Online help for helpers

Doing therapy is hard work, especially if you are a Highly Sensitive Therapist (HST) yourself or if your own family history feels like it’s coming up in response to the content of your sessions. Your own empathy and deep processing help you in so many ways, but sometimes the emotional content of your work feels like it stays stuck in your body and mind even after work is over.

Finding a therapist as a therapist can feel challenging. And even when you do find someone, there’s a good chance that your therapy session will just turn into shop talk and feel more like supervision than like your own time to process and heal. Or maybe you’ve felt that weird energy show up in the room- that sense of imposter syndrome or the comparison trap. You need a therapist who can hold the space for you to just be a client where the focus stays on you and your needs.

I work with highly sensitive therapists, therapists experiencing grief and loss, therapists with childhood trauma, and therapists navigating secondary trauma. According to research cited by Diane Gehart (who is a fascinating author and trainer), over half of mental health professionals are struggling with their own mental health issues, and 37% of therapists plan to leave the field in the next 5 years.

Highly Sensitive Therapists

Your sensitivity is probably what got you into this career path in the first place. Being a healer probably felt like a natural use of your intuition, depth of processing, and caring heart. But the reality has been different. Agency work feels totally overwhelming with the huge client loads, paperwork demands, and lack of respect for humanity- both yours and your clients’. Private practice often doesn’t feel much easier between keeping up with business regulations, marketing yourself, and getting all your documentation done.

I help highly sensitive therapists to navigate the parts of this work that tend to be more difficult for HSTs. Whether you’re overwhelmed by the business and financial side of your practice, struggle to disengage from work at the end of the day, or feel deeply impacted by your clients’ emotions, I’ll help you to regulate your nervous system, ground yourself in your intuition, and manage your internal and external boundaries.

Therapists Experiencing Grief and Loss

Whether you’ve lost a pet, a family member, or a client, grief often feels like one of the hardest situations to navigate as a therapist. All your training and understanding of the process doesn’t help when you’re faced with your own loss.

Losing a client is a unique kind of pain. Often, you don’t find out until they’ve missed appointments and you reach out to hear that they’re gone. Coupled with the emotional pain of your loss, you may also start to worry that there was something you could have done to prevent their death, especially if they died by suicide. And you don’t get to participate in the usual grief closure rituals like funerals and public mourning.

I help grieving therapists process their loss, determine whether or not to take bereavement leave, and give space to fully grieve. We’ll create space for you to honor your loss, work through the somatic and psychological pain, and develop your unique grieving rituals to support you both now and at the anniversaries of your loss.

Therapists with Childhood Traumas

Being a therapist doesn’t give you a free pass from working on your own stuff, and you probably know that better than most people. Even if you’re trained in trauma, it’s hard to work through your own past memories on your own. You want to process your family history, current relational issues, and trauma triggers.

I help therapists with childhood trauma to explore and reprocess their traumatic memories, heal relational wounds, and feel fully integrated holistically between mind and body. I use Somatic and Attachment Focused EMDR as well as integrated psychodynamic techniques to help you go deeper into your inner world.

Therapists with Secondary Trauma

You have been noticing the signs for a while now, and it’s to the point where you find yourself dreaming of leaving the field. You know it’s bad when you start to feel jealous of the people around you, that their jobs seem so much less emotionally intense and they’re not feeling traumatized by what they hear and see. You’ve started to feel relieved when new consults don’t call back or when regular clients cancel because that’s one more person’s stuff off your shoulders.

I help therapists navigate burnout and secondary trauma so you can create a practice that will sustain you in the long term. We’ll address your secondary trauma and identify the internal boundaries that will protect you from being retraumatized by clients’ experiences. I’ll help you navigate your burnout and support you through either reshaping your practice so it feels sustainable or through a career transition as you discover a new direction for yourself.

Therapy for therapists puts you in the center

As a therapist, most of your relationships are one sided with you supporting your clients. That dynamic can spill over into other areas of your life, leaving you with one sided friendships, feeling like you’re parenting your partner, and stuck with that nagging feeling that nobody cares for you like you care about them.

It can feel super uncomfortable being in the other seat. But the healing is worth the work, and your efforts will create new dynamics in your other relationships as well.

Are you ready to get started?

Let’s talk. Contact me here or send me an email and we’ll schedule a 15 minute consultation. We’ll talk about what you need and what you’re looking for from therapy, I’ll share about how I work, and we’ll decide together if I’ll be a good fit for your needs.

Still thinking about it? Learn more about me here, or read how I help HSPs and use EMDR in session. Or check out my FAQ and my blog to get the details on how I work.

Sliding scale therapy available only for therapists

Student Rate: I accept up to 2 very low fee spots under $100 only for students currently in their degree program.

Therapist Rate: I hold 2 spots at the $100-155 range and 2 spots at the $155-225 range for prelicensed and licensed therapists.

Sliding scale fees are on the honor system and I ask that you pay what you can comfortably afford for weekly work.

Mention the sliding scale in your contact email, phone call, or form response and I can let you know if I currently have any spots available.