking for a therapist, and admitting you need support, isn’t often easy. It’s also a very brave step to take, and one that can be truly life-changing if you let it. People seek therapy for all kinds of different reasons, including but not limited to issues with anxiety, perfectionism, low self-esteem and low self-worth, negative body image, disordered eating and binge eating, trauma and post-traumatic stress, relationship issues and life transitions. I believe we reach out for help when our distress is overwhelming our ability to cope with that distress, and we are looking for relief and support. Therapy can be many things—it can be a way to teach valuable coping and self-care skills; a medium through which to process difficult emotions and learn more about ourselves and others; a means by which we can take away some of the power negative thought and behavior patterns can hold over us. At its core, therapy involves a unique type of relationship between therapist and client—one that is supportive, collaborative, affirming and healing. Many folx don’t have a relationship like this one anywhere else in their lives, which is part of why the corrective emotional experience therapy can offer can be such a powerful one. Finding the right fit and connection with a therapist is critical, of course. This is why I recommend doing some research ahead of time, and also why I offer free, 20-minute phone consultations with potential clients, so we can both know if it feels like the right fit before moving forward. I look forward to connecting with you soon. Warmly,
Alex Altman, LICSW, LCSW-C
Psychotherapist and owner, Alex Altman Therapy LLC

Hi, I haven’t been on here in forever! The thing is, I’m not sure I belong on Instagram these days. I don’t need it to g...
06/15/2021

Hi, I haven’t been on here in forever! The thing is, I’m not sure I belong on Instagram these days. I don’t need it to get wonderful clients—something for which I’m thankful—and I feel like so many voices need and deserve to be amplified more than mine. I think it’s important to share those voices and resources more than my own thoughts for the most part, but this concept has been coming up repeatedly in my work lately so it seemed worth mentioning. It’s the idea of a self-care reset.

I find that folx can hold so much shame around self-care ‘slippage’, whether it’s due to an increase in symptoms of depression, or anxiety, an increase in stress or an eating disorder relapse. There’s this tendency to self-criticize, to fall right into the blame and shame game: ‘What’s wrong with me? I can’t even handle a simple meditation practice? I can’t journal or take my vitamins or remember to stretch regularly? I missed another therapy appointment? How dumb can I be?! I’ll never get this right-what’s the point?’.

SO much perfectionism poured in there, right?! As if we are beings that can set a habit and never have to attend to it again. Yeah, that would be nice; it isn’t realistic for 99.9% of us, though.

The thing is, ALL of us need to bring extra intentionality to our self-care practice now and then. All of us need to breathe, and reboot, and reset. Our world—our White supremacy, diet culture-y, Capitalist world—often doesn’t encourage us to self-care, to rest and restore. It doesn’t see that as ‘productive’ or worthy (which is hugely problematic). So it makes a ton of sense, especially if you’re anxious, perfectionistic and people-pleasing, that prioritizing and remembering self-care can be tough if no one else is encouraging you to do it.

Return to it, though. It’s critical. It’s life-changing. Life-saving. Accept that you need to reset, and come back to your practice. It won’t be perfect, because it never is, and that’s okay. Practice gentleness and self-compassion as antidotes to that shame and self-criticism. Because self-care isn’t indulgent, lazy, or a luxury—it’s survival. And you desperately need it, because we all do.

Capitalist, White supremacist American culture doesn’t make it easy to step back from perfectionism, either. But if ther...
04/09/2021

Capitalist, White supremacist American culture doesn’t make it easy to step back from perfectionism, either. But if there is this connection between perfectionism and real trauma—whatever that has looked like for you—it’s so important to be aware of this. This knowledge helps us unpack where these beliefs came from, how they were created, or inherited from earlier generations. We need this awareness of their roots first, before we can begin to shift and let go of perfectionism, which, like eating disorders, promises safety yet leads to disconnection, disembodiment, shame and suffering. We also need to be exploring our felt sense of safety, and what helps us feel soothed and comforted, so we can put those things in place, too.

If perfectionism is feeling near-impossible to shift away from, you may want to explore where your beliefs about perfection come from, why it feels so critical and appealing to embody. And be gentle with yourself! Self-compassion and validation are antidotes to perfectionism, and a critical part of practicing letting go.

TW: the ‘o’ word. Today is World Ob*sity Day and I wanted to participate in the World Ob*sity Day hack by offering some ...
03/04/2021

TW: the ‘o’ word.

Today is World Ob*sity Day and I wanted to participate in the World Ob*sity Day hack by offering some important anti-diet reminders (that are applicable today and every day). If you’re wondering about the asterisk in there, I use it because that o word is dehumanizing and offensive to many people, myself included.

