Today we’d like to introduce you to Maggie Lipham.
Hi Maggie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Before I was ever a therapist, I was a long term mental health patient in Atlanta systems. I learned early what it feels like to be misunderstood, dismissed, mislabeled, and expected to adapt to care that was never designed for someone like me.
My path into this work came through lived experience first, and credentials second. I spent years navigating mental health care, chronic illness, and disability before I ever sat on the other side of the therapy chair. Somewhere along the way, I encountered a radical idea that finally made my life make sense: humans are only understandable in context.
That lens changed everything. It helped me see that many of the obstacles in my life, and in the lives of my future clients, were not personal flaws. They were predictable outcomes of broken systems, cultural bias, and institutions that routinely fail chronically ill, neurodivergent, and traumatized people. A masters degree in clinical social work is how I added those ever important letters behind my name.
Now I run Worth the Fight Counseling, where I work as a therapist, trauma specialist, and chronically ill systems nerd, supporting people whose lives are shaped by complex trauma, dissociation, disability, and systemic harm. I am known for being direct, irreverent, and deeply respectful of my clients intelligence.
I do not do platitudes. I love a good platitude, do not get me wrong. Comfort matters. Hope matters. Sometimes a cheesy line is exactly what the nervous system needs. I just refuse to use platitudes as a substitute for real care, real accountability, or real change. I do not pretend healing is about positive thinking. I focus on practical change, dignity, and helping people build lives that feel more livable.
That worldview also fuels my advocacy and creative projects, including We Will Not Shut Up, which centers womens medical trauma in the United States.
My work is rooted in a simple belief: people are not broken. Systems often are. Lets change systems and empower people to make their worth living. My clients are doing the work, I am handing them some tools.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has definitely not been a smooth road.
I built a private practice while living with chronic illness, disability, ongoing medical trauma, and a body that requires constant negotiation just to stay functional AND present. There were long stretches where surviving took more energy than building anything new. That is part of why We Will Not Shut Up is still in its infancy. If passion alone could produce podcasts and websites, I would already be a media mogul teaching DBT in grocery store checkout lines. I am only half joking.
My work involves sitting with deep trauma, dissociation, complex PTSD, and systemic harm. Holding stories that are heavy, unjust, and deeply human is meaningful AND it is not light work.
On top of that, there are the realities of running a business in a world that expects productivity without accommodation, healing without time, and resilience without rest. Burnout, financial pressure, health crashes, broken systems, and yes, a global pandemic, have all been part of the terrain.
I try very hard to practice what I teach in DBT. I try to avoid the word BUT because it can shut our eyes to dialectics: Life is rarely either easy or impossible. It is usually hard AND meaningful. Pain is inevitable AND suffering is not a personal failure. Once you start practicing DBT skills you find dialectics everywhere and frankly, part of my work is sitting with people in how deeply annoying that is.
That framework shapes how I live and how I practice. When something is hard, I do not minimize it. When someone is struggling, I do not treat it like a character flaw. I focus on reducing unnecessary suffering while honoring real pain.
The obstacles have shaped me into a therapist who is honest, grounded, and deeply respectful of how complex real lives are .This work is so both hard and worth doing.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My work centers on people who have been told they are too much, too broken, too complicated, or too hard to treat. In reality, most of them are responding understandably to trauma, chronic stress, medical harm, marginalization, or systems that were never built with their needs in mind.
I specialize in complex trauma, dissociation, chronic illness, neurodivergence, and medical trauma. Many of my clients are brilliant, exhausted, deeply self-aware AND they have been carrying far more than any one nervous system should have to hold alone.
I am known for being direct, irreverent, and deeply respectful of my client’s intelligence. I love warmth, humor, and a well-placed platitude AND I refuse to offer false reassurance or pretend that systemic harm can be fixed with Boat breathing alone. We can practice grounding skills AND name capitalism, misogyny, ableism, racism, and broken healthcare systems in the same session.
What I am most proud of is creating spaces where people feel believed. For many clients, therapy with me is the first place they have not been minimized, pathologized, or blamed for what happened to them. I focus on helping people build lives that feel more livable, more autonomous, and more aligned with their values, not lives that merely look functional on paper.
Beyond therapy, I dream of slowly building projects that extend healing into the world on a larger scale. I am deeply grateful for the chance to share with your readers that advocacy work like We Will Not Shut Up, along with creative and educational efforts like my eventual podcast You Are Not Broken, are active dreams looking for collaborative dreamers.
If you are a tired founder, creative, coder, or builder who wants to co create meaningful, values-driven work, I am looking for you. We will figure out the logistics together. Reach out by email and let us build projects that name broken systems rather than blaming broken people.
I believe therapy should not just help people survive harmful systems. It should help them see clearly, resist shame, and reclaim power. That is what I hope we can put into the world.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
For most of my life, I did not believe in luck. That changed when I realized that my survival as a newborn depended on blood transfusions given before HIV testing existed.
I was born in 1981 fighting for my life because my mother’s body was attacking mine due to an Rh incompatibility. I required multiple blood transfusions to survive. At the time, there was no test for HIV in the blood supply, and more than half of hemophiliacs in the United States contracted HIV from untested blood.
By sheer chance, the blood I received was safe.
That shaped me more than I realized for a long time. I came into the world fighting to be here AND eventually understood that my survival involved a real roll of the cosmic dice. When people talk about luck as business timing or career breaks, I think about that first, literal stroke of luck that allowed me to exist at all.
I have had moments of good timing AND long stretches of bad luck, especially with health, disability, and medical systems. Effort matters AND randomness matters. Hard work alone does not explain who gets care, who gets opportunities, and who survives intact.
That perspective keeps me grateful AND allergic to narratives that blame people for suffering that was never in their control. If I have access or platform, I want to use it to help other people survive, heal, and live with more dignity.
Some luck keeps you alive AND what comes next is never just willpower. It is effort, privilege, barriers, support, injustice, and persistence all tangled together.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wtfcounseling.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wtf_counseling/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@WTFCounseling
