Kat Zwick’s psychotherapy business was first founded in Santa Cruz, CA many years ago. All services transitioned to Telehealth during the COVID pandemic in 2020. Kat Zwick relocated back to Chicago, IL, and will soon be able to offer in-person groups in Chicago while maintaining a dedicated Telehealth practice for the Greater Santa Cruz area. Kat holds clinical licenses in both States.

living in balance & sharing what we learn and feel

Ride The Wave Recovery stands for the capacity of every person to experience joy in their lives, in hardship, and to be in the flow, riding the undulating, unpredictable, immeasurably awe-inspiring wave of life while dialectically knowing, perceiving and grappling with challenging realities and oppressive systems that affect all of us, that need to change, and the liberation from which may be a lifelong process inviting daily work, play, rest, struggle, skillfulness, honesty and non-conformity, individually and within community.

Ride The Wave Recovery invites a willingness to listen and share, find creative, individualized ways towards change, find personal intuition and wisdom in balance with community needs and input, and an openness to the idea that together we can do what we could never do alone.

We specialize in helping clients of diverse genders, sexualities, races, ethnicities and other minoritized realities recovering from or having recovered from eating disorders, substance misuse, compulsive behaviors, and dysfunctional relational patterns find balance, joy, presence and fulfilling lives. We additionally are a neurodivergent affirming practice and some of our services directly assist neurodivergent individuals with executive functioning challenges in supportive and strengths-based ways. Ride The Wave Recovery is committed to group psychotherapy services, including skills groups and process groups, as part of our mission is to live the value that healing and learning happen in relationships and community.

Ride The Wave Recovery additionally is committed to teaching, training, supervision and consulting and has always included these aspects as part of its business initiatives and mission. Kat Zwick was and is privileged to be mentored, educated, trained and supervised by many people for decades, both in clinical and organizational/business practices, and they are called to pass on and share knowledge, to grapple with complexity with others, and to be in community with those who are passionate about their work, as well.

ride the wave...

Ride the wave is an expression that reminds us that sorrow, pain, happiness, triggers, relapses, slips, high highs, low lows, and everything in-between need not be waves that consume us, overtake us, define us, or drown us; rather we can gently and skillfully navigate the challenging and stormy and calm waves of our lives from the surface, as if on a psychological surfboard, with the help of our Wise Mind, or Self, or inner Source keeping us afloat. Or we can dive in and ride from within, as well, observing and describing our emotion rather than being controlled by it, even as we experience it deeply. The only constant is change… Ride the wave.

In recovery, above all, we have options, and remembering we have options helps us ride the wave. 

more on our ethic of care…

diversity & inclusion

RtW provides its therapeutic services to a diverse community of those moving forward in their lives; we proudly serve trans, non-binary, and gender expansive clients, clients of various sexual orientations and abilities, and a wide array of cultural, economic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Our staff and those we provide consultation and supervision services to and receive consultation services from includes those with a variety of racial, ethnic, nationality, gender, sexuality, neurotype and socioeconomic realities.

We at RtW look at and engage actively with the impact that covert and overt oppressive systems have on individual mental health and relationship health for those we treat. 

We seek to acknowledge the authority role we occupy as clinicians, supervisors and managers and strive to be open to seeing the ways in which this intersects with our various identities, whether covert or overt.

We, imperfectly and humanly, help make speakable the impact these aspects may have on our clients and on the therapeutic relationship. 

We, imperfectly and humanly, actively share power with our clients and assist clients in stepping into their own power, both in therapy and in their lives outside therapy. 

We understand that the dominant culture centers whiteness, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, cis-maleness, heterosexuality, neurotypicality, able bodies and minds, thinness, youth, non-consensual domination, and the acquistion and hoarding of wealth, and we therefore seek to center, imperfectly and humanly, in our ethic of care populations, people, and realities - which include some of the realities of our staff, present and past - typically relegated to the margins of the sociopolitical and bodily experience in this country.

We also center, imperfectly and humanly, accountability regarding ways any one of us may embody dominant and oppressive cultural narratives in the care space.

We also know no statement on a website proves this. And dialectically we can also not be silent on this ethic.

our common wellness, justice & equity

RtW believes that our collective wellness has a direct impact on our community's health and our individual mental health. RtW is committed to contributing, through albeit modest financial philanthropy, to organizations and causes that promote the public good, our common welfare, common well-being, and common justice. RtW particularly centers Black, Indigenous, Trans, Gender Nonconfiming communities in its modest charitable donations.

Please feel free to ask the owner what organizations and causes RtW makes contributions to, in accordance with this mission. As of late 2022: because we intentionally moved back to a smaller solo practice, our contributions are smaller than what they used to be!

Additionally, RtW is committed to offering sliding scale services to clients in need and reserves sliding scale spots in all groups and on all clinician caseloads.

land acknowledgment

Our business address in Santa Cruz, and where Ride The Wave Recovery began, sits on the unceded territory of the Awaswas, one of the eight divisions of the Ohlone people. Their descendants are known today as the Amah-Mutsun Tribal Band. You can learn more about their conservation efforts that continue to this day and consider a donation HERE.

Chicago is situated on the unceded homelands of Council of Three Fires - Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa Nations, as well as other Indigenous nations, including the Ho-Chunk, Miami, Menominee, and Sac and Fox, Peoria, Kaskaskia, Wea, Kickapoo, and Mascouten. Consider donating to the Potawatomi Nation or an Indigenous Nation of your choice here.

We honor the history that precedes us, we are grateful for the opportunity to work and live here and offer healing and relationship to clients and each other, on these indigenous peoples’ traditional homelands.

Please join us in taking a moment of silence to pay respect to all Indigenous people past, present and future.