Focus Areas
Complex Trauma (C-PTSD)
Not all trauma comes from a single event.
Sometimes it develops over years spent in relationships or environments where safety meant learning to read the room, keep the peace, and brace for what might come next.
Even after those experiences end, your mind and body may still respond as though the danger is present. You may overthink, struggle to trust yourself, feel numb and disconnected, or have difficulty setting boundaries.
These responses aren’t random. They tell the story of how you learned to survive.
Recovery isn’t about “getting over” these parts of your story. It’s about understanding how they’ve shaped you, experiencing safety in new ways, and building a life rooted in self-trust, secure relationships, and choice.
Together, we’ll honor what you’ve lived through while creating room for a life no longer shaped by survival alone.
Family Dysfunction
The relationships we experience early in life shape the way we see ourselves, others, and the world around us.
Family dysfunction isn't limited to your relationship with your parents. It can also involve grandparents, siblings, extended family members, caregivers, or the roles and expectations within your family system itself.
When those relationships are marked by inconsistency, criticism, emotional neglect, unhealthy boundaries, or other painful family dynamics, we often learn to adapt in ways that help us survive. We become the peacekeeper, the perfectionist, the people-pleaser, the caregiver, or the one who learns not to need anything at all.
These patterns aren't signs that something is wrong with you. They're evidence of the ways you learned to adapt in order to feel safe and connected.
For many women, these adaptations become strengths that others admire. You're dependable. Responsible. Accomplished. The one everyone can count on. Yet beneath the surface, those same patterns often come at the expense of your own needs, your relationships, and your sense of self.
As an adult, you may struggle to trust others, fear being abandoned or rejected, lose yourself in relationships, or feel responsible for everyone else's needs while overlooking your own. You may even find yourself repeating relationship patterns you promised yourself you'd never return to, wondering why it keeps happening.
As we uncover how your earliest relationships continue to shape your life today, those patterns will become clearer, giving you the opportunity to respond mindfully and with newfound clarity.
Our work isn't about blaming your family or rewriting your past. It's about understanding how your experiences have shaped you so you can begin building relationships rooted in safety, trust, healthy boundaries, and secure connection.
Because the ways you learned to survive early in life don't have to define how you relate for the rest of your life.
Chronic Stress/Autoimmune Disease
Survival mode was never meant to be a long-term way of living.
Many women who find me are navigating the demands of everyday life while living in a body that feels like it's working against them. Alongside the emotional weight they carry, many are also living with chronic pain, autoimmune conditions, or other health concerns that can make daily life even more challenging.
From the outside, it may look like you're holding everything together.
On the inside, your nervous system has been working hard to protect you for far longer than it was ever meant to.
When stress and survival become a way of life, the burden is often felt not only emotionally, but physically as well.
While therapy cannot treat autoimmune disease or chronic illness, it can help lessen the burden that chronic stress and unresolved trauma place on your nervous system and overall well-being.
We'll explore how your nervous system adapted to help you survive. As we process those experiences, you'll begin discovering that survival mode is no longer the only way forward.
As your nervous system begins to settle, many women start relating to their bodies differently. Instead of something to fear or fight, their bodies become something they can understand, trust, and care for again.
Your body isn't a problem to solve.
It's part of your story, worthy of being listened to and understood.
Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI)
For many women, self-harm is one of the hardest parts of their story to say out loud.
It often carries layers of shame, secrecy, and fear of what someone might think if they knew.
If this is part of your story, I want you to know something first.
You're not alone.
Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is often a way of coping with emotional pain that feels too overwhelming, too confusing, or too difficult to put into words. For many people, it's not about wanting to die. It's about trying to survive.
That doesn't mean it's something you have to continue carrying on your own.
Therapy offers a place where we can talk openly about self-harm without judgment or shame. We'll work to understand what it has meant for you, what it has helped you cope with, and what needs it has been trying to meet.
Together, we'll begin building new ways of responding to distress while honoring that these behaviors developed for a reason.
Your safety will always matter.
For some women, self-harm may exist alongside passive thoughts of not wanting to wake up tomorrow or wishing the pain of existing could simply stop. For others, it may not. Self-harm, passive suicidal thoughts, and suicidal intent are different experiences, and we'll thoughtfully explore yours without making assumptions.
We'll regularly check in about your safety, create a plan together when it's needed, and make decisions collaboratively whenever possible to ensure you receive the level of care and support that's right for you.
You don't have to hide this part of your story.
It deserves to be met with honesty, compassion, and care.
If you feel you are in active danger and/or at risk of harming yourself, please seek immediate support by visiting your nearest Emergency Room or contacting the 988 Lifeline by calling or texting 988 or visiting the website at https://988lifeline.org.
Grief and Loss
Grief isn't limited to the loss of someone you love.
Sometimes it's the loss of the childhood you deserved but never had. The family you wished for. The relationship you hoped would change. The marriage that ended. The life you thought you would have.
And sometimes, grief and trauma exist together, making it difficult to know where one ends and the other begins.
You may be grieving the death of someone you loved while also carrying the weight of a complicated relationship with them.
You may be mourning the end of an abusive relationship while questioning whether leaving was the right choice.
You may be grieving a parent who is still living but has never been emotionally available in the ways you needed.
Or perhaps you're grieving the parts of yourself that were lost while you were simply trying to survive.
Grief doesn't always move in a straight line.
It can look like sadness, anger, relief, guilt, longing, confusion, or even numbness. All these experiences are valid.
Together, we'll create space to honor what has been lost without rushing you toward acceptance or asking you to "move on."
Instead, we'll make room for grief and hope to coexist, recognizing that each has a place in your story.
Grief doesn't ask you to forget. It asks for space to be witnessed, honored, and gently carried.
Faith Deconstruction & Reconstruction
There are seasons of life when the questions seem to outnumber the answers.
Sometimes the hardest questions aren't the ones you ask about yourself.
They're the ones you find yourself asking about God.
Perhaps faith was once a source of comfort and belonging. Or perhaps it became intertwined with fear, shame, control, and silence.
You may be wrestling with the beliefs you were taught, grieving the faith community you lost, questioning what you've always believed, or wondering if there's still room for both your story and your faith.
For others, experiences of abuse, family dysfunction, or spiritual harm have made it difficult to trust not only people, but God as well.
These questions don't mean there's something wrong with you.
They're often a natural response to experiences that no longer fit the beliefs, expectations, or understanding you once had.
Therapy offers a space where your questions can be explored openly and without judgment.
We'll hold space for curiosity, grief, doubt, anger, and hope without pressure to arrive at a particular conclusion.
Whether you're deconstructing your faith, reconstructing it, or simply trying to understand where you are today, you'll be met with respect and compassion.
My role isn't to tell you what your faith should look like.
It's to walk alongside you as you discover what is true, meaningful, and life-giving for you.