Meet Essy Hart (They/She)
I’m Essy, the heart behind Third Object. My work lives where creativity, spirituality, and mental health meet. I help people reconnect with each other, themselves and the larger community. I hold a deep belief that traditional therapy is a colonial construct, and that our liberation is bound to the collective. I am deeply aware of the psychological impact of living in divided, conflicted and complicated times. I believe that we all have opportunities to invest in community, and I use my practice to turn people toward each other and the larger world at their own pace. Beyond my work in mental health and healing, I am an abstract painter, indie musician, writer and performer. I hold three master’s degrees, ranging from Marriage and Family Therapy to studies centered on holy land conflicts and the spiritual and cultural impact of global colonization. I believe in liberation of the individual through participation, and our essential and ancestral bond with the earth. My practice is built on the belief that therapy is not about fixing brokenness — it’s about remembering wholeness.
My Story
Rooted in Liberation and Creativity
My path to becoming a therapist wasn’t linear. I have lived between disciplines and have grown to this work through a life deeply lived. I was a subway musician in my twenties, witnessing people on their daily commutes in New York City and studying the human condition. I became a touring musician, meeting people across party lines, across identities and across state lines. I shifted to painting during divinity school and have deepened my voice in artmaking over the past decade. I have created coursework for UCLA, preached at Unitarian Churches throughout California, and continue to make music when called. My family and friends always joked that I would become a therapist one day, but I knew I needed to be ready to work with people in this way. When I came to this work, I came to it fully formed, with a unique perspective and a willingness to face shadow.
My Therapeutic Lens
My practice is guided by:
Liberation Psychology – understanding how systems of power shape our inner lives.
Queer-Affirming Care – centering LGBTQIA2S+ voices and experiences.
Understanding creativity as the baseline for human experience – cooking, walking, talking, and structuring life - all human acts are creative acts.
Spiritual Curiosity – honoring all faiths, all doubts, and all personal journeys.
I work with artists, activists, families, traditional and non traditional relationships, queer and trans people, and those healing from high-control religions. Our sessions are spaces full of curiosity, humor, integrity, and co-creation.
Beyond Therapy
I am a musician, writer, and painter, creating work that explores death, time, queerness, friction, storytelling and integration. My creative practice and therapeutic work inform each other deeply.
My Philosophy
Decolonizing the Inner World
I believe that some of what we call mental illness is the lived impact of a colonized approach to the world. Depression is a sane response to a world ruled by systems of harm. In my work decolonization means:
• Reclaiming the body as a site of wisdom
• Restoring creativity as a collective and ancestral right
• Questioning narratives of productivity, perfection, and punishment
• Honoring the collective heartbreak endured when we live into and within systems that generate harm.
When we center creativity and community building, therapy becomes more than coping, it becomes a reimagining of life itself.
My Therapeutic Approach
My work is collaborative, queer-affirming, and grounded in liberation psychology. Together, we look at the internal and external systems that shape your life, religious, cultural, familial, economic, and begin to question them gently, creatively, and without shame.
In our sessions, we may:
Use art-making to access the subconscious and express what words can’t hold
Explore how power, identity, and spirituality shape your inner world
Connect with ancestral and cultural sources of resilience
Practice embodiment and imagination as acts of freedom
You don’t have to choose between talking and creating, both are welcome here.
Who I Work With
My goal is to create a space where complex identities are celebrated, not pathologized, where healing is allowed to be political, sensual, and creative all at once. I work primarily with:
Queer, trans, and nonbinary individuals
Artists, writers, and creative professionals
People deconstructing or recovering from high-control religions
Adults navigating grief, identity transformation, or creative burnout
Spiritual seekers and skeptics looking to reconnect with meaning in a post-religious life
People and couples struggling with communication and connection in relational experiences
People with attachment trauma that divorces them from a collective experience of life, and who need time to slowly develop relational health and emotional management skills
The Meaning of “Third Object”
Where Two People Meet, Art Happens
The name Third Object is taken directly from art therapy praxis, where the art is understood as a third object in the room with the client and therapist. In my work, I understand the third object more expansively as: :
The artwork created in or out of session
The story we uncover together
The new understanding that appears between us
The Third Object is the living, evolving product of our work — something neither of us could have made alone. That’s where I love to work: in the relational space, where new possibilities emerge.
Something to Reflect On
Healing isn’t linear, and it isn’t solitary. It’s an unfolding — between you, me, the art, and everything that moves through us. My role is to hold space for that unfolding: the beauty, the mess, the mystery. Ideally, our work invites you to turn towards others, or to turn more deeply towards your own work in the world.
Together, we’ll listen for the story that wants to be told — and create the art that only you can make.