Tending Paths - Katy Higgins Lee, MFT

03/09/2026

For anyone in Sonoma County or the rest of the SF Bay Area, Lindsey Wert, LMFT, Ceip-MH has some wonderful upcoming equine-assisted offerings. See her page for the other upcoming options.

We are excited to announce this integrative two-day program weaving partnership with horses and rites of passage. This gathering invites you to claim your inner fire—individually and collectively—as we step fully into spring and meet the world as it is. We are living in a time shaped by ecological crisis, war, devastation, illness, and deepening separateness. In response, we are called to gather—to draw upon our gifts, strengths, and shared wisdom—and to ground ourselves in what is truly needed now.

This retreat is held in alignment with the Year of the Fire Horse, an energetic cycle that arrives once every 60 years and carries the medicine of transformation and truth. It marks a time of courage and forward movement—an invitation to choose purpose over permission and freedom over fear. The Fire Horse reminds us that there are seasons when waiting no longer serves us, when shrinking, over-explaining, or carrying what was never ours must be released. The Fire Horse does not wait to be chosen. She chooses herself.

This is not change for the sake of chaos, but necessary change—a burning away of what no longer fits so something truer can take root. A remembering that you were never meant to live small.This retreat is open to individuals seeking meaningful connection with themselves, the horses, the land, and community, and is especially well-suited for therapists, healers, and helping professionals longing to reconnect beyond the role of holding others.

This transformative experience includes a one-day workshop integrating partnership with horses in Petaluma, CA, followed by an overnight stay at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in Kenwood, CA, on the ancestral lands of the Pomo people (Kashia Band). Participants will be given time on the land to work with a personal intention and be witnessed by community and guides. Please read below for more information.

Our Partners
The partners for the first day will be Peach, Buttercup and Sha'bi. They will help us step into the Year of the Fire Horse through mirroring, symbolism and giving direct feedback.

Meet our Guides
Lindsey Wert, LMFT, CEIP-MH, is a wilderness guide, certified wilderness first responder, equine-facilitated psychotherapist, and integrative psychotherapist with over 15 years of experience. She is a lover of all things wild and deeply committed to exploring the natural landscapes of the heart, mind, body, and spirit.

In her working life, Lindsey has specialized in trauma, eating disorders, leadership development, and supporting others in finding healing on their journey toward health and wholeness. She bows deeply to Mother Earth, who guides us toward healing and health if we listen closely. She enjoys bringing community together in service of the greater good of humanity.

Devon Shane Baker, AMFT, is a guide who weaves embodied, relational, and earth-based wisdom into her approach to reflection, connection, and renewal. Her work is grounded in trauma-informed therapeutic care and shaped by years of community-based leadership, creative practices, and deep relationship with the natural world. She supports individuals, adolescents, couples, groups, and families through seasons of transition, healing, and transformation.
Shaped by mindfulness, somatic, systemic, and relational traditions—and a reverence for nature and community as teachers—Devon’s guiding presence invites people to slow down and attune to what is alive within, between, and around them. Her work centers joy and self-compassion, inner authority, and connection, offering a steady, nurturing space for growth and healing.

Retreat Logistics
Date: May 2nd and 3rd, 2026
Start time: 9:30AM May 2, 2026 in Petaluma, CA
End time: 5:00PM May 3, 2026 in Kenwood, CA
Supplies: A tent for sleeping and basic camping supplies
Investment including meals and camping fees: $825.00
Payment plans available
Open to individuals who identify as women
Space is limited to 8 participants

03/07/2026

You might be feeling like the world is falling apart.

But...war, sexual assault, genocide, and abuse have been occurring for many generations.

They just might not have been as visible to you until recently.

These atrocities are just becoming more visible to more people. What if that is what we need?

What if we need more of us to witness as these events occur, so that we can fall apart?

What if we need to collectively fall apart—or disintegrate—in the hopes of re-integrating in a different form?

Kazimierz Dabrowski proposed that individuals sometime go through a process of positive disintegration, but societies can go through this too.

According to Dabrowski, disintegration can be facilitated by the experience of becoming increasingly aware of the tension between what is and what ought to be.

To do this, we must first clearly see what is, in all its ugliness and dysfunction.

We need to have the capacity to witness what is happening and to acknowledge how it does not align with our values.

I invite you to witness and truly see the horrors of our world, and acknowledge the tension between what is and what ought to be.

You might need guidance to learn how to do this, though.

I can recommend three resources:

The first is a Substack article from last year written by Chris Wells, titled
"Disintegration as a path to meaning", which describes how we can apply the theory of positive disintegration to this global moment.

The second resource is a recent Instagram post from Linda Thai titled “How to engage with fu***ng gross sh*t”, which she refers to as a nervous system guide for bearing witness.

The third resource is the book
Embodied Activism: Engaging the Body to Cultivate Liberation, Justice, and Authentic Connection--A Practical Guide for Transformative Social Change, by Rae Johnson,
which offers tools and practices to increase our capacity and resilience,
which we all need in this moment.

