Fermata Psychotherapy

04/10/2026

Many men don’t come to therapy saying they feel depressed. They may report irritability, disengagement, or a persistent sense of pressure and failure. They may feel like they are stuck and have lost access to something essential in their sense of self. Depression is often indicative of internal challenges and conflicts, many of which are shaped by social expectations, internalized ideas about strength, usefulness, value, and control that leave little room for uncertainty, dependency, or need. Over time, these expectations influence not only men's behaviors but the relationship they keep with themselves, including what seems acceptable to feel and what must be pushed aside. Depression, in this context, can reflect the cost of maintaining a version of masculinity that leaves too much of the self out. Read our latest article on how therapy can help!

Social expectations shape depression in men and limit their emotional life. Learn how therapy for men can help restore vitality, authenticity, and self-understanding.

04/09/2026

Whether our life looks like calm water or perpetual turbulence, what matters is always under the surface. Pain, loss, fear, and yearning are inevitable parts of our humanity that lie underneath, often outside of our awareness. It is by recognizing the depths of our inner life and our history that we can learn to navigate the undercurrent shaping who we are and who we can become.

03/30/2026

Masking anxiety often looks like competence: staying productive, agreeable, thoughtful, and in control. Beneath that surface, many people feel tense, divided, and alone. This post looks at the deeper emotional burden of hiding anxiety and how anxiety therapy can help loosen the need for relentless self-disguise.

Masking anxiety can look like competence while creating exhaustion, shame, and disconnection. Learn how anxiety therapy can help.

03/13/2026

Many people come to therapy struggling to trust themselves or others, even if they would not describe “trust” as the problem at first. Childhood trauma can shape how we anticipate others will respond to us, whether we believe we matter, and whether we feel safe relying on our own thoughts, feelings, and instincts. Over time, mistrust can become a way of organizing life: through hypervigilance, withdrawal, self-doubt, or difficulty tolerating intimacy. Trauma therapy can help make sense of these patterns with compassion, opening space for trust to slowly emerge through understanding, safety, and repair.

Explore how childhood trauma shapes trust in yourself and others, and how trauma therapy can help rebuild safety, connection, and self-trust.

02/23/2026

It’s easy for relationships to become organized around blame. We begin to tell ourselves a story: They are the problem. They are too distant. Too selfish. Too reactive. Too demanding. In moments of hurt, that narrative can feel stabilizing and help us avoid more vulnerable feelings.
But blame rarely captures the full emotional reality of what is happening. Beneath accusation there is often something deeper: disappointment, shame, longing, fear of rejection, fear of losing connection. When these deeper feelings go unspoken, conflict repeats itself in slightly different forms.
Therapy for relationship issues can help shift that dynamic. Genuine curiosity can be the bridge between blame and understanding, supporting our capacity to tolerate ambiguity, consider different possibilities, and recognize the complexity of our shared humanity.

Blame can erode connection. Learn how therapy for relationship issues helps shift from accusation to deeper understanding and emotional repair.

02/07/2026

We are excited to welcome Sam Abboud, LPC, to Fermata Psychotherapy!
Sam works with adults experiencing anxiety, depression, shame, anger, and challenges with self-esteem, relationships, family of origin dynamics, and identity issues. He helps people grappling with complex trauma and is passionate about men’s mental health.
👉 In-network with Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO plans
👉 Immediate daytime and evening availability
👉 Appointments in person in Downtown Chicago and virtually throughout Illinois.
Sam earned a Masters in Counseling from Northwestern University, after a few years working in HR and as a musician. He brings over 2 years of clinical experience and works from a psychodynamic and relational perspective.
In his own words:
"Asking for help, letting someone into our thoughts and feelings, takes a tremendous amount of courage. Such an act is an expression of our humanness and our imperfection. It is the manifestation of our hopes and wishes for something different than what is, and I’m honored to be trusted with something so personal and precious.”
You can read more about Sam here:
https://www.fermatapsychotherapy.com/sam-abboud
Welcome, Sam!

02/05/2026

Depression can alter how time is experienced. Days may feel frozen, the past relentlessly present, and the future strangely inaccessible. This distortion of time is not a flaw in character or motivation, but a core feature of depressive experience. In depression therapy, these changes in how time is lived often reveal unspoken losses, unresolved conflicts, and a collapse of inner movement and imagination. As therapy helps restore emotional rhythm and psychic motion, time itself begins to flow again, opening space for new possibilities.

Depression therapy helps make sense of how depression distorts time, leaving people feeling stuck in the present and cut off from the future.

12/12/2025

Addiction is often a response to early relational trauma, unmet needs, and emotional experiences that were too overwhelming to face alone. Our latest post explores how unresolved attachment wounds shape the inner landscape that makes substances feel comforting, necessary, or even stabilizing. We can understand addiction as an attempt to regulate emotions that were never safely held in childhood. Trauma therapy offers a pathway that can deepen recovery by rebuilding a sense of connection, emotional safety, and internal steadiness.

Trauma Therapy reveals how early relational wounds shape addiction, offering a path toward deeper recovery, emotional safety, and lasting change.

11/21/2025

Sometimes healing begins with grief. Not only for the losses we remember, but for the versions of ourselves we had to become in order to survive. Many of us carry invisible ropes from childhood: the belief that we must stay small, stay quiet, stay perfect, or stay needed to be loved. Even when those patterns no longer fit our adult lives, they can feel impossible to set down. Letting them go can feel like losing a familiar identity or a part of ourselves. Therapy creates space to mourn the losses we need to endure in order to health, change, and grow. Read our latest article, by Fermata therapist Patricia Nolan!

Grief counseling supports the deep mourning that true healing requires, helping you let go of limiting patterns and reconnect with who you are deep inside.

11/12/2025

When one partner longs for closeness and the other withdraws, the pattern often reflects more than incompatibility: it reveals two internal worlds negotiating safety, love, and autonomy. Relationship therapy helps couples uncover the unconscious choreography beneath the pursuer–distancer dynamic, creating space for a more stable and intimate connection. Read our latest article!

Relationship therapy helps couples understand the unconscious pursuer–distancer dynamic and transform cycles of pursuit and withdrawal into connection.

10/31/2025

Shame is not just an emotion, but a way of organizing our inner world, shaping how we see ourselves and relate to others. It can silence our voice, diminish our experience, and make closeness feel unsafe. Over time, shame can become woven into our personality, making visibility feel dangerous and belonging uncertain. We may learn to hide our longings, minimize our needs, or internalize a sense of unworthiness that quietly structures our relationships. If shame is such a complex process, its "opposite" cannot be reduced to a single experience. In this article, we consider the role of healthy narcissism, mutual recognition, integration, desire, and dignity. These are not independent layers, but interconnected dimensions that help create the possibility of a life with a greater sense of agency, authenticity, aliveness, and belonging.

Therapy for shame helps restore dignity, desire, and connection by addressing the unconscious patterns that erode self-worth and disrupt our capacity for authentic relationships.

10/27/2025

Not all depressions are alike. Each reflects the structure of our inner world: how we love, how we cope, how we protect ourselves. Depression is a signal, much like a fever, pointing to deeper psychological conflicts and needs. Psychodynamic therapy for depression goes beyond symptom relief and invites us to listen to that signal in the context of who we are. When we understand the meaning of our depression against the backdrop of our personality, it becomes a doorway to self-understanding and change.

Depression therapy helps uncover how depression reflects our unique personality structure, revealing it as a signal, not just a symptom.