To focus on ob*sity, which is measured by BMI—an incredibly problematic, racist, classist ratio that was a) never intended to be used for anything health-related, b) comes from a time period in which co***ne use was sometimes recommended by doctors (!), and c) is frankly lazy medicine—is to ignore social determinants of health which make up a ton of our overall well-being.

It offers a fast and easy way to say ‘eat less and exercise more’ and move on to the next patient, which is great for Capitalism and totally sh*tty and negligent for the human sitting in that doctor’s office. It allows medical professionals (and others) to avoid tougher, more nuanced conversations about access to healthcare, access to nutritious food and clean water, safe housing, adequate and affordable childcare, socioeconomic status, discrimination, oppression, mental health issues and a whole host of others. It turns health into an individual issue rather than a societal one. This is deeply, deeply wrong and we deserve better.

So when you feel frustrated with your body, remember where that frustration truly belongs! Externalize it. Get mad at diet culture, White supremacy, the patriarchy, sexism, ableism, ageism, all of these—these are the REAL problems. And they want you focused on your body so you’re distracted, so you’re fighting like hell to change your body instead of working towards acceptance and self-love and fighting to change these toxic, dangerous systems instead.

Let’s resist together. Today and every day. 💙

Confusing, I know! Sometimes action needs to come *before* the feeling state. This is often the opposite of what we are ...
02/24/2021

Confusing, I know! Sometimes action needs to come *before* the feeling state. This is often the opposite of what we are taught.

If you’re waiting until you like or accept your body to change how you treat it—guess what, you could be waiting a really long time. That elusive feeling doesn’t just magically come along on its own. Body acceptance and body respect (which are more realistic than body positivity, in my book) don’t just happen without any effort on our part. (I know, I wish they did, too!)

It’s the actions we take for our bodies BEFORE we feel a certain way about them, that can ultimately bring us more body acceptance, respect and appreciation (not to mention flexibility and self-compassion).
And while you can’t always control your feelings, you can begin changing how you treat your body immediately—change how you think about it, talk about it, change the kind of care you give it.

Start with noticing how you talk about and to your body throughout the day. Notice if there’s judgment, comparison, self-criticism (there probably is). Practice infusing some self-compassion in there, a gentle reframe, a shift towards neutrality. Practice noticing and meeting your body’s needs. And notice how you feel when you do all of this. Is it uncomfortable? (It’s new, so probably yes.) Is there relief in there, too? Sadness? Whatever comes up is okay.

These can feel like very small changes to make, at first. This is where we start, though. In trying to make some peace, in trying to call a truce with your body, even if you don’t like it, even if you hate it right now. This is our locus of control. And it really can make a difference over time.

Whether you’ve realized you’re eligible to get the vaccine earlier than you thought, just because you’re in a bigger bod...
02/22/2021

Whether you’ve realized you’re eligible to get the vaccine earlier than you thought, just because you’re in a bigger body.

Whether you’re wrestling with your decision to get it, when you know the ‘science’ linking higher COVID risk to higher BMI is flawed, that it’s correlational and not causal, and that the BMI is a highly problematic, racist, classist, ableist ratio that was never supposed to be used to measure health, anyway.

It’s a hugely complicated subject, body politics and the COVID vaccine, and it makes sense if you feel an array of conflicting emotions around it. In addition to shame, you might feel other hard feelings, too—anger, rage, frustration, anxiety, fear, self-consciousness, sadness, grief—and these are valid as well. (And things could feel even more confusing if there’s a good deal of relief in there, too—which also makes so much sense!)

Your decision is yours. My own feeling is that we should all get the vaccine when invited to, because the more vaccinated people, the better. The system might be broken, in terms of the fact that it continues to spread misinformation and faulty conclusions about weight, health and COVID risk—and also, that doesn’t mean you have to step out of it and refrain from doing something that could save your life and others’ lives, just to make a political statement, just to avoid the discomfort of putting yourself first. (Particularly if you hold other marginalized identities, if you belong to other groups which have been strongly affected by COVID). Maybe this is one way in which that system finally favors you in its brokenness. There will be more opportunities to make political statements, after all, diet culture and fatphobia being what they are in today’s world. You deserve protection when it’s offered to you. In any body you’re in, regardless of what others might say or believe about it.

You might feel differently than I do, and that’s fine. Just here to hold some space and compassion for your complicated experiences and feelings here, and to encourage you to do the same for yourself. 💙

(Please be respectful if you choose to comment—I have no problem turning comments off to protect fat folx, FYI.)

Address

Rockville, MD
20847-53 & 20857

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 5pm
Tuesday 10am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm

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