Emily Saltzman, MSW, LGSW

About

  • Pronouns: she/her/hers

  • Occupation and Specialty: Social Worker and Educator

  • Location (Clinic/hospital): Aviva Therapy Collaborative

  • Location (City): Telehealth only

  • Offers Telehealth: Yes

  • Contact Information: https://www.therapyden.com/therapist/emily-saltzman

  • Bio: Hi! I'm Emily Saltzman, MSW, LGSW a social worker and educator. My practice focuses on building a therapeutic connection with you where you are the expert of your own experience. We will move at your own pace to discuss past experiences, current challenges, and envision future possibilities. I utilize a feminist, anti-oppressive, intersectional, and systemic approach to therapy. I love working with folks exploring various life transitions, challenges, grief, and identity exploration. As a queer person myself, I love working with LGBTQ+ folks in various ways and support all types of relationship structures and partnerships. I also understand the deep journey of losing a loved one and the complexity of anticipatory grief and ambiguous loss. I identify as a fat tomboy femme and use a fat liberation perspective in therapy. I am dedicated to creating a therapeutic space for all bodies as we show up in the moment. I come from a background of community organizing, political activism, and sexuality education, which influences my approach. I take this work seriously while also bringing humor and laughter into our sessions to connect and build together. When I’m not at work, catch me learning a new 90s rock anthem on the drums or nerding out about my crystal collection. Please email me to set up a free intro call to figure out if we're a good match for working together. I'm happy to talk through how insurance works for therapy services and what a sliding scale fee would look like as well.

Approach to care

  • What does it look like for you to provide care to patients in larger bodies? How is, or isn’t, your approach different from how you care for patients in smaller bodies? If you work with children, how is or isn’t your approach different when working with children?

    I work with folks who are 18+ and everyone's journey is unique. For someone who has been in a larger body their whole life, their story may differ from someone who has been in a larger body for a shorter time. I try to honor everyone's unique perspective and tease out their narrative. We all have body stories and my hope is that through a therapeutic alliance and a fat liberation perspective, I can provide an intersectional space to talk about desire, motivation, relationships, and challenges. Sometimes being a fat person in therapy it can be difficult to talk about our bodies if our therapist is not also fat. Additionally, if our fat therapist is not coming from a fat-positive framework or body-neutral perspective, it can be even more harmful. I strive to create an environment that is supportive of the reality of living in a fat body that is not forcing us to constantly change that.

  • What is your perspective on how weight is or is not related to health?

    From a mental health perspective, weight and weight stigma is often used to predict worth, access to care, or desire. My approach to therapy is to challenge that notion, rewrite these scripts, and place shame and blame where it deserves, on the systems - not the people. Our bodies are sacred. Our bodies are desired.

  • Finish this sentence: “Fat people are…” 

    Fat people are multi-faceted!

  • How do you, your clinic, and the healthcare system you work in use BMI (i.e BMI cutoffs for accessing certain services, BMI on charts and printouts, etc)? Is this flexible?

    n/a

  • If a patient declines to be weighed, how do you and/or your staff proceed?

    n/a

  • If a patient declines to discuss weight loss, nutrition, and/or exercise, how do you proceed?

    n/a

  • Do you offer weight loss as a service, and if so, how much of your practice is this? What do you do if a patient requests your assistance with losing weight?

    I do not offer this service.

  • What does the physical accessibility of your office space look like? What kinds of accommodations are present for people in larger bodies? Are there things you wish were in place that are currently not? 

    I provide all sessions via telehealth.

  • What do you do to allow fat people to feel comfortable and welcome in your office? 

    I'm a friendly presence! And also, all my sessions are via telehealth.

  • If you’d like to use this space to talk about any identities (gender, race, size, sexuality, etc.) you hold and how this relates to your care, please do so. 

    I identify as a fat queer tomboy femme and have a lot of experience traversing the queer community with these identities in a variety of U.S. cities. I'm also an Ashkenazi antizionist Jew and would love to work with any Jewish fat folks that are in the process of unlearning Zionism and would like a space to hold this complexity.

Profile last updated November 2026