Psychotherapy with Anna

I consider relationship building to be a two-way street in my office. So just in case you were wondering, here is a bit about how I got here.

 

I've been described by several clients and colleagues as an old soul. I like to say I've "lived a lot of life" in my thirty-something years. I identify as an empath, and even before I had the language to describe it, I knew I was sensitive to picking up on others' emotions as a child. I've certainly overcome my fair share of hardships and grief, and I walk alongside my own suffering daily. I believe my ability to skillfully and gently hold my own pain is a big part of what makes me a great space holder for others. Today, as an adult with my own trauma history and as a clinician in the Western medical world, I see the cracks in our existing healthcare systems, the freight train that is our country's mental health epidemic, and I also see my place in this entire system with clarity. I consider my life purpose to be to better the healthcare system through the work I do to increase access to integrative, human-centered mental health care. 

Full disclosure: I’m also a total science nerd. If you're a client of mine, you may see the evidence of this in the way I nerd out over teaching neurobiology as it pertains to therapy. I always knew I wanted to work in the sciences and work with the human body, and this was perhaps motivated by my early life experience being a competitive gymnast for 15 years. In fact, I actually began college at Louisiana State University studying to be a physical therapist for athletes. However, as fate would have it, I found my way to a more emotionally-focused form of human science through an elective psychology course, and discovered that I could connect my love for the sciences to my natural capacity for empathy and caregiving. From that point on, everything just made sense. I didn't just find a career path, I found my purpose. I received my B.S. in Psychology and Sociology from Louisiana State University, and my M.A. in Counseling from St. Edward’s University. 

 

My first experience as a therapist was working with adults in an inpatient psychiatric hospital setting. My patients were typically folks experiencing high acuity disorders and crises. I have treated for suicidality, depression, DID, panic attacks, schizophrenia, personality disorders, chronic self-harm, and substance abuse - you name it. Being a psychotherapist in an inpatient unit taught me a lot & was incredibly meaningful to me. I actually excelled at being "in the trenches" where I believe a lot of professional helpers buckle, and found that I was naturally good at being with folks in their darkest hour.

 

Thanks to that background in a hospital setting, I feel comfortable with nearly anything that comes my way these days, and for that I am grateful. However now, as a private practice therapist, I get to enjoy a bit of a slower pace and a longer treatment process. In my private practice, I also get to better serve a population that is incredibly underserved in larger hospitals and agency settings: folks with trauma/PTSD.

Through my early professional experience working in a psychiatric hospital, I began to see a common factor among the folks who weren't "getting better" by doing traditional talk therapy and medication management alone - they all had trauma histories. My awareness of this was deepened by my own trauma work with my therapists over the years, as I began feeling like I was hitting a wall with traditional cognitive processing. Even though I intellectually knew what was going on, was intimately familiar with my triggers, and had all the CBT/DBT coping skills under the sun - I learned that intellectual knowing doesn't always translate into feeling differently, and that relying on coping skills was reactionary, not proactively resolving any root causes. Thus my specialization in mind-body trauma modalities began. I now specialize in what are considered the gold standard of "bottom-up" trauma therapy modalities - Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), and Polyvagal Theory to name a few. ​

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My specialization in trauma therapy also led me to one of my greatest passions in the therapy world: Psychedelic therapies for mental health indications. After witnessing firsthand how our existing hospital systems fall short of providing adequate care for folks with trauma to truly heal, I began studying and researching alternative therapeutic modalities, including ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP). I was lucky enough to get involved in KAP very early on in this current psychedelic-medicine renaissance, as I received training, certification, and a role as ketamine therapist on a multidisciplinary team here in Austin in 2020 at Transcend Health Solutions. As I was cutting my teeth in KAP, the COVID pandemic was simultaneously destroying life as we knew it. Some of my earliest KAP clients were nurses, paramedics, doctors, and other therapists coping with vicarious trauma from being on the frontlines of the COVID pandemic. Again, I enjoyed being "in the trenches" with folks who needed care the most.

 

I have now facilitated 3000+ KAP sessions for trauma survivors here in Austin, as well as for folks who flew in from across the U.S. and even across the world. My experience in KAP is vast and through the years I have had the opportunity to learn how to support clients dealing with extremely varied presenting problems, all from a trauma-informed foundation. In addition to being an experienced KAP therapist, I have also traveled to Oregon to receive formal training and certification in Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy via a year-long Oregon Health Authority approved program. Although PAT is not legally accessible in Texas yet, this specialized training has prepared me to support folks needing psychedelic prep and integration support, and I plan to use the certification to facilitate retreats for complex trauma survivors up in Oregon. I've also completed training in Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration (PHRI) under Elizabeth Nielson, PhD, one of today's prominent researchers and pioneers in psychedelic-assisted therapy. I am proud to say that I am a "lifelong student" and an advocate for increased access to integrative mental health treatments, and as such it's safe to say I will be actively involved in the movement towards psychedelic therapies for mental health indications for the remainder of my career.

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Today, I bring all this experience as a trauma-informed psychotherapist, a seasoned psychedelic therapist, and my lived experience as a former athlete & yoga teacher into my work by providing a form of therapy that focuses on the mind-body connection. My approach incorporates Polyvagal Theory, Somatic Experiencing, and Internal Family Systems to highlight the neurobiological underpinnings of what “safety” means to us and how a lack of safety can affect our relationships, beliefs about ourselves, and how we move through the world.

 

When I’m not in the therapist chair, you can catch me on my own self-improvement journey. I spend a lot of time "walking the walk" - That is, doing my own therapy work, or moving my body via dance, yoga, or simply playing under the sun at Auditorium Shores. I love to get out of my element through traveling, specifically to locations where I can scuba dive and get a little lost off the beaten path. 

Thanks for reading, and I hope I get the chance to know you too!