Working with MacKenzie

510-394-4679
mackenzie @ metaphortherapy.org

Availability

Self-pay and out-of-network insurance slots for families: Closed
Self-pay and out-of-network insurance slots for individuals/couples: Closed
Reduced fee slots: Full

Scheduling

MacKenzie teaches full time and is in part-time practice seeing 6-8 clients a week. She does not have weekend or evening availability for individual or couples clients.

MacKenzie prioritizes in-person work but offers phone and video sessions. Many clients choose a hybrid of in-person and telehealth work. Masks are requested in the office regardless of vaccination status.

Self-Pay Clients

MacKenzie's fee is $190 for a 50-minute individual or partners session and $349 for a 75-minute partners or family session. This cash rate includes a 20% prompt payment discount.

For self-pay clients, MacKenzie offers a complimentary 20-minute consultation for you to get to know each other and to ensure a good fit for ongoing sessions.

Insurance Clients

MacKenzie is an out of network provider for all insurance plans, including Cigna, United Behavioral Health, and Blue Cross. Her services are billed at her usual and customary rate of $237 for a 50-minute individual session. Full payment for visits is required at time of service. Metaphor Therapy's office handles billing as a courtesy to the client, and the client will receive insurance reimbursement directly for the insurance share of cost, if any.

Please note that regardless of whether insurance pays or not, the client is ultimately responsible for the entire cost of the visit.

Begin the insurance verification process for family therapy

Reduced Fees

MacKenzie holds a number of slots for $119 50-minute individual sessions, 50% of her usual fee. She does not offer a reduced fee for partners or family therapy. Superbills and insurance billing are not available for reduced fee sessions. These slots are noted above when available.

MacKenzie Stuart, LMFT offers individual, partners, and family therapy in Alameda, California and online via telehealth. Her detailed fee schedule is below.

Table of Services and Fees - MacKenzie Stuart

About You

MacKenzie works with adults and families from a variety of backgrounds, including:

LGBTQIA2-S people
- Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual, and 2-spirt people are all welcome at Metaphor Therapy
People in ethically nonmonogamous relationships, including polyamorous and open relationships
BDSM/kink practitioners and community members
Sex workers
Fat people and folks of size
COVID-conscious people
People living with chronic depression and suicidality
Mental health professionals, including therapists, social workers, coaches, and peer counselors
Artists, creatives, and small business owners
Families including adults, adolescents, and children, especially those with any of the above backgrounds
People who have historically been left out of therapeutic healing due to systemic forces like ableism or racism

About Us

You'll work collaboratively with MacKenzie to craft a treatment plan that makes sense for your goals, budget, and timeline. MacKenzie can work with you on many facets of your life, such as:

Exploring family of origin experiences and how they impact your current relationships
Discovering how your values inform your boundaries and behavior
Navigating the ongoing impact of COVID, disability, or chronic illness on your world
Learning skills to manage your depression, suicidal ideation, and negative experiences
Finding meaningful activities and beloved community
Building the right nonmonogamous/polyamorous relationship for you, your partner(s), and your metamours
Creating rituals to honor big and small moments in your life
Whatever you feel would most benefit you

How MacKenzie Works

MacKenzie is an eclectic, strengths-based psychotherapist. She draws from a wide variety of theoretical orientations and intervention styles to help you find what works best for you.

Psychodynamic
Explore how your past experiences create and shape your present ones

Creative and Expressive
Pull a tarot card or create a collage to tap into your intuition

Skills-based
Learn and practice tools from evidence-based practices like nonviolent communicaiton, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy

Enneagram
Learn about 9 types of personality and see how they play out in your life

EMDR and BLS
Process negative experiences with EMDR, the flash technique, and bilateral stimulation

Biofeedback
Use HeartMath technology to learn about what's happening in your body in the moment

COVID-Conscious Therapy

As the weeks, months, and years pass, maintaining COVID protections has become increasingly isolating or demoralizing. As the world pushes to treat COVID as something in the past, MacKenzie has seen relational stresses, loneliness, and despair increase in her clients and communities. MacKenzie has experience in supporting clients in navigating the relational and personal aspects of the pandemic.

While not all of MacKenzie's clients are COVID-conscious, many who are have expressed curiosity about MacKenzie's own protections. MacKenzie has health conditions that place her at risk of COVID complications, necessitating higher than average protections over the past several years.

MacKenzie's office is set up for those who need to be COVID-conscious, which means there is a high degree of air circulation/cleaning and masking is requested for in-person sessions. She can NAAT (Nucleic Acid Amplification Test) before sessions or provide N95s upon request. Her office has HEPA air filtration and ventilation to keep the CO2 levels in the space below 750ppm. For clients who find masking interferes with their experience of therapy, often due to a need for more facial real estate for reading relational cues, MacKenzie offers phone and video therapy, as well as outdoor walk-and-talk sessions (weather permitting).

Outside of work, MacKenzie uses a mix of masking, air cleaning, communal testing with NAATs, wastewater tracking, nasal sprays like virX, CPC mouthwashes, lifestyle modifications (hanging out with people with similar protections in place, no indoor dining, etc.) and outdoor gathering for "swiss cheese" protections.

Commitment to Inclusive Therapy

In all aspects of her life, including your work together, MacKenzie commits to communicating without reinforcing systems of oppression.

MacKenzie will accept and support you regardless of what you say or do. She won't judge you for consensual expressions of your identity or sexuality. She won't judge you for your mistakes. MacKenzie believes being accepted as you are creates a safe enough space from which to move toward growth. MacKenzie is attuned to the dynamics of oppression, privilege, and systemic power structures, understanding their intricate intersections in our lives. She is committed to work that weakens these systems of domination and fosters empowerment as you heal and grow.

About MacKenzie

MacKenzie is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She teaches in MA-level counseling psychology programs full time. As a member of core faculty at The Wright Institute, MacKenzie especially loves teaching courses on psychopharmacology, biological bases of behavior, and diagnosis. She is also an adjunct professor at Dominican University of California, University of San Francisco, Saint Mary's College of California, Kaiser Permanente School of Allied Health Sciences, and Sentio University.

Outside of academia, MacKenzie serves as CEO and President of Metaphor Therapy, where she sees 6-8 clients clients online and in her Alameda office, provides training, consultation, and supervision, and works with an incredible clinical team. With Jason Brand, LCSW, she co-manages the year-long deliberate practice supervision residency at Sentio Counseling Center and co-facilitates a deliberate practice consultation group.

MacKenzie has participated in mental health care for depression since childhood. She is a queer white cisgender woman with invisible disabilities.

Outside of work, MacKenzie enjoys artistic pursuits in a variety of media, board and video games, and puzzles ranging from nonograms to word ladders. She plays flag football and collects tarot decks.