Finding Freedom: My Journey to Becoming a Fat Therapist Supporting Fat Clients
Blog post by Dejah Fingland
Hi, I’m Dejah Fingland (she/her), a new therapist at Guerin Therapy Group. I want to take a moment to share a little about myself and why I’m so passionate about working with fat clients, especially those seeking to break free from diet culture and disordered eating, and who are navigating major life transitions like starting college, entering adulthood, or building new relationships.
I am fat–and have been for as long as I can remember. With this comes a keen awareness of how deeply weight stigma seeps into our lives—from classrooms and medical offices to family dinner tables and social media feeds. Throughout my life, I’ve struggled with the effects of weight stigma. I have PCOS, I’ve struggled with eating disorders, and I’ve spent a lifetime navigating diet culture, harmful stereotypes, and environments that weren’t supportive or built for me. I’ve experienced firsthand the weight stigma that fat people encounter, and I have a deep empathy and understanding for all of the various means of protection one will go through in order to alleviate that stigma.
My personal “coming of age” experience was shaped heavily by anti-fat bias. It wasn't until college that I had any real reckoning that my body was not a problem for simply existing, and it began to put many of the struggles I’d faced into perspective–leading me on a trajectory to become the therapist I am today.
In my first semester of college, I had an intro chemistry class in a 400+ person lecture hall–daunting enough on its own. I was horrified by the seating arrangements, and after an agonizing hour, I left on the verge of tears after failing to contort my body to fit into a lap desk that looked sized for a toddler. I never went back to that lecture hall, and I ended up failing chemistry my first semester of college—not a great outcome for someone who’d planned to go to medical school. I struggled to acknowledge that this wasn’t because I failed to do the work, but because the environment I had found myself in was quite literally not built for my body. I felt lost–and I slipped into relentless bouts of anxiety as I thought about all of the barriers to come as I made my way through life as a fat person.
While I sat in that anxiety, it grew into depression, isolation, and disordered eating habits. I took a break from college, and I ended up going to therapy for the first time. There, I opened up about some of my struggles. My therapist wasn’t fat, or even particularly tuned in to the role my size played in my trajectory, but they played an invaluable role in my life by encouraging me to not give up on myself. I was allowed to exist as a fat person, to have dreams for myself exactly as I was, and I didn’t have to shrink to move toward them.
Later, much of my work throughout my undergraduate and graduate career focused on the lived experience of fat women–an area unfortunately lacking in research but ripe with evidence that greater support is necessary and even life-saving. Lots of research confirms that my story isn’t unusual.
Fat people are more likely to report depressive symptoms, lower body satisfaction, and academic and career challenges than their thinner peers. And yet, research in this area remains sparse, even in mental health spaces. The actual lived experiences of fat people are largely overlooked, and it’s the reason I am so passionate about making space for fat folks in my work.
I share this part of my story because I believe that self-disclosure and relatability in therapy are not only important, but deeply healing. When I tell clients that I understand what it feels like to be excluded from spaces or to shrink yourself out of fear of judgment, I’m not speaking from theory. I hope that by being a fat therapist, I can provide an additional layer of support and comfortability to clients in larger bodies.
In my counseling work, I focus on helping clients build more compassionate, trusting relationships with their bodies and with food. Many of the people I see are adolescents and young adults who are in the thick of big transitions and facing the same pressures I once felt: trying to fit into a world that often wasn’t built with fat bodies in mind. My goal is to help clients move away from shame and rigid rules and toward flexibility, joy, and authentic existence.
I bring a Health at Every Size® lens to my work, which means I value body diversity, reject weight stigma, and prioritize holistic well-being over the pursuit of weight loss. I know I’m not perfect, and I don’t expect my clients to be either. What I do believe in is collaboration, curiosity, and finding sustainable ways to live more fully—even in a culture that often tells us we must do otherwise.
At home, I’m committed to building body positivity into my family life. For me, this work is not just professional–it’s personal and a tangible way to make my corner of the world a little brighter.
If you’re a fat person looking for a therapist who understands life in a larger body from both professional and personal experience, I want you to know you’re not alone. There is space for you here.
About the Therapist:
I’m a client-centered counselor who values the therapeutic relationship as a powerful tool for growth and change. My approach blends cognitive-behavioral and solution-focused techniques, as well as experiential and somatic practices, all rooted in the “here and now” of our work together. I believe in helping clients identify and increase joyful behaviors as tangible indicators of change, while also offering space to explore and process difficult emotions safely.
I am LGBTQ+ affirming and welcome clients from many different backgrounds and lived experiences. In addition to working with individuals, I’m open to working with families, and I am passionate about supporting parents and caregivers in creating safer and more body-positive cultures at home. My aim is to nurture collaboration, encourage curiosity, and help clients connect with their innate resilience so they can move toward a life that feels more authentic.
Learn more about Dejah here. She is accepting new clients!