Vedalia Zellers

Vedalia (she/they) is a Clinical Social Work Associate who is passionate about helping people work through childhood trauma, grief, and relationship challenges. She offers mostly in-person therapy to individuals (18+) and couples. She specializes in working with disabled clients (including people who are neurodivergent, chronically ill, or adjusting to an injury or medical condition), queer folks (including those who’ve faced religious trauma or familial rejection), and members of other oppressed groups.

In individual therapy, Vedalia aims to help clients heal more deeply by traveling to places within themselves that they might be afraid to go. She hopes her accompaniment will make this task feel possible, and that the rewards will be rich. In the process, clients might discover a part of themselves—their capacity to play, rest, dream, grieve, be intimate, or receive care, for instance—that they buried long ago to survive. Vedalia believes that recovering and reclaiming these parts can help us feel more alive, expanding our sense of what is possible. In couples therapy, Vedalia guides clients to explore how their own history and their partner’s history might contribute to strengths and challenges in their relationship today. She aims to deepen mutual understanding and compassion, which can alter old cycles and reveal new ways forward.

Vedalia earned her Master’s in Social Work at Portland State University. There, she built the foundations of her approach to therapy, which is rooted in psychodynamic and attachment theories and incorporates elements of narrative therapy, parts work, and DBT. She is currently training in RO-DBT to learn new approaches for helping clients who struggle with perfectionism. Before becoming a therapist, Vedalia worked in union and community organizing, then in rehabilitative healthcare with survivors of Traumatic Brain Injury. She also completed a 6-month, community-based training program for disabled people who are interested in disability justice. Her background has shaped the anti-oppressive lens she brings to her work in mental health.

Outside of therapy, she enjoys nature, art, and the company of her very sweet pet hedgehog.