(Links to all three resources in comments.)

02/19/2026

02/06/2026

I am a therapist and I am a parent.

Should I talk about politics within my roles as therapist and parent?

YES.

I believe that fellow therapists and parents who have NOT talked about politics have contributed to us being in the situation that we are in now.

In the United States, many people in power have abused their power by violating the rights of those with less power.

This has occurred in our country in many ways throughout history, but recent examples include sexual assault, physical assault, and even murder.

As therapists and parents, it is our responsibility to support our clients and our children in being able to recognize where they fit within the systems of oppression that have perpetuated these acts since the founding of our country.

It is our responsibility to understand—and support others in understanding—the impacts of racism, transphobia, homophobia, sexism, ableism, colonization, and patriarchy.

It is also our responsibility to understand the impacts of all of this on our nervous system and the nervous systems of our children and clients.

Please do not misunderstand this and assume that I am advocating for proselytizing or attempting to persuade our clients or our children to have the same beliefs as us.

We should never have an agenda to change or control our client’s or our children’s beliefs.

However, we can provide information, and provide the conditions for an increase in ability to shift from less conscious to more conscious, in scaffolded ways that are appropriate for their current capacity.

11/11/2025

For some of us, action is not initiated by routine, obligation or social expectation but by meaning, because of a structural feature of cognition.

The capacity to engage with a task is closely tied to whether that task holds significance within our internal framework. If the task has meaning, action is possible. If the task does not have meaning, the ability to act may be absent, regardless of intention or external pressure.

This is constantly misinterpreted as avoidance, laziness, lack of willpower, emotional immaturity, you name it. However, those interpretations rely on the assumption that motivation is universally produced by the same mechanisms. It is not.

There are multiple motivational architectures. One is compliance based, where action arises from expectation, habit or perceived obligation. Another is meaning based, where action arises from relevance, connection and internal coherence. Many of us operate within the second system.

Here, meaning functions as the cognitive activation switch if you will. When something matters, emotionally, ethically, intellectually or relationally, the brain organises around it. Attention becomes available. Sequencing becomes possible. Movement starts. This is all to highlight that the system is working as designed.

When meaning is absent, the task lacks structure, it cannot be held mentally as there is no accessible entry point. We may understand the task, recognise its importance to others and still be unable to act. So, the issue here is access.

The biggest problem is cultural interpretation, because most social environments assume a compliance based motivational structure. They expect tasks to be completed because they need doing, because everyone has to, which unfortunately creates a misalignment, on account of trying harder does not produce meaning

This is not to say that meaning is not dynamic, because it is and it changes in response to context, internal state, relational safety, how the task sits within identity and whether the outcome feels real.

For example, a task that was once accessible may become inaccessible if the meaning structure shifts. This shift is often understood by the person immediately and somatically, even if they cannot yet articulate it and this is why sustainability cannot be assumed from initial capacity.

A meaning oriented system is consistent to its own organising principle. It is consistent with values, coherence, purpose, internal logic. In contrast, it is inconsistent with arbitrary instruction, unbound routine, tasks performed for the sake of it.

To establish where all of this sits, we could ask:

What does this connect to?

What value does it serve?

How does this fit into my narrative of what matters?

What becomes possible if I complete it?

What becomes compromised if I don’t?

11/11/2025

10/23/2025

A gifted therapist offers something precious to a gifted client: recognition that is felt rather than explained. When both therapist and client share the perceptual intensity, cognitive complexity, existential depth and emotional range that characterize giftedness, the therapeutic field itself becomes more resonant. There’s an unspoken fluency, a shared rhythm of thought, a familiarity with inner multiplicity, a capacity to travel quickly between abstraction and feeling, and an appreciation for the nuanced layers of meaning that even highly skilled non-gifted therapists might miss or misinterpret - not out of negligence, but as a result of qualitative mind differences.

In a shared gifted therapeutic field, the gifted client no longer has to work so hard to translate themselves. They can bring forward their authentic velocity and intensity, their metaphoric leaps, their recursive reflections, their existential concerns, without fear of being “too much” or thinking “too fast” or intellectually traveling "too far". This allows therapy to move beyond quickly beyond the pre-work required to find common ground, and forge ahead into deeper developmental terrain: identity integration, existential coherence and the embodiment of gifted potential in a sustainable way.

However, the very same shared giftedness that creates resonance can also create complexity. If the therapist has not fully integrated their own giftedness - for example, if they carry unexamined shame, grandiosity or avoidance related to their difference - these fragments will inevitably echo in the therapeutic space.

The therapist may unconsciously compete with the client’s intelligence or insight, feel threatened by their intensity, or idealize their giftedness instead of helping them ground it. Alternatively, the therapist may collude with the client’s gifted defenses - such as intellectualization, existential detachment, or over-responsibility - instead of gently inviting the deeper, often neglected emotional, existential, somatic and creative life into awareness.

