Online in Seattle, Washington
Therapy for Women in Tech, Engineering, and Male-Dominated Fields in Seattle
Online therapy for women in Seattle’s tech , Engineering, & corporate Industries
If you work in tech or another male-dominated field in Seattle, you already know what it costs to hold your position in rooms that weren’t designed with you in mind.
You’ve sat in a meeting at your South Lake Union office and watched a male colleague restate the recommendation you made twenty minutes earlier, in slightly different words, to a room that suddenly started nodding. You sat there calculating whether to say something, knowing that if you pointed it out you’d be the woman who “needs credit” instead of the woman who had the best idea in the room.
You’ve laughed at a joke in the team Slack channel that wasn’t funny because you’ve calculated exactly what not laughing costs you in that group, the sideways looks, the “she can’t take a joke,” the quiet exclusion from the next happy hour where the real decisions get made. You’ve gotten a performance review that praised your “communication style” while the man at your level got recognized for his “strategic thinking,” and you knew exactly what that language meant but also knew that naming it would make you the problem.
None of those moments were big enough to report, and most of them weren’t big enough to explain to anyone who doesn’t work in your industry without sounding like you were making something out of nothing. But your body registered every one of them and kept a running tab, and somewhere along the way that tab started showing up as the jaw pain your dentist keeps asking about, the 3am wakeups where your brain is already rehearsing tomorrow’s standup, the Sunday evenings that carry a heaviness now, the way you cancel plans with friends in Capitol Hill or Ballard because after nine hours of monitoring your tone and the precise wording of every Slack message, you don’t have anything left to give anyone.
You’ve probably explained it away as burnout, or the pace of the industry, or just how it is when you work in tech in Seattle. But it doesn’t go away when you take a vacation, and it didn’t resolve when you got the promotion.
WHY SEATTLE WOMEN IN TECH CARRY This DIFFERENTLY
Seattle is one of the largest tech hubs in the country, home to Amazon’s headquarters, major offices from Google, Meta, Salesforce, and Stripe, and thousands of startups and mid-size companies competing for the same talent. It’s a city that runs on ambition, speed, and technical excellence, and for women who’ve built careers here, the pressure to perform at an exceptional level while navigating male-dominated teams is constant and cumulative.
The stress that builds up in these environments doesn’t stay at the office. It follows you home across the Ship Canal, onto the Link light rail, into your apartment in Fremont or your house in Wallingford or Queen Anne. It shows up as the tightness in your chest when you see your VP’s name on your calendar, the over-preparing that eats your weekends, the inability to stop replaying a meeting that ended hours ago. And because everyone around you in downtown Seattle or South Lake Union is also working at that pace, it’s easy to convince yourself this is normal, that everyone feels this way, that you just need to push through.
But here’s what you already know: the men on your team aren’t doing this. They’re not rehearsing every comment before they unmute on the Zoom call. They’re not lying awake wondering if they came across as “too much” in the meeting. They walk into the same rooms you do, but their bodies aren’t paying the same price, because the environment isn’t asking the same thing of them. And over years, that gap between what the job asks of you and what it asks of them builds up in ways that don’t go away on their own.
You’ve Tried to fix this…
You've tried the breathing exercises your coach recommended, and they work until lunch. You've tried the meditation app, and it helps you fall asleep but doesn't stop the 3am wake-ups. You've tried yoga, and your shoulders feel better on Saturday but they're back around your ears by Monday morning.
If you've been to therapy before, you probably did what you do in every room: explained the problem clearly, analyzed it thoroughly, and left each session understanding everything without your body changing at all.
That's because all of those tools were aimed at the thinking, analytical part of you, and that part has never been the problem.
What Starts to Change Through Our Work Together
After 18 years of clinical practice, I've learned that the women who come to me aren't short on self-awareness. They can describe exactly what's happening and why. What they need is someone who works below the surface of that understanding, and that's what I do.
Instead of spending our sessions talking through what happened, I work directly with what your body is still holding, using approaches that are physical and creative, things that move you out of the analytical mode you've been operating in your whole career and into a place where the bracing and the guarding can start to release.
If you've spent years being precise, strategic, and in control of every word, sitting in a room and talking about your feelings can easily turn into another exercise in analysis. You explain the problem clearly, you connect the dots, and you leave understanding everything without anything in your body changing. Most of my clients don't even realize they're doing it. I help you get out of your head and into the place where the work needs to happen.
Here’s what it looks like in your life when things start to change:
You sit through a tense meeting at your South Lake Union office and notice that your heartbeat stays steady, even when someone pushes back on your recommendation. You respond clearly, and afterward you walk to the light rail thinking about what you want for dinner instead of replaying every sentence you said. You get home to Fremont or Wallingford, and you're present for the evening instead of sitting at the table with your mind still in the conference room.
