Liz Johnson

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 Liz Johnson is a Licensed Social Worker in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She earned her MSW from the University of Pittsburgh and holds a BA in Social Justice with a focus in political theory and philosophy. Her background spans community mental health work in recovery, homelessness, and reintegration settings, as well as political organizing — experiences that continue to shape her belief that personal healing is tied to collective liberation and cannot be understood apart from identity, relationships, and systems of power.

Liz works from a relational, anti-oppressive, and intersectional perspective, supporting clients navigating trauma (PTSD/CPTSD), chronic stress, anxiety, burnout, depression, relationship struggles, attachment wounds, and patterns that feel difficult to change. Many of the clients she works with are queer, neurodivergent, activists, or people whose identities, bodies, politics, or ways of being have not always been met with safety or understanding.

Her practice integrates somatic approaches with a psychodynamic lens. Liz brings a body-based and autonomic nervous system perspective to therapy, helping clients understand how chronic stress and trauma can leave the body stuck in survival mode. This may include biofeedback, breathwork, meditation, and the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP), with the goal of building greater safety, regulation, and connection in the body.

Liz also supports clients in exploring the deeper patterns, relationships, and stories that have shaped how they move through the world. Her psychodynamic and attachment-informed lens invites curiosity about the ways clients have adapted, protected themselves, related to others, and made meaning of their lives. She understands therapy not as "fixing" what is wrong, but as a collaborative process of understanding what has happened, how someone has survived, and what new possibilities may open with greater awareness, safety, and choice.

Liz has trained with the Hearing Voices Network and brings a thoughtful, non-pathologizing perspective to experiences that are often misunderstood or overly reduced to diagnosis — including what the DSM describes as personality disorders, delusions, and hallucinations. Her approach is grounded in curiosity, relational depth, and a commitment to understanding clients as whole people, not collections of symptoms.

Clients typically experience Liz as warm, engaged, direct, and deeply curious. She sees clients as the experts on their own lives, and understands her role as supporter, collaborator, and witness in the process of reclaiming agency and creating new ways of living, relating, and being in the world. Outside of her clinical work, Liz is passionate about cinema, philosophy, political theory, listening to music, playing guitar, and spending time with her dog Alma 🍎.