Faith Swords, LICSW

My approach to therapy is relational, warm, and candid, with strong doses of humor when appropriate. I generally spend at least one session getting to know you and your life and one session getting to know the reason you are coming to therapy. At that point, we will identify preliminary treatment goals and what might be helpful in meeting them. I enjoy sharing knowledge with my clients about mental health, including understanding diagnosis, learning about different treatment options, and providing resources for further education. My therapy practice is grounded in attachment theory, mindfulness/contemplative practices, and the NASW’s Code of Ethics: service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence.

Social justice and advocacy for human rights have always been central to my identity both as a therapist and as a person. As an American macroculture, we are experiencing more external pressures – economic, political, existential – that must be integrated with our personal lives, beliefs, and identities. Each of us also belongs to a microculture that will experience the same systemic challenges with more or less emphasis depending on various factors. Each of these challenges must be integrated into our functioning somehow. In my experience, more integration results in better functioning, while less integration tends to result in limits to function.

I am the proud mother of two daughters and have found parenting and learning about human development to be among the most rewarding experiences of my life. I believe in supporting your development as a parent while you and your children move through stages of life. I enjoy working with the challenges of early childhood as well as helping parents build relationships with their older children. I believe that it is fundamentally important to respect and celebrate children’s intellect, imagination, and autonomy. I also believe that our development as parents affects our children’s wellbeing as well as our own. Learning how to set boundaries and limits, communicate effectively and respectfully, and manage complicated feelings are all important relational processes between parents and children.

Therapy is a second career for me. I received my undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and spent 10 years working in the legal, tech, and regulatory sectors in Washington, DC, before obtaining my Master of Social Work from the Catholic University of America in 2018. Engaging with the private sector, particularly the law and technology sectors in the 2000s and 2010s, has resulted in a wealth of knowledge of and experiences with professional contexts and institutional experiences that cannot be learned in school. The intersection of technology, executive functioning, and mental health is an increasing focus for me. My pre-pandemic work focused on crisis support, family homelessness, education advocacy and child welfare. During the pandemic, I relocated to the west coast and moved into fulltime private practice. I am a licensed clinical social worker in the States of Oregon (L12402) and Washington (LW.70054978).

I enjoy spending time with my husband, daughters, and extended family. I have lived in 8 states and the District of Columbia and visited 3 continents. I have some conversational proficiency in 5 languages and have been playing video games recreationally since about 1994. Being close to nature is important to me, as are elaborate cooking projects and boring podcasts and audiobooks about history.