Coral Blankinship, MSW, LICSW
Pronouns: She/ Her/ Hers

As a Clinical Social Worker, I have an approach that is queer centered, humanistic and affirming. My lens to therapy is anti-racist, neurodivergent, harm reduction, weight neutral, sex positive, kink informed and social justice focused. I have a Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of Washington and provide gender affirming therapy to help people live lives congruent with their identities, values and passions. I apply narrative therapy by separating the person from the problem, which leads to deeper conversations, insights and possibilities. When a problem is externalized, the problem loses its power, openings for new stories and transformative change evolves.

My experience includes working with individuals, couples and families with gender expansive identities, non-traditional relationships, substance use, disordered eating and diverse mental health health conditions.

Because I am passionate about equity and public health, I worked for a public mental health agency as a Mental Health Therapist for children, adolescents and adults. Also I served a non-profit mental health agency with clients with co-occurring substance use and mental health conditions. Foundations of my experiences also include working with people without housing, substance misuse and chronic mental health conditions.

I meet you at, wherever you are, whether you cannot identify what your problem is, you feel at an all time low or are feeling stuck and in a stalemate. There is hope.

These are some of the root philosophies that inform my practice:

Harm reduction means that there is no intervention too small to take towards change. It means that I meet you where you are at. I provide a safe space that is open, non-judgemental and available for you to bring your authentic self forward.

My framework is intersectional, which means that I recognize our various identities and power imbalances in different groups that we belong to, whether it is race, age, disability or gender identity, each paints the picture of our opportunities in life whether it is access to housing, food, jobs and whether or not we are targeted by law enforcement. Our identities define our access to resources and our diverse world views.

Resilience

Resilience and protective mechanisms in our systems bring hope. Resiliency is a process that can be built and promote change and healing.

Flexibility

We live in a non-binary relative world. Gender is not an identity that fits into a simple box of male or female, but more complex. You can be gender fluid, gender queer/ non-binary, intersex, transgender or other expansive gender identites. Body parts do not define gender.

There is not a one-size fits all to any approach to this world- whether it is body size, sexual orientations, relationship structures, therapeutic approach or culture. We know that we have different levels of privilege that give us different inequitable access to resources and different perspectives about life.

Complexity

There can be two opposing truths at one time. You have many possible futures. When you are in a space of chaos with all or no structure it provides an opening for creativity. According to Dr. Biler, “Creativity and growth occurs at the edge of chaos in the border zone of known and unknown, where small changes lead to big effects.