Kulky (they/them/their) brings a creative, synergistic, and vibrant energy to the therapy room.  They earned their doctorate in clinical psychology at Adler University in Chicago, IL and their masters in counseling psychology at Argosy University in San Diego, CA.  Identifying as a fat and tattooed queer femme of color, Kulky has also experienced marginalization, discrimination, and oppression for these intersecting identities throughout their life.  They understand the deep impact that prejudice and stigma has on one’s mental health and wellbeing, and they are committed to socio-political and cultural change in efforts towards social justice and equality.  After years of professional training and personal exploration, they are not only fulfilling their calling but are also building their legacy.  Accordingly, Kulky is intentional about helping to cultivate meaningful, healing, and transformative therapeutic relationships so that their clients may become their own compassionate caregiver and agent of change to live an authentic, value-guided, and worthwhile life.

 

Kulky operates within a relational foundation of humanistic, systemic, multicultural, and feminist frameworks.  They value being a strong generalist who can establish a safe and secure therapeutic atmosphere for providing customized, holistic, and evidenced-based individual and group therapy.  Clinically, they practice multi-theoretical, trauma-informed, and multiculturally competent treatment, and they specialize strengths-based practices working with marginalized and oppressed communities.  Their main treatment approaches include third-wave Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness Self-Compassion (MSC), and Shame Resilience (SR).  They also incorporate brief-psychodynamic, internal family systems, creative/alternative therapies in treatment including map conceptualizations emphasizing positive psychology, and tarot card interpretations based in Jungian psychology and narrative therapies.  Kulky enjoys working with a diverse range of adults who have experienced relational trauma, identify as perfectionists, are highly self-critical and shame-prone, have low self-esteem/worth, and/or who may exhibit ineffective coping behaviors such as suicidality, self-harm, disordered eating, and substance abuse. Additional professional interests include mood disorders, complex anxiety concerns (social anxiety, relational OCD), identity development and intersectionalities of multicultural diversity concerns, family of origin issues and attachment/relational concerns.

 

Alongside their heartfelt therapeutic style, Kulky takes a collaborative, encouraging, and empowering approach to help foster change by developing insight, expanding coping skills, mastering distress/challenges, emboldening self-agency, affirming self-expression, nurturing resilience, and promoting overall wellness.  They aim to cultivate the courage and resiliency for clients to take risks towards vulnerability and connection.  They hope to demonstrate how to let go of unnecessary suffering, to forgive ourselves for our past transgressions, to learn how to unapologetically love ourselves for who we already are, to believe in our worth and our potential, to wholeheartedly trust our intuitive wisdom, and to have faith in the process of healing and transformative growth.  Above all, it is of the utmost importance that folx who work with Kulky leave treatment having felt heard, seen, valued, understood, inspired, and empowered. 

 

Kulky is a transplant from California who has rooted themselves in the Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor community, located on the traditional land of the Anishinaabe people, including the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potowatomi, as well as Wyandot.  As a multifaceted individual, Kulky is more than just a psychologist.  They are also a performance artist through improv and drag.  What’s more, they have directly experienced the transformative power of therapy and they understand the courage it takes to step into their own light, to reclaim their voice, and to live out an authentic, wholesome, and meaningful life.