About Underworld Overcoming Therapy

Located in Asheville, North Carolina, Underworld Overcoming Therapy is an outpatient psychotherapy private practice which was founded on April 9th, 2024 by Venyamína ‘Kallista‘ macIvèrra, LCSWA, MSW, QMHP. Kallista macIvèrra has served as a mental health social worker in North Carolina since 2016 and has been a licensed clinical social worker-associate therapist (LCSWA) in North Carolina since 2021. Since she imminently nears completion of her requirements for fully independent clinical licensure in North Carolina, Kallista decided to found her own private practice, Underworld Overcoming Therapy.

Underworld Overcoming Therapy is an outpatient psychotherapy private practice influenced by clinical social work culture and techniques, namely seminal theories such as the Person-in-Environment lens, Person-Centered work, and a more Second Order psychotherapy approach where the therapist collaborates as a formally trained expert on mental health factors, while the client collaborates as an expert of their own lived experience, cultural knowledge & self-knowledge around their own mental health. We are an anti-colonialism minded and intersectionality-attuned practice that works to provide outpatient therapy with a trauma-informed sensitivity related to identity matters. For example, how each person’s experience is unique and often affected by factors like race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, spirituality/creed, environment, community values, personal values, and cultural interpretations of various life issues. We also aim to create a safer space for LGBTQ people where sensitivity to the distinctions between gender identity and gender expression; sexual orientation and romantic orientation; bisexual/pansexual/non-monosexual and monosexual; asexual, grey-ace, and allosexual; among other such concepts, are honored, understood, and heard. We believe that ethically non-monogamous and polyamorous people deserve the same human rights that monogamous people have, and we hold respect for both ethical non-monogamists & monogamists alike here.

We are an appropriate therapeutic level of care for people who would benefit from therapy once per week or less, and generally, can only approve intensive outpatient therapy (twice a week sessions) under exceptional circumstances such as bereavement. Please note that we may have to refer out prospective clients whose therapy needs fall out of our appropriate scope of practice, such as when someone’s recent history of active suicidality or homicidality, or of early/prodromal or florid, independence-disabling psychosis, suggest that we may not be the best fit for someone. However, we provide free 15-minute consultations for both prospective clients with whom we can go ahead with an intake session, and prospective clients who we assess would be best served somewhere else more appropriate to the situation.

If you are interested in becoming a client of Underworld Overcoming Therapy, or are considering UOT’s services for another, the following information may be of assistance. Kallista macIvèrra, LCSWA MSW QMHP (she/her) is a clinical social work associate therapist who specializes in trauma recovery, general mood difficulties, major life transitions of various kinds, gender transitions, social adaptivity, executive functioning, and intersectional identity & community issues, among other topics. Kallista’s primary therapy modalities include Psychodynamic Therapy, ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy), and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. These therapy modalities are all geared towards building up a flexible toolkit of techniques & strategies for coping with life’s ups, downs, joys, and stressors; restoring emotional equilibrium through talk therapy which follows a progressive, non-linear, semi-structured timeline (“recovery is non-linear“); building an authentic & effective therapist-client bond, the processing & regulating of difficult emotions, conceptualizing new & different ways to think in general as well as being aware of mental tendencies humans can have, cultivating one’s sense of values, mindfulness, self-awareness, and putting these into practice.

Kallista brings a warm-hearted, silly yet serious demeanor combined with a cool head and a socioculturally attuned intuition to her work with others. Please note that her Psychodynamic Therapy and DBT perspective means that in cases of trauma treatment, she finds it important to discuss traumatic content in a limited fashion at first while someone’s coping skill toolkit is still in the earlier process of being fleshed out and practiced, but that deeper discussion of traumatic content may be indicated later in the therapy process at an advanced stage of progress. She is passionate about supporting her clients through life’s difficulties.