Quinn Davis

LPC, R-DMT

She | Her | Hers

Domestic Violence | Trauma | Grief | Identity | Life Transitions | Integration

My Background

My path to becoming a therapist was a meandering one. Yes, my bachelor’s degree from Kalamazoo College was in psychology, but I left college unsure of what I wanted next. I spent the next eight years trying out different paths – including a five-year stint at JSTOR, the online academic database that you probably used if you went to college after 1995 – before coming across dance/movement therapy as “a thing.” As a lifelong dancer and as someone who saw the transformative power of therapy in my own life (yes, you will have a grandtherapist), dance/movement therapy was exactly what I’d been searching for. I obtained my master’s degree in dance/movement therapy and counseling from Columbia College, Chicago and haven’t second-guessed it since.

Despite the frustration that came with it, I’m not sure if I would be a therapist today if it weren’t for that eight-year period of professional mismatch. It provided me with life experience that enriched my empathy with clients in their shifts from student to professional. It allowed my feminist activism to blossom and mature so that when I began to develop my clinical self, I was able to integrate it fluidly with my values. Most importantly, it gave me time to do my own work on myself before even starting my graduate career – a therapeutic value I hold dear to this day.

My experiences in the field have run the gamut, from inpatient and outpatient hospital settings to community mental health to domestic violence agencies. I’ve worked with myriad populations, but my specialties include domestic violence, survivors and/or observers of trauma, toxic relationships and boundary setting, life/identity transitions, ADHD (especially mixed or inattentive type and/or late diagnosis), grief, anxiety/panic, depression, LGBTQIA issues, the immigrant and multicultural experience, and caregiver role concerns. My clinical ethos emphasizes the client’s choice, and I value informed consent above all.

My approach is eclectic, and therefore shifts for each client depending on their needs. That being said, it will always come from my background in dance/movement therapy and counseling, and I rely heavily on a humanistic, feminist, culturally humble, client-centered, trauma-informed, and strengths-based approach. Dance/movement therapy relies on the body-mind connection. It involves body-based observations, analyses, and interventions, and I weave it into our regular talk therapy sessions. This approach allows us to dive into issues at depths that might not be as accessible with words alone. I also integrate the following theories and modalities in my work, which is not an exhaustive list: mindfulness, psychodynamic, CBT, narrative, and art and other expressive therapies.

Now for details on the outside-Empowered Quinn: It won’t take long for me to tell you that, while I love Chicago, I’m from Michigan originally, and you should be ready to tell me to stop talking about it if it gets brought up. I still dance, and try to take classes and see shows here in Chicago when I can. I enjoy taking on cooking projects that are way over my head, and as a result can now bake a pretty darn good pie from scratch (but not before I made plenty of pretty bad ones). I find peace the most when next to large bodies of water, love dogs and my cat Minnow a whole lot, and am probably best known for my sense of humor.