About Kai

Hi! I’m Kai Thigpen, LCSW (they/them). I’m a therapist who has provided outpatient therapy full-time in a variety of settings since 2018. I live and work as a settler in Lenapehoking, the land of the Lenni Lenape people, also known as Philadelphia, PA. As a therapist, consultant and supervisor, and in my community involvement, I seek to foster healing, connection, alignment, and expression. While the best way for you to get to know me and see if we would work well together is to contact me, I’ve shared more about different aspects of who I am and work I’ve done below (and, most importantly, cat pictures).

More about my social locations and background: my social locations, or ways in which I am positioned in our systems of privilege and power, include being white, trans and non-binary, queer, Ashkenazi Jewish, and temporarily able-bodied. I have lived experience with a borderline personality structure; this helps to inform my commitment to providing depathologizing and person-centered care. I am descended from Ashkenazi Jews and from more distantly English, Irish, and Welsh people, some of whom were early settlers of Turtle Island (also known as the US). I grew up as a third culture kid in France, Sweden, and the US.

More about my professional experience: Since 2018, I have provided outpatient therapy in a general community mental health setting, a community mental health setting specifically serving people who have experienced trauma, an LGBT+ and HIV+ focused organization, and a group practice centering care for LGBT+ and neurodivergent people. I began to operate this private practice in 2023. Previously, I have held volunteer roles including serving as a board member with the William Way LGBT Community Center and as a counselor with two crisis hotlines. I have learned and grown from all of these spaces, from supervision and consultation, and from involvement in trainings as both a participant and teaching assistant. You may read more about my approaches to therapy, including some of the trainings I’ve completed, on the therapy page, or read more about how I orient to supervision and consultation.

More about my values: I value access to basic needs, joy, connection, well-being, and bodily autonomy as well as care for the land and waters. I believe that our relationships with other people, the natural world, and our inner worlds can lead to both greater felt security and needed outward change. Flowing from these notions, I gladly ascribe to liberationist, abolitionist, and decolonial/unsettling values including anti-Zionism and Land Back. I learn from movements centered in these principles and supporting dignity and life, from the natural world, and from my own community. How I understand and enact my values is an evolving project.

More about my writing and interests: my poetry chapbook habitat appeared with Illuminated Press in 2023 and my full-length poetry collection heart of us was published by Another New Calligraphy in 2024. I am a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal. Evidently, writing and reading poetry are important to me. I also enjoy reading more broadly, gardening, visiting bodies of water, and spending time with my fluffiest co-conspirators, pictured below.