Isabella Calingaert, LPGC
Therapist
Isabella Calingaert, LGPCLGBTQIA+ Affirming Psychotherapist, Holistic Trauma Therapist & Couples Counselor
"Navigating identity, feeling stuck in relationship patterns, or dealing with past experiences that still feel unresolved can be hard to carry on your own. I help my clients understand why these patterns keep showing up, how their past has shaped them, and begin overcoming these distressing cycles."
Book a consultation call with Isabella
Issues Isabella helps with
LGBTQIA+ Clients
Clients practicing ENM
Virginia
Maryland
Who she works with
LGBTQIA+ Clients Navigating Identity, Self-Worth & Relationships
Finding your place in the world can be exhausting when you feel misunderstood, judged, or pressured to be someone you're not. Isabella works with LGBTQIA+ individuals navigating identity exploration, dating and relationship challenges, family conflict, depression, trauma, and the emotional toll of discrimination and minority stress.
Whether you're struggling with internalized shame, questioning your self-worth, or finding it difficult to feel fully accepted in your relationships, she helps you make sense of the experiences that have shaped how you see yourself. Together, you'll work toward letting go of limiting beliefs, building confidence in who you are, and creating more authentic, fulfilling relationships—with yourself and others.
LGBTQIA+ Couples & Nontraditional Relationships
Do you and your partner keep getting caught in the same arguments, struggling to feel understood, or finding it hard to navigate life's challenges as a team?
Isabella helps LGBTQIA+ couples strengthen communication, rebuild trust, repair relationship wounds, and break painful cycles of conflict and disconnection. She understands the added complexities of navigating discrimination, microaggressions, cultural expectations, and parenting in a world that doesn't always affirm your relationship. Whether you're working through betrayal, negotiating boundaries, sharing the mental load of everyday life, or trying to reconnect as partners and parents, Isabella helps you find your way back to each other. She also offers polyamory-affirming and consensual non-monogamy (ENM) therapy, supporting couples and partners navigating different relationship needs, agreements, and structures, including mono-poly relationships.
Eldest Siblings, Parentified Children & Childhood Trauma
Were you always the responsible one growing up? The eldest sibling who had to be mature beyond their years, the family peacekeeper, or the child everyone depended on?
When you spend your childhood taking care of others, it can be hard to stop—even when it's costing you your own happiness. You might struggle to say no, feel guilty putting yourself first, take on too much in relationships, or feel responsible for everyone else's emotions. Isabella helps adults unpack the lasting impact of parentification, childhood trauma, and complicated family dynamics, including experiences sometimes described as eldest daughter syndrome. Together, you'll explore how those early roles shaped your sense of self, learn to set boundaries without guilt, and break free from patterns that no longer serve you—so you can build relationships where your needs matter, too.
How she works
Isabella believes that meaningful change starts with understanding what's beneath the surface—not just what you're struggling with, but why certain feelings, beliefs, and relationship patterns keep showing up. She helps clients connect the dots between past experiences and present struggles, uncover how trauma and family dynamics shape their sense of self, and break free from patterns that no longer serve them. Her work focuses on building healthier self-talk, strengthening self-worth, setting boundaries, and creating more fulfilling relationships. With couples, she helps partners look beyond recurring conflicts to understand the deeper emotions, unmet needs, and attachment wounds driving disconnection.
Therapy with Isabella is warm, collaborative, and refreshingly real. She brings humor, curiosity, and thoughtful directness into the room—not just a listening ear, but an engaged partner who helps you challenge old perspectives and discover new possibilities. She supports people in collaboratively building up their resources, practical tools, and community for life beyond therapy, using an integrative approach pulling from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Psychodynamic therapy, Family systems, Mindfulness, and Relational-cultural therapy. She also has specialized training in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), the Gottman Method, and Polyamory & ENM, helping couples strengthen emotional connection, rebuild trust, and develop healthier relationship patterns. She blends deeper self-exploration with practical tools to help create meaningful, lasting change.
I offer affirming, anti-oppressive, and HAES-aligned care, creating a space where your full identity and lived experience are respected and supported.
Training & Credentials
Master's in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, The Chicago School
Bachelor's in Psychology and Humanitarian Affairs, Fordham University
Licensed Graduate Professional Counselor — Washington, DC
Resident in Counseling — Virginia
Licensed Graduate Professional Counselor — Maryland
Specialized training in Gottman Method Level 1 - Couples Therapy
Postgraduate training in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy — ICEEFT
Training in Polyamory & Ethical Non-Monogamy
What a first session is like
After your free 30-minute consultation, if it feels like the right fit, you will schedule your first full 50–55-minute session.
For individual therapy, the first few sessions are a chance to begin developing a fuller, more holistic understanding of what you are facing now. Isabella will learn about your history, when the current concerns began or became more difficult, what has shaped them, and what you have already tried. Together, you will start to make sense of the larger context around your experiences and identify where the work can begin.
For couples, the first full session focuses on understanding your relationship, the concerns that brought you in, and the pattern that may be keeping you stuck. Each partner then has an individual intake session with Isabella, giving her the opportunity to understand each person's history and perspective. Ongoing sessions are generally held together as a couple.
If that sounds like what you are looking for, book a 30-minute consultation call with Isabella.
Questions people ask Isabella
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Couples often arrive having spent months explaining themselves to someone who stayed neutral but was wrapped up in the content of your argument. EFT works differently: the focus is on the cycle the two of you fall into in these difficult moments and arguments. Isabella helps you slow down and understand that pattern, explore what’s underneath it and learn to respond differently in difficult moments.
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Yes. Isabella works with people at any stage of exploring what kind of relationship structure is right for them, as well as people already in established polyamorous relationships or any form of ethical non-monogamy.
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Isabella’s approach to relationship therapy is built to work with all traditional and non-traditional structures rather than assuming a conventional two-person model. Depending on the issues you are facing, Isabella will recommend whether it’s beneficial to meet with two partners at a time or everyone together—as may be the case for a triad wanting to work on an issue together.
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Olesya is a self-pay therapist. We provide a superbill for you to submit to your insurance plan for possible out-of-network reimbursement and have also partnered with Reimbusify to make this process seamless. You can check your out-of-network benefits here. This can tell you whether couples or individual therapy is covered and what reimbursement may be available.
We understand therapy can be a investment in yourself and your relationship and do not take that lightly, which is why our therapists are specialized and will make sure they have the tools to help you meet your goals.
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Isabella's create a safe, welcoming space for clients explorring thier identity. Her practice affirms all parts of your identity, including where you're still exploring rather than settled. That exploration is welcome as part of the work, not something to resolve before you start.
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It depends. If your partner is reluctant about Couples Therapy, you can still book a consultation and meet with Isabella on your own to talk through what is happening if you’re open to Individual therapy to work on your relationship struggles. Relationship work done in individual therapy is also benefticial and a lot can shift in a relationship when one person changes how they handle the pattern. So if you are open to individual therapy, the consultation is still worth having.
However, if you’re just interested in Couples Therapy, then one thing to know before you decide to start therapy with Isabella is that if she becomes your individual therapist, she cannot later be your couples therapist. Couples work depends on both partners believing the therapist is genuinely even-handed, and a partner who arrives knowing you already have a therapy relationship with that therapist rarely feels that way — however fair the therapist actually is. So if what you are really hoping for is couples therapy with Isabella, then its better to wait until your partner comes around and start that work together.
Book a free consultation call
No waitlists and no phone tag. Pick a time that suits you to speak to Isabella.
