Mental Health Influencer
Gretchen Winterkorn hosts a popular TikTok channel @RealLiveHumanTherapist where she shares how she uses her skills as a therapist to grow and change in her personal life. Ideas about use of self, integrating AI with mental health, a changing landscape of neurodivergence as it relates to psychotherapeutic thought and more are the focus of her content.
My Story
I have been honored to provide therapy and see the ways in which this deeply transformative process impacts my clients lives for over 17 years. I have also longed to share my story as well. After moving to the Hudson Valley in 2019, I began writing, growing flowers and nurturing my creative self alongside my work as a therapist. I stumbled into going viral on TikTok in October of 2023 while trying to create a YouTube channel called Gretchen’s World. Since then, I’ve been sharing how I work on myself and think about life through my channel. It’s been a healing process of centering my experience as a person who has spent her life centering others’ experiences. In doing so I question some of the norms and values of therapeutic culture. I also invite others to see me as human alongside being a therapist, something I believe is essential to the profession, especially as AI starts to integrate into mental health.
My Therapeutic Background
I have spent over 20 years of my life in my own psychotherapy, including 9 years in psychoanalysis and believe this is as formative as my clinical training and experience on how I work and my ability to show up as a whole person therapist. I have spent the last 12 years in private practice, founded Winterkorn Counseling & Psychotherapy in Tribeca where I led a team of 7 therapists in my relational style for 4 years before moving to the Hudson Valley. I trained analytically with a focus on feminist, anti-racist relational theories and thinking at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in New York, first completing their two year program in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and then their 4 year intensive Psychoanalytic Program, holding certificates in both. I went to the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College to earn my Master’s in Social Work and spent 3 years post graduation in clinical supervision to gain my License in Clinical Social Work. Over 17 years I have worked clinically with clients in a number of settings, including founding and leading the H.E.L.P program at VillageCare Health Center in New York.