A gifted therapist who has done their own integration work, meeting both the brilliance and the pain of their difference, hold giftedness as something ordinary and sacred at once. In the therapeutic relationship, they model to their gifted clients what it looks like to live as a whole gifted person, not just as a gifted mind.

From this integrated stance, they discern when a client’s gifted traits are serving wholeness and authenticity, and when they are protecting against pain and vulnerability. They accompany the client not only in exploring and validating their exceptional capacities, but also in finding rest, belonging and tenderness within them.

In this sense, the gifted therapist’s inner work is not ancillary - it is the foundation of their capacity to help their gifted clients. The more deeply they have made peace with their own gifted complexity, the more their presence itself becomes regulating and freeing for gifted clients. Integration, on both sides, becomes a shared, living process - one that restores the gifted experience to its full humanity.

Our Gifted Psychology 101 for Psychologists Course with Jennifer Harvey Sallin is opening registration now! If you're a gifted psychologist, therapist, social worker, counselor, or otherwise trained in psychology and would like to join a cohort of gifted professional peers around the world for 6 months of giftedness integration, learning and professional development, learn more and apply at --> www.intergifted.com/gifted-psychology-training

Starting in January 2026, we have two cohorts - one for the Americas-Europe and one for Europe-Asia/Australia. We have up to 3 partial scholarships per cohort, for therapists from countries with unfavorable exchange rates or in other legitimate financial need.

10/09/2025

October 10th is World Mental Health Day. I'm for it. And I believe that without adequate attention to helping people meet basic needs and to be recognized as equal human beings - no amount of 'mental health' treatment is going to stem natural, normal responses to oppressive systems.

I've been a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor for 25 years, and I've seen client after client experience a lifetime of gaslighting by privileged people telling them to find ways to be "well-adjusted" to oppressive, broken systems. For so many people, 'mental health' ought to be met with curiosity, compassion, community, and adequate resources. Instead it's diagnoses and drugs. It's calls for compliance rather than aiding in liberation.

So today - let's celebrate everyone who struggles with their mental health and everyone who works to help. Let's also recognize that if we want mental health, we'll need enough healthy food, water, shelter, community, health care, respect, care, and full human rights.

10/06/2025

I’ve been taking a break from posting for more than a month, but this trend caused such a visceral reaction in me that I had to say something.

Video description: Katy, a middle-aged white woman with brown medium-length hair and clear-framed glasses, speaks directly to the camera.

10/03/2025

For the first time in quite a while, I have space for a couple of new therapy clients!

(I’ve had a waitlist for a number of years, but I have made my way through the list and still have some space!)

I work with individual adults and couples, with a focus on neurodiversity-affirming therapy.

I’m only able to work with clients who are in California, but can do either telehealth or in-person in my office in downtown Santa Rosa.

My work is influenced by the Neurodiversity Movement and Neurodiversity Paradigm, The Theory of Positive Disintegration, Neuroqueer Theory, Brainspotting, Somatic/Movement Therapies, Mindfulness, Ecotherapy, Expressive Arts, Trauma Theory, Anti-Racism, Attachment Theory, and Mythology.

Check out my website site for more info. (Link in comments.)

10/03/2025

Free event with Andrew Reichart, AMFT.

FREE ONLINE EVENT: One hour Q&A on how to view the world through a Neurodiversity-affirming lens, and what this means for people & society.

10/02/2025

AuDHD Parent + PDA Child = A Beautiful, Exhausting Dance 🧠💙

You understand your child's need for control because you feel it too. You see their overwhelm because you live it daily. You recognise their masking because you've perfected the art yourself.

Being an AuDHD parent to a PDA child means you're fluent in the same language, but that doesn't make it easier. Sometimes it makes it harder.

The beautiful parts:
• You truly GET why demands feel threatening
• You can spot their overwhelm before anyone else
• Your sensory needs align, you both need the calm space
• You understand stimming, special interests, and the need for routine
• Your empathy runs deep because you've been there

The exhausting parts:
• Their meltdown triggers your own nervous system
• You're masking your own needs to support theirs
• Executive function struggles meet executive function struggles
• Your ADHD brain forgets the PDA strategies when you're dysregulated
• You're advocating for them while your own needs go unmet

The guilt:
"I should be better at this because I'm neurodivergent too."
"Why can't I regulate when they need me most?"
"Am I passing on my struggles to them?"

The truth:
You're not failing. You're two beautifully wired nervous systems trying to find safety together. Some days you'll be the regulated one. Some days they will be. That's the dance.

The glimmers:
• You see their authentic self, not their behaviours
• You know accommodation isn't "giving in"
• You model that neurodivergent is not broken
• You're raising them to embrace their differences

You're exactly the parent they need. Perfectly imperfect and wonderfully wired. 🌼