Welcome
This space is an invitation to understand yourself outside of frameworks that were never built with your full humanity in mind.
Having a website is a vulnerable thing. It asks to be perceived. But it also makes room for connection, honesty, and resonance. This space is an invitation rather than a performance.
I’m Dr. Danna B. My work is rooted in transforming how we think about mental health—especially the ideas we’ve inherited without ever being invited to question them.
I spend a lot of time deconstructing long-standing mental health tropes, the ones that quietly shape our lives both culturally and clinically. I’m particularly drawn to demystifying diagnosis across the spectrum of mental health, and to examining what we’ve been taught to accept as neutral, objective, or inevitable.
I approach this work through an explicitly intersectional lens, informed by disability justice, queer theory, and a deep attentiveness to the harms produced by colonialism and capitalism—especially as they show up in therapeutic spaces. I’m interested in what happens when we slow down, tell the truth more carefully, and refuse frameworks that require people to shrink in order to be understood.
At its core, my goal is not refinement, but reimagining—dismantling the ways the mental health industry keeps people flattened or pathologized, and rebuilding with intention, inclusivity, and respect for the full complexity of human lives.
This is a space for nuance, lived experience, and thoughtful disruption.
About Dr. Danna Bodenheimer
I graduated from Smith College with a degree in women’s studies, where I began developing a critical lens around power, gender, and identity. I later completed a post-baccalaureate in psychology at Columbia University, followed by a Master’s in Social Work from Smith and a doctorate in Clinical Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania.
I have worked as a therapist for over twenty years and have owned and led a group therapy practice in Philadelphia for the past decade. My professional life has included clinical work, organizational leadership, teaching at the university level, and consultation across a range of settings.
My work is informed by long-term engagement with questions of diagnosis, identity, power, and care—particularly as they affect queer, neurodivergent, and marginalized communities. I am especially attentive to how systems shape clinical practice, and to the ways well-intentioned frameworks can unintentionally reproduce harm.
At this stage of my work, I am most interested in depth, alignment, and sustainability—for both people and the systems they move within.
If you’re here, you’re likely already asking careful questions. I see this space as one place where those questions are welcome.
Testimonials