Fermata Psychotherapy

Fermata Psychotherapy Therapy to get unstuck, improve your relationships, find new meaning, and reconnect with yourself.

When the world is unstable and unpredictable, our anxiety often reflects more than personal stress, revealing the deep c...
10/15/2025

When the world is unstable and unpredictable, our anxiety often reflects more than personal stress, revealing the deep connection between our inner life and the social realities around us. The psychological and the social are intertwined: the conditions we live in shape our sense of safety, belonging, and possibility. Anxiety therapy offers a space to explore how political and collective tensions interact with our own emotional histories. By understanding these intersections, therapy can help us recognize that the unease we feel in turbulent times is not only a symptom of distress but also an expression of our individual and shared humanity.

Anxiety therapy helps us understand how political and social unrest affect our inner world, offering steadiness and reflection amid uncertainty.

Personal growth begins when we stop needing all the answers. The need to be sure about who we are may feel familiar and ...
10/12/2025

Personal growth begins when we stop needing all the answers. The need to be sure about who we are may feel familiar and protect us from discomfort, but also from transformation. When we can tolerate not knowing, new possibilities emerge. Space opens for reflection, flexibility, and authentic change.

We can understand abandonment not only as the experience of being left, but as feeling unseen or emotionally alone, even...
10/07/2025

We can understand abandonment not only as the experience of being left, but as feeling unseen or emotionally alone, even when others are present. Sometimes, when those experiences are overwhelming and we don't have anyone to help us find our way through them, they can be traumatic. Trauma therapy for abandonment issues helps us explore how these early experiences shape our capacity for closeness and trust, offering a space to rebuild a sense of emotional safety and connection with ourselves and others.

Trauma therapy for abandonment issues helps people understand emotional absence, rebuild trust, and form deeper, more secure relationships.

There are unseen parts of ourselves that shape our lives quietly, surfacing in dreams, sudden emotions, or in the reflec...
10/02/2025

There are unseen parts of ourselves that shape our lives quietly, surfacing in dreams, sudden emotions, or in the reflections others offer us. Meeting these hidden dimensions with curiosity rather than fear invites growth, reminding us that self-knowledge is less about certainty than about openness to discovery.

We are drawn to love triangles not just for the drama, but because they echo our earliest lessons about love and belongi...
09/29/2025

We are drawn to love triangles not just for the drama, but because they echo our earliest lessons about love and belonging. Since childhood, we navigated complex feelings of desire, rivalry, and exclusion within the relationships that shaped us. These early triangular experiences played a central role in our emotional and psychological development, and their effects often live on in adulthood. Love triangles in the media stir something familiar inside us, allowing us to safely revisit intense feelings that shaped our sense of self. This article explores why they resonate so deeply with us and how therapy for relationship issues can help uncover the hidden impact of these early dynamics on the way we relate today.

Discover why love triangles captivate us and how therapy for relationship issues helps untangle deep unconscious conflicts and patterns.

Growing up with a depressed parent leaves a mark that is often quiet but enduring. As children, we adapt, becoming caret...
09/23/2025

Growing up with a depressed parent leaves a mark that is often quiet but enduring. As children, we adapt, becoming caretakers, perfectionists, retreating inward, or dismissing relationships in order to survive an atmosphere heavy with sadness and grief. These adaptations follow us into adulthood, shaping our personality, our relationships, and the way we feel about ourselves. Depression therapy should offer more than symptom relief. It can help us uncover how early experiences continue to live within us, mourn what was absent, and open new possibilities for connection, agency, authenticity, and aliveness.

Explore how parental depression shapes personality, mood, and relationships, and how depression therapy helps reclaim agency and a stronger sense of self.

Grief doesn’t move in a straight line. It ebbs and flows, sometimes quietly, sometimes with overwhelming force. In grief...
09/15/2025

Grief doesn’t move in a straight line. It ebbs and flows, sometimes quietly, sometimes with overwhelming force. In grief counseling, we learn to trust these tides, exploring the unconscious work of mourning that helps us live with loss while keeping love alive. Read our latest article!