You've been going back and forth for months about whether to stay at your company or make the jump to one of the smaller startups that keeps reaching out, and you haven't been able to think clearly about either option because every time you sit down to evaluate it your chest tightens and the decision feels impossible. After a few months of working together, you notice you can think about both options without your body flooding with dread. You weigh the trade-offs based on what you want instead of what you're afraid of, and you make a decision you trust instead of one you talked yourself into at 2am.
You set a boundary with your manager about the weekend Slack messages, and you sleep through the night afterward. Not because you've convinced yourself it'll be fine, but because your body has stopped treating every difficult conversation as a threat that requires hours of post-game analysis. You wake up Monday morning, and you handle whatever comes across your screen from a clear head instead of a clenched stomach.
You stop over-preparing for the all-hands presentation because you trust yourself to handle the room. You spend the time you used to burn on the fifteenth rehearsal doing something else, maybe finally getting to the project that's been sitting in your backlog, maybe meeting a friend for a drink in Capitol Hill, maybe doing nothing at all, and you don't feel guilty about it.
You're at dinner with your partner on a Thursday night and you're there. You tell him about your day, and it comes out like a conversation instead of a debriefing or a flat “fine.” You laugh at something he says and realize you haven't done that on a weeknight in a while. You stay at the table after dinner instead of disappearing upstairs to decompress alone, because the day isn't living in your body anymore. There's something left for the life you built outside that office.
I can't promise that the dynamics in Seattle's tech industry will disappear. But your body doesn't have to carry every room you've ever walked into.
What You Can Expect
Sessions are online. You don’t have to leave your South Lake Union office or fight I-5 traffic after work. You can do a session from your home in Ballard, your car in the Amazon garage, or wherever you have privacy and 55 minutes.
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, and it's worth a five-minute call to your insurance company to check your specific plan.
I’m licensed in Washington State and Oregon, and I work with women across both states. Learn more about how I work with women in male-dominated fields and what changes you can expect as things start to shift.
Jeniffer Duncan, LPC, LMHC, LAT, ATR
I’ve spent 18 years working with women whose stress didn’t match their circumstances, women who had everything under control on paper and couldn’t figure out why their body was acting like it wasn’t.
I’m a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (Washington), and a Licensed and Registered Art Therapist. The ATR designation means that creative and expressive approaches aren’t something I added to my practice as a specialty; they’re the foundation of how I was trained to work, and they’re the reason I’m effective with women who experience the ongoing stress of working in male-dominated fields.
I work specifically with Seattle women in fields where being a woman means being outnumbered. I chose this focus because I kept seeing the same thing: brilliant, accomplished women who are able to explain exactly what was wrong, and yet completely unable to make it stop. The understanding was never what was missing. What was missing was someone who could work with them at the level where the tension, the guarding, and the bracing were still running.
Licensed in Washington: LMHC (MHC.LH.61685622 — verify with Washington state board)
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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 job change.
You might be a senior engineer at a company downtown who spends more time editing her Slack messages than writing code. A product manager in South Lake Union who turned down the director role because more visibility meant more rooms full of senior men evaluating her, and her body already knew what that would cost. A data scientist who can't figure out whether to stay at her company or leave, and can't think clearly enough about it to make a decision she trusts. -
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 oriented. I want to understand what your body is doing, what situations set it off, and how long this has been building. You don't need to come in with a perfectly organized history of everything that happened at work.
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Over the first month, you'll start to feel the difference between this and whatever you've tried before. Instead of analyzing what happened and why, we work directly with what your body is still holding. Some sessions will feel unfamiliar, especially if you're used to therapy that's built around conversation, and that unfamiliarity is usually a sign we're getting somewhere that talking alone wasn't reaching. By month two or three, most of my clients start noticing shifts outside our sessions without having to think about it. They stayed steady in a meeting that would have rattled them a month ago, or said something directly without rehearsing it first, or made a career decision they'd been circling for months and felt clear about it for the first time. This is usually when we start spacing sessions to biweekly, because the changes are holding on their own. Over three to six months, the way you feel at the end of a workday starts to change. You have energy left over. Your body stops bracing for every interaction. You make decisions about your career, your boundaries, and your relationships from a place of clarity instead of self-protection. And the people in your life start noticing the difference even if you haven't told them what you're doing.
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Sessions are online, so you can do them from your home office, your car, or wherever you have privacy and 50 minutes. I work with women 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.
frequently asked questions About WOrking with Me
You’ve been white-knuckling your way through long enough.
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.