THerapy for Washington Women in Male-Dominated Fields
Specialized online Therapy For women in Washington Working in STEM, law, Finance, academia, Leadership and Management, and any Other male-dominated Work place
For the woman who Has been the only one in her department for years
If you’re a woman in a male-dominated field somewhere in Washington outside of Seattle or the Eastside, the dynamics you’ve been navigating come with the territory of being in a small community: switching jobs would mean leaving town, pushing back at work means being gossiped about at your kid’s soccer practice, and there might not be another woman in your specialty within 90 miles.
You know what it costs to hold your position when everyone you work with also lives in your neighborhood:
You’re a research scientist at PNNL in Richland, and the senior PI you report to has been quietly redirecting first-author credit to the male postdoc on your team for two grant cycles in a row. The Tri-Cities is small enough that you and the postdoc go to the same gym, and his wife coaches your kid’s robotics team. You’ve thought about flagging it. You haven’t, because the PI also sits on the committee that approves your next promotion.
You’re a department chair at Western in Bellingham, and you’ve spent the last year covering for a male faculty member whose behavior in meetings has crossed enough lines that you’ve documented every incident. The dean has heard you out three times and done nothing. Bellingham is a town of around 90,000. The faculty member’s wife is on the board at your kid’s school. Going to Title IX would cost you more than it would cost him.
You’re an assistant attorney general in Olympia, fourteen years into your career at the agency, and the litigation you’ve actually wanted to lead keeps getting assigned to younger male AAGs. You’re the agency’s go-to for the politically sensitive matters and the difficult committee chairs, because you’re “great with people.” The work that would build the litigation career you came in to build is going somewhere else. There are only so many senior AAG positions in Olympia, and they don’t turn over often.
None of those moments would make a story you could tell at a dinner party without sounding like you were keeping a list of complaints. The complication that women in Seattle and Bellevue don’t have to manage is that, in a town the size of Bellingham or Walla Walla or Pullman, the complaints aren’t private. Your colleague’s wife is on the board of your kid’s school. The dean and your spouse coach the same youth soccer team. Your daughter’s piano teacher is also your director’s sister-in-law. There is no version of pushing back on the status quo that doesn’t impact other relationships.
You went back and forth in your head about each of those moments, but your body didn’t. Your body kept its own score, and that score has started showing up as the muscle tension your massage therapist has been working on for two years, the 4am Sunday wakeups where the dread is already there, the way you’ve stopped making plans for the night after a hard meeting.
When You Work in a smaller Washington Community
Escaping the dynamics that show up in your male-dominated workplace is complicated by the fact that you can’t easily switch jobs.
The next location in your specialty is in Seattle or San Francisco, or further. Switching means leaving the school your kids are in, the house you remodeled, the friendships you and your spouse have built in town.
The “I’ll just go to a competitor that values me” play that works for women in major metros isn’t available to you in the same way.
You can’t escape by switching social circles. In a small town the social circle and the professional circle are the same circle. Your director’s wife is your tennis partner. Your colleague’s son plays youth soccer with yours. The professional issue doesn’t get a clean container, it leaks into Saturday afternoons.
You can’t escape by finding a peer to talk to. The one or two other women in your specialty at your level in your town are people you’ve known for fifteen years and probably can’t fully be honest with, for the same political reasons. The structural isolation that comes with being one of one in a small market is a specific kind of lonely that doesn’t fix itself with a long weekend.
The women who come to me from smaller Washington cities aren’t dealing with a milder version of the problem. They’re dealing with a version where every move has more consequences, where everyone knows everyone, and where their body’s response has been compounding for years without an outlet.
For the broader picture of the work and the methodology I use, see my main page on therapy for women in male-dominated fields.
How therapy can change your experience in your workplace and Community
At 6:30am you wake up because your alarm went off, not because you’ve been staring at the ceiling since 4:15am rehearsing the conversation you have to have with your boss. Your body let you sleep through the night, so you start the day with energy instead of three hours of accumulated dread.
