Hi, I’m Rebecca.
A trauma therapist for the last sixteen years, Rebecca has provided individual therapy to adults as well as clinical supervision and case consultation to both new and experienced practitioners. She has also given talks and trainings to both professional and general audiences on topics such as therapy and activism, trauma, memory and imagination, talking about patriarchy and white supremacy in clinical practice, and working with burnout and secondary trauma in healthcare institutions.
Before she was a trauma therapist, Rebecca was a tenured professor of English and Women’s studies at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her Ph.D. in English and cultural studies from the University of Virginia where, in addition to pursuing her graduate work, she was the managing editor of a nationally-distributed feminist journal. After she became a trauma therapist, she also taught courses in family studies and diversity and social justice at Portland State University School of Social Work, and a course on trauma-informed critical theory in the doctoral program of education at Lewis & Clark College.
Rebecca Hyman, Ph D, LSCW is a writer, a trauma therapist, an educator, and a lifelong participant in the collective work of social change. She writes the newsletter Therapy for Social Change, currently hosted on Substack. Her essays and articles focus on the intersection of gender, race, and mental health, and have been published in places such as Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine, Clamor Magazine, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Communities, Alternet, Our Human Family, and Women and Performance.
In her personal life, she’s participated in groups made up of therapists, educators, and activists who are helping people stay “in” the work of movement building by caring for their own and others’ mental health. She’s also served on the social justice and curriculum committees of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, one node of a global organization of therapists and others who are addressing the mental health effects of climate change. Originally from the D.C. area, she now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her wife, dog, and cat.