Meet Dr. Elyssa Helfer
What do you get when you take a Queer, fat, radical human, a whole bunch of fire, and a burning desire to change the world? Well, you get me and the birth of Elevated Healing Center. Born and raised in LA, I have spent my life struggling to understand who I am. Not quite feeling like I fit in and certainly not feeling welcome on this stolen land that favors thinness, mononormativity and adhering to the status quo. I have spent the last few years of my life dedicating myself to change, building my therapy practice, homing my skills, striving for absurdly high levels of formal education, and reinventing who was once another cog in the machine. While my journey has still only just begun, I can confidently say that I am living my truth.
What I am here to do now is help you on your journey to find that truth, because as much as it hurts, I believe it is worth fighting for. Whether your business is suffering, your dating life is a mess, or you are rediscovering your erotic self, my goal is to guide you towards the life you seek with compassion, authenticity, and a whole lot of f-bombs.
It is important for you to know that I am committed to creating and upholding an anti-racist, LGBTQIA+ affirming, sex-worker and kink affirming space that is informed by Feminist, Queer and Intersectional theories. My values inform my practice and I am deeply dedicated to maintaining spaces that not only welcome but affirm and honor ALL identities.
So let me tell you where I’ve been.
Starting my educational journey at the University of Minnesota (yes, it was fucking cold), I obtained my Bachelors in Psychology. Upon graduation, I moved back home and attended Pepperdine University for my Masters in Clinical Psychology with an Emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy. While there, I began working at a non-profit, gaining my clinical hours in a low/no fee setting and worked to home my clinical skills. After years of training and passing some pretty tough exams, I completed all necessary steps to obtain my License in Marriage and Family Therapy (LMFT). Many would stop there, but being the academic masochist that I am, I continued on and began working towards my PhD in Clinical Sexology, focusing my studies on the lack of kink/BDSM related education in the graduate level educational system. I became a Certified Clinical Sexologist, began researching with The Alternative Sexual Health Research Alliance (TASHRA) and was hired as an Adjunct Professor at Antioch University-Seattle where I teach Diversity in Sexual Expression. Needless to say, I love what I do and am dedicated to continuously learning so that I can best serve the communities that I love. I can safely say that this is still only the beginning of my educational journey.