Farah Salem A.
LCPC, MAATC, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing

I am here to support you with your unique struggles. I believe therapy through consistency and ritual will encourage and create, in you, growth and self compassion. My goal is to help you access your internal and external resources, identify your strengths, and use them to reach your full potential. 

The therapeutic dynamic is a space to practice building healthy bonds so one can implement this learning in their day-to-day relationships with others. I am eager to support you in practicing boundary setting, for yourself, and others. To find assertive and healthy ways to communicate your authentic truth. Together, I will help you identify your strengths. Increase your ability to tolerate, cope and better handle the hard moments life presents us. I am passionate about celebrating you reclaiming your autonomy, embodying your sense of agency and taking ownership of your story.

I am a bilingual art therapist and counselor practicing from a cross-cultural understanding, and providing services in both English and Arabic. My focus in clinical counseling includes a collaborative, insight oriented and somatic-centered approach which incorporates Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Mindfulness and Art Therapy tools, to facilitate a mind-body connection in a non-judgmental safe processing space. My multidisciplinary clinical interests also include incorporating an eco-psychology lens, developing, and implementing self-regulation tools to calm the nervous system.

My approach is centered within an intersectional feminist and social justice lens, a trauma-informed approach, client-centered and a relational-cultural framework. My clinical and communal experience includes working with groups, families and individuals experiencing anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, domestic, sexual and gender-based violence survivors, religious trauma survivors, refugees, and immigrants. My areas of expertise also include supporting women, individuals struggling with family estrangement, or living in exile, international students, Arab-Americans and Arab Immigrants, Multicultural, Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) and BIPOC community members.

Outside of my clinical work, I offer virtual and some in-person workshops, organizational and personal expressive sessions and professional consultation. Please navigate to these pages to learn more.

In my personal time, I enjoy spending time outdoors, hiking and rock climbing. I also engage in my own art making process, working across mediums. I am an active artist exhibiting work, facilitating communal programs and a recipient of 3Arts award, International Women’s Photographers awards, amongst other achievements. My artistic practice centers the liberation of human and geologic bodies through preserving indigenous healing practices of my lineage which focus on body-centered healing within a reciprocal relationship with the earth.

Professional Training:

  • MA in Art Therapy and Counseling: School of the Art Institute of Chicago (3 year training program including supervised clinical practicum).

  • Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor: IDFPR

  • Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing Certified: EMDR Institute (1 year training program including supervised clinical practicum)

  • Somatic Experiencing (Certification in-progress): Somatic Experiencing International (3 year training program including supervised clinical practicum)

  • 40-Hour Illinois Domestic Violence Training: Between Friends Chicago

  • Wisdom of the Body Training: Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute

  • Online Art Therapy Training: Red Pencil International

  • Training in foundational understanding Dialectical Behavioral therapy (DBT)

  • Facilitating Across Difference: National LGBTQ Institute on Intimate Partner Violence

  • Adolescent Sexual Health and Being an Askable Adult Training: School-Based Health Alliance

  • Domestic Violence Teen Services Training: Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence

  • Immigrant Child and Youth Mental Health Training: Illinois Coalition for Refugee Mental Health

  • Motivational Interviewing Training: DASC

  • Supporting Clients in Grief From Theory to Practice

  • Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy Training: DASC