Mary Leighton

My approach

My style is sympathetic and straightforward, and I bring a sense of humor, honesty, and compassion to my sessions. I work with adult clients facing loneliness, interpersonal challenges, and life transitions.

As an existential therapist, I believe no situation is completely hopeless. Questioning something that defines your identity is frightening, whether it is a career, a relationship, your gender, or religious faith. It’s normal to feel stuck or overwhelmed when we are confused or in pain. My role is to walk alongside you.

Areas of focus

I have two main areas of focus. The first is helping academics and other professionals with issues like burnout, imposter syndrome, workplace bullying, and procrastination. The second is working with first and second generation immigrant individuals and families.

Prior to becoming a therapist I was a socio-cultural anthropologist who studied scientific communities and the structure of higher education institutions in the U.S. and in Latin America. There is an urgent need for mental health services for academics beyond college counseling programs for undergraduates. Adjuncts, ABDs, tenure-track faculty, and contingent faculty need these services but also want to avoid running into their students in the waiting room. As a therapist, my goal is to take what I have learnt from studying academics—that the ivory tower is built on depression, anxiety, and untreated trauma—and use it to help individuals survive and flourish in what is often a lonely and unsupportive career. This can involve addressing issues like burnout, anxiety, procrastination, bullying, imposter-syndrome, and fieldwork depression/trauma.

I bring my personal experience as an immigrant to the U.S. to my work as a therapist, but I recognize that my experience of making a life in a new country will not be the same as yours. All our stories are unique. Moving to a new country is a major life event, but it’s also an ongoing process. New issues arise at different life stages, as we build lives that bridge two (or more) cultures. I continue to seek out trauma-informed training in counseling refugees and to educate myself about the immigration histories of the populations with whom I work.

A little about me

I am originally from the UK, but have now lived in the US for twenty years. I came to Chicago for my graduate studies in Socio-Cultural Anthropology and went on to complete an ethnography study of structure and culture of higher education in North and South America. I eventually realized I would be significantly happier helping the people I studied and interviewed, rather than writing articles about them. So I decided to retrain as a therapist who specialized in working with academics. I completed my masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at DePaul University, and joined At Peace Therapy in November 2024.

In my free time I enjoy trying new hobbies and exploring the city of Chicago. You can find out more about me by visiting my website at www.maryleighton.com.