Lies Van Bekkum, phd

PERINATAL MENTAL HEALTH

Dr. Lies van Bekkum provides her clients with a wonderful balance of warmth and straightforwardness as a therapist at The Catalyst Center. She is passionate about her work with mothers and their partners during pregnancy and postpartum, and with her upbringing in the Netherlands, she brings a refreshing international perspective on birth and parenthood.

She completed her doctoral research comparing the experiences of fathers during the birth of their children in home births, birth center births, and hospital births, and is passionate about working with new mothers and their partners as they explore their new roles as parents.

Lies specializes in helping people to grow their existing strengths and develop new ways of living more flexibly and more joyfully. She has a wonderful sense of humor that is balanced with her knowledge of what helps people become unstuck from Depression, Anxiety and other challenges. She is firm and direct when needed and also expressive of her genuine caring for the people with whom she works.

In her work with couples she uses an approach called Emotion Focused Therapy that helps people to get to the heart of the matter in their relationships. She is skilled at bringing couples beyond their anger and resentment. She gets them back in touch with what drew them together in the first place and helps them develop a deeper understanding themselves as individuals and embrace the ways they can help each other grow and live a life filled with love.

Lies is passionate about working with people around issues of complex identities.

She excels at exploring issues of race, ethnicity, nationality, language, gender expression, sexual orientation, and other complex identities and intersections between many identities.