MEET ALLISON STAIGER, LCSW
Chicago therapist for women who are “fine.”
I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker based in Chicago, practicing throughout Illinois and Louisiana, with over 15 years of experience supporting high-achieving people in helping, healing, and leadership roles. My work focuses on trauma, burnout, identity shifts, grief, and the ongoing tension of trying to show up for others without losing yourself in the process.
For six years, I specialized in perinatal mental health, supporting clients through fertility challenges, pregnancy and infant loss, and postpartum transitions. That work clarified something I see across all areas of my practice: the patterns of self-sacrifice, over-responsibility, and impossible standards that emerge in new parenthood are the same patterns shaping caregiving, leadership, and high achievement more broadly.
That perspective informs everything I do now—supporting clients who are at a threshold: still functioning, still holding it together, but no longer able to unsee the cost of how they’ve been living and leading.
Why I Do This Work:
Because capability can become a trap. The same qualities that make you successful—responsibility, empathy, competence, and care—can become the patterns that exhaust you.
Because overfunctioning is often rewarded before it becomes unsustainable. What looks like strength from the outside can be a long history of carrying too much and needing too little.
Because burnout is rarely just about doing too much. It’s often about losing connection with your own needs, values, and sense of self.
Because coping better isn't always the answer. I’m interested in what becomes possible when you understand your patterns deeply enough to choose differently.
A Different Kind of Burnout Therapy
I show up directly, relationally, and without shaming. I don’t position you as a problem to fix or a project to optimize. I’m paying attention to patterns, context, and systems—but I’m also paying attention to you as a person, not a case.
This is collaborative work. I’m not here to take over your process or push you faster than you can go. I will also not collude with the parts of you that have learned to disappear, perform, or over-explain in order to be okay.
There’s room for honesty, complexity, and humor—because we’re working with your real life, not an ideal version of it.
Burnout Therapy Rooted in Context, Not Self-Blame
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN OUR WORK:
No pathologizing what your environment taught you to do, and what our current world requires.
No pressure to optimize yourself for systems that are exhausting you.
A deeper understanding of why your patterns exist—and whether they still serve you.
Permission to stop performing competence long enough to discover what you actually need.
Therapy that honors both your nervous system and the world and systems you've had to navigate.
A collaborative process of reclaiming a life that feels more connected, sustainable, and colorful.
What Changes When You Work With Me:
You step off the edge of "I can handle it" before it turns into depletion or resentment.
You make decisions from alignment, not obligation or the need to keep everyone else comfortable.
You stop building a life that looks good on paper and start building one you don't need to recover from.
Your life becomes more honest, more textured, more alive — even if it's less polished or impressive from the outside.
You learn to stay with complexity without defaulting to overfunctioning, self-abandonment, or exit.
Why Lousiana?
Although I am a born-and-bred Chicagoan, I spent almost fifteen years living, working, and reveling in New Orleans. I went to grad school at Tulane, got my original LCSW license in Louisiana, and opened up my practice there. I was even one of the first PMH-Cs in the state (very glad that’s changed). When I moved back home to Chicago in 2022, I let my Louisiana license expire, and then last year I thought…”why did I do that?,” and reinstated it.
Although I’ve chosen to return to my roots, I love New Orleans fiercely, and have a great respect for the distinct culture, the spirit(uality), and the people. It’s where I learned about trauma, both formally and implicitly, and how I learned to celebrate life with reverence and respect. I miss living there, but I stay connected to my people, both personal and professional.
So if you live in New Orleans and want a therapist who you won’t run into at the Breaux Mart, but who also knows how to boil crawfish, danced in Muses for five years, and can pronounce Tchoupitoulas, I’m your gal.
Let’s Work Together
Ready to have a consultation call or get started? Fill out this form and I will get back to you within one business day.