Grief counseling helps us navigate the ebb and flow of mourning, honoring the unconscious work of grief as it comes and goes in waves.

Trauma isn’t just about memories of the past, but it quietly shapes how we make choices today. For some, it shows up as ...
09/08/2025

Trauma isn’t just about memories of the past, but it quietly shapes how we make choices today. For some, it shows up as paralyzing caution; for others, as impulsive leaps into risk. Trauma therapy helps reveal the unconscious dynamics at play, opening space for decisions that reflect who you are now, not just what you survived.

Read our latest post about how trauma affects decision-making and risk-taking.

Trauma therapy helps uncover how trauma shapes decision-making and risk-taking, fostering choice, trust, and freedom.

Our psychological, emotional, relational, and social life cannot be reduced to simple explanations or "truths."  As unco...
08/13/2025

Our psychological, emotional, relational, and social life cannot be reduced to simple explanations or "truths." As uncomfortable as not knowing can be, believing that we "know" the truth about ourselves or others can shut down curiosity, exploration, and surprise, undermining our potential for growth, change, creativity, and transformation.

Social media has the power to stir deep emotional responses, often tied to unresolved trauma. Posts, images, or news sto...
08/11/2025

Social media has the power to stir deep emotional responses, often tied to unresolved trauma. Posts, images, or news stories can unconsciously reactivate past wounds, causing overwhelming feelings that feel both intimate and disorienting. For individuals with a history of complex trauma, the constant influx of emotionally charged content can evoke intense emotional dysregulation. Trauma therapy offers a path to understanding and processing these reactions, helping individuals regain emotional balance and respond with greater awareness.

Social media evokes emotional responses tied to unresolved trauma. Learn how trauma therapy helps individuals process these feelings and regain control over their reactions.

Avoidance feels protective but, over time, it keeps anxiety alive. When we steer clear of what we fear, we never discove...
08/07/2025

Avoidance feels protective but, over time, it keeps anxiety alive. When we steer clear of what we fear, we never discover what we can tolerate. Anxiety therapy helps uncover the unconscious patterns behind avoidance and build the inner capacity to stay present, even when emotions feel overwhelming. It’s not about pushing through, but about understanding why the fear exists in the first place and finding a different way forward.

Avoidance offers quick relief from anxiety, but keeps fear alive. Learn how anxiety therapy helps break this cycle and build lasting emotional resilience.

Shame doesn’t always begin with something we did — it often begins with how we were seen, treated, or misunderstood by o...
07/10/2025

Shame doesn’t always begin with something we did — it often begins with how we were seen, treated, or misunderstood by others. Many people carry shame not as a reaction to a specific event, but as something inherited from early relationships: experiences of being dismissed, humiliated, or made to feel invisible. Sometimes we internalize a caregiver’s own unresolved shame, absorbing it as part of our identity before we have the words to understand it. This kind of shame shapes how we see ourselves, how we expect to be treated, and what we believe we deserve. It can feel like a quiet certainty that we are not enough, not good, not worthy. Over time, it may show up in perfectionism, self-doubt, or fear of being known. Therapy for shame invites us to trace these beliefs back to their origins, not to place blame, but to better understand how they formed and how they continue to shape our emotional lives.

Therapy for shame helps uncover how trauma and early relationships shape guilt, shame, and a sense of unworthiness.

Address

53 W Jackson Boulevard, Suite 1450
Chicago, IL
60604

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 7pm
Wednesday 8am - 7pm
Thursday 8am - 7pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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What is a Fermata?

"Fermata" is the name of a musical symbol. When placed above a sound or a moment of silence, it extends their duration based on the performer's wishes, preferences, and needs.

A Fermata is an invitation to slow down, to pause, to hold, to take a moment to breathe. It offers you the choice to become the composer and the performer of the life you want to live.

The name combines our appreciation for music, the arts, and creativity, with our understanding of what therapy is about: a journey to self-awareness, compassion, authenticity, love, and freedom. A journey you don’t need to take alone.