You raise the concern about resource allocation with your director at the Monday standup. He responds in his usual way, and you don’t spend the drive home rehearsing what you should have said differently. At 4pm you pick your kid up from school, and you’re paying attention to the car-line conversation about Saturday’s game instead of nodding distractedly while you draft the email you’ve been avoiding. You don’t lose days of sleep after this conversation like you would have six months ago.
You set a boundary with the colleague who keeps adding you to projects you didn’t agree to. The conversation lasts five minutes. You drive home with your shoulders down, you eat dinner without rehearsing what you should have said differently, and you don’t wake up at 4am thinking about it again.
You stop turning down the visibility you actually want, the bar association leadership role, the visiting research talk, the seat at the planning commission you’ve been wanting to join for two years. You say yes to one of them, and you don’t pay for it with a week of disturbed sleep or a Friday stress headache.
The dynamics in your community aren’t going to change because of this work. What can change is what those dynamics cost you in the hours and days after, so that a hard interaction stops impacting your sleep, family time, and focus.
Working with Me: What You Can Expect
All sessions are online. Secure video means I work with women across Washington — from Spokane, the Tri-Cities, Walla Walla, Pullman, Yakima, Wenatchee, Bellingham, Olympia, Tacoma, Bremerton, and the Peninsula. Most of my clients meet with me from their home office or their car.
We start weekly. When your body has been locked into this kind of guarding for years, it needs consistent work to learn something different. Weekly sessions give us enough momentum to build on each session before the old responses have time to fully reassert themselves.
Sessions are $250. I don’t bill insurance directly, but I provide Superbills you can submit to your insurance for potential out-of-network reimbursement. Many PPO plans reimburse 50-80% of session costs.
Serving all of Washington
I work with women in male-dominated industries throughout Washington, including the medical and academic community in Spokane, the legal and state government community in Olympia, the Western Washington faculty and Bellingham hospital systems, the PNNL research community and engineering corridor in the Tri-Cities, the WSU community in Pullman, the Naval Shipyard and engineering community in Bremerton, the agricultural and medical communities in Yakima and Walla Walla, and women in law, healthcare, and engineering in Wenatchee, Ellensburg, Port Angeles, and across Washington’s smaller markets. I also work with women in Seattle and Bellevue and the Eastside.
All sessions are online by secure video, so wherever you are in Washington, you can meet with me from home.
Jeniffer Duncan, LPC, LMHC, LAT, ATR
I use art therapy and somatic therapy because my clients have already spent years analyzing their situation, and they can describe exactly what’s wrong and exactly why. What they need is someone who works at the body level, where long-term healing happens, and that’s what these modalities do.
I’ve been a therapist for 18 years. I’m a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Washington (LMHC #MHC.LH.61685622) and a Licensed and Registered Art Therapist.
Get started Today.
If you’re ready to start, you can book your first session directly using the scheduling link below. It will take you to my calendar, where you can request a session. I will then email you your new client forms that you’ll digitally sign, and then we’ll meet on your scheduled day.
If you have questions before scheduling, please fill out the form on the contact page and I’ll be in touch within 1-2 business days.
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This work is for women who’ve spent significant time as one of the only women in their department, their leadership team, or their industry, and who are starting to notice that the experience has left marks that don't go away with a long weekend or a promotion.
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Most of my clients work in technology, aerospace, software engineering, finance, academia, healthcare leadership, law, construction, architecture, biotech, or other STEM fields.
I also work with women in operations, logistics, manufacturing, law enforcement, and executive leadership roles across industries where women are still a minority at the decision-making level.
What these fields have in common is that the women in them have spent years navigating environments where being competent was never enough on its own, where they also had to manage how they were perceived, calibrate their tone, and absorb things their male colleagues never had to think about.
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The first session is about getting to know each other. I want to understand what your body is doing, what situations set it off, and how long this has been happening. It is a chance for the both of us to decide if this is a good fit for a working relationship.
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Sessions are online, so you can do them from your home office, your car, or wherever you have privacy and 55 minutes.
I work with women online across Oregon and Washington State.
We start with weekly sessions, then taper to biweekly after about two to three months as the changes start holding on their own.
Sessions are $250. I don't bill insurance directly, but I provide Superbills you can submit for potential out-of-network reimbursement.