LICENSED CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKER
Saphir Allen Davis
Queer, Trans & Liberation-Centered Art Therapist
Pronouns: They/Them
Licensure: LCSW
Location: Pennsylvania
Languages: English
Accepting New Clients: Yes
Sliding Scale: Yes with out-of-pocket
Insurance: Aetna, BCBS, Carelon, Harvard, Medicaid, NHP, Optum, Tufts, UHC
About Saphir
"Each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling" —Audre Lorde
Welcome! I'm Saphir (they/them), LCSW. I strive to foster a warm space of authenticity, compassion, and intentionality that embraces all of who you are and welcomes all that you may bring, from tears to laughter. I believe you hold the wisdom you need to heal and grow, and it's my honor to accompany you. Moving at your pace, we'll grow an alliance rooted in safety, caring, and trust. I believe therapy holds reparative power as a sandbox to exercise bravery and a model for relationships in our lives. We'll co-create a space that invites your feedback, belief systems, and healing practices. We'll be curious about patterns in your life, honor survival strategies that got you here, and look to new ways of being.
I work with individuals and families of varied experiences and concerns, and I view expressive arts and therapy through a trauma-informed, liberatory, and harm-reductionist lens. I am community-minded, relational, and holistic in my approach. As an art therapist, I'm inspired by play and nature, and I believe art is an act of resistance. Imagination is a resource always at our disposal to find meaning, empowerment, and connection. Together, we'll discover resources and tools that fit your strengths and needs for safely exploring emotions, building self-awareness, navigating transitions, managing stressors, and addressing traumas.
I'm a Black, queer, trans-nonbinary, neurodivergent person with chronic illness. My lived experience and clinical knowledge inform my passion for access to culturally responsive, intersectional care. I commit to advocating for you and holding sex- and body-positive space free of judgment and rooted in liberation. I'm informed by social justice, feminist, and anti-oppressive frameworks, and am invested in naming the ways that power, privilege, and systems of oppression affect mental health for all of us. Together, we can explore ways of unlearning, resisting, resting, and healing from oppressive narratives.
Specialties
Trauma/PTSD
Anxiety
Depression
Supporting neurodivergence (autism and ADHD)
Life transitions
Executive dysfunction
Spirituality
Family conflict
Sociopolitical stress
Areas of Focus
Individuals
Couples & relationships
Families
Groups
Queer and trans communities
Neurodivergent individuals (ADHD & autism)
Artists, creatives, and expressive practitioners
People navigating burnout and chronic stress
Black, racialized, and marginalized communities
Individuals processing trauma and identity-based harm
People exploring spirituality, embodiment, and self-definition
Clients navigating grief, transition, or major life change
Community-centered and liberation-oriented healing work
Individuals seeking expressive arts and nontraditional therapeutic approaches
Modalities
Art therapy
Person-centered
Relational-cultural
Strengths-based
Psychodynamic
Mindfulness
Ecotherapy
Attachment theory
ACT
CBT
DBT
Trauma-focused
Lived Identity
and Experience
Black
Trans-nonbinary
ADHD
Chronic pain/illness
Lived experience of housing and food insecurity
Raised in Muslim faith
Why I Do This Work
“Art, storytelling, and imagination have always helped people survive impossible things. I believe healing begins when we are given space to feel, create, remember, and exist more fully as ourselves.”
- Saphir Allen Davis
My Approach in Practice
I approach therapy with the understanding that many survival strategies begin as acts of protection. What may feel overwhelming, disconnected, guarded, or difficult to explain today often developed in response to environments that demanded adaptation, vigilance, or self-erasure. Rather than treating these responses as failures, I see them as meaningful parts of a person’s story.
My work is grounded in expressive arts, relational healing, and liberation-centered care. I believe healing can happen through conversation, creativity, reflection, imagination, humor, grief, movement, and rest. Together, we build space to notice what has been carried for too long and explore what safety, connection, and self-trust might look like now.
I work collaboratively and at a pace that honors your nervous system, lived experiences, and capacity. I am especially mindful of how systems such as racism, transphobia, ableism, chronic stress, family dynamics, and spiritual harm can shape how people move through the world and relate to themselves.
As a Black, queer, trans-nonbinary, neurodivergent person living with chronic illness, I bring both clinical training and lived understanding into the room. I strive to create a space that feels grounded, compassionate, curious, and human. A space where you do not need to perform healing, justify your pain, or arrive with everything figured out before being worthy of care.
What Clients Often Come to Me For
People often reach out when life feels heavy, layered, or difficult to put into words.
Reconnecting with yourself after survival mode
Some clients come feeling emotionally distant from themselves after years of surviving instability, masking, caregiving, burnout, or constantly adapting to others. Our work focuses on creating enough safety to reconnect with your emotions, identity, creativity, body, and inner world without shame or pressure to “have it all figured out.”
Queer, trans, neurodivergent, and liberation-centered care
I work with many clients navigating identity, embodiment, visibility, belonging, chronic illness, neurodivergence, and systems that have impacted their sense of safety or self-worth. Therapy can become a space where you are not asked to shrink, explain, defend, or translate your existence in order to be supported.
Expressive and creative approaches to healing
Sometimes experiences live beyond language. I integrate expressive arts, imagination, storytelling, symbolism, and reflective practices for clients who want support processing emotions in ways that feel more intuitive, embodied, creative, or expansive than conversation alone.
Our work focuses on making sense of what you have lived through while supporting you in building clarity, resilience, and self-trust in ways that fit your life and values.