Hi, I’m Vanessa.
I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor based in Austin, TX, providing relationship therapy for individuals and couples across Texas.
I work with thoughtful, high-functioning people who have usually done a lot of work on themselves already and are still tired of ending up unseen, over-responsible, exhausted, or stuck in painful dynamics that keep taking too much out of them.
A lot of the people drawn to this work learned early how to stay connected by swallowing what they felt, needed, or knew. Sometimes that shows up in love. Sometimes it shows up in family, conflict, work, coping, or self-trust. Either way, the pattern costs too much.
My work helps people understand what keeps taking them out of themselves — and come back to enough power, steadiness, and clarity to stop repeating what hurts.
I hold a master’s degree in counseling and advanced training in trauma-informed approaches, including EMDR. I come to this also shaped by real life, real repair, and a lot of learning how not to disappear from myself in the middle of things.
I’m not here to blame your past. I’m here to help you understand how the ways you learned to survive are still shaping what happens in your life and relationships now — so you can stop repeating what hurts and start choosing differently.
My approach is trauma-informed, somatic, relational, and direct.
That means we do not just talk about what is wrong. We pay attention to what actually happens when you feel criticized, ignored, overwhelmed, ashamed, unseen, or afraid of getting it wrong.
We slow those moments down so the pattern gets easier to see.
We look at the roles you slip into under pressure — the fixer, the peacekeeper, the over-responsible one, the one who shuts down, the one who tries harder, the one who gets hard, the one who disappears — and we work to change what happens there.
When it fits, I may use EMDR and other body-based approaches to help loosen what still feels stuck.
This work is not about endlessly rehashing the past.
It is about changing what keeps happening now.
I’ve known seasons of overextension, self-abandonment, unhealthy coping, and having to face my own impact.
That did not disqualify me from this work.
It matured me into it.
I know what it’s like to lose yourself in a relationship. To look up and realize you have been living outside your own center, trying to make something work while getting farther away from yourself.
This work did not come from theory alone for me.
It came from having to choose a different way — and learning how to stay in it.
That is the place I work from with you.
