I help ambitious women heal relational trauma and build thriving lives on solid foundations.
(1)
Psychotherapist & Executive Coach | Trauma Recovery Specialist | Author | Founder, CEO Evergreen Counseling | 15,000+ Hours with Silicon Valley's High Performers
03/02/2026
You're working so hard NOT to be your parents that you've become a different kind of wound.
The hypervigilance that kept you safe from them is now directed at yourself. Every parenting moment feels like a test you're failing.
But here's the truth: your kids don't need a perfect parent who never makes your parents' mistakes. They need a real parent who knows how to repair. Every time you say "I'm sorry," you're teaching them what you never learned: that love survives mistakes.
03/01/2026
Comment ARMOR ESSAY and I'll send it your way.
You checked your email four times between dinner and bedtime. Not because anything was urgent. Because the alternative — letting yourself feel whatever was underneath the busyness — doesn't feel safe.
Maybe your version looks different. Maybe it's the Sunday afternoon where you can't sit on the couch without mentally calculating what you should be doing instead. Or the promotion that felt incredible for a week and then… flat. Like the hunger just reset itself.
Not because you're ungrateful. Not because something is wrong with you. But because your nervous system has been running on its own supply of adrenaline and cortisol for so long that stopping actually feels like withdrawal. Because that's exactly what it is.
In this month's essay, The Best Dressed Addiction, I unpack what workaholism actually is — not a personality flaw, not a discipline problem — and where the wiring comes from. Whether it was a home that looked perfect from the outside or one where there wasn't enough.
📍 And one more thing worth knowing:
I'm teaching a 90-minute live masterclass at the end of this month — Transforming Workaholism: Achievement as Armor for the Unloved Child — where we go deeper into the neuroscience, the nervous system patterns, and the internal dialogue that actually starts to shift this from the inside. Not with willpower. Not with a better morning routine. By understanding what the work has been protecting you from feeling.
Details coming soon. The essay is yours now. The masterclass is where we work with it together.
Comment ARMOR ESSAY and I'll send it your way.
02/27/2026
That panic after sharing something real? The urge to text "sorry for oversharing"? That's not regret—it's a vulnerability hangover.
Your nervous system is having a meltdown because you just did something it believes is dangerous: you let yourself be seen. For those of us with relational trauma, vulnerability feels like handing someone a weapon.
The hangover is your brain screaming "RETREAT!" Don't listen. Don't apologize. Breathe through it. You're teaching your system that being seen won't kill you.
02/26/2026
You’re tired of being the one who tries harder.
Tired of adjusting, accommodating, managing. Tired of loving people who can’t love you back the same way.
The exhaustion isn’t because you’re doing something wrong. It’s because you’re working too hard for something that should be mutual.
February 27th: Learn to rest in love instead of perform for it.
Comment NARCISSISM—or tap the link in my bio if you’d rather keep it private.
02/26/2026
The beautiful home, the successful career, the happy family. Your life is a curated collection of perfect moments.
But behind the screen, you feel a sense of emptiness, of disconnection, of quiet desperation.
You have built a life that is designed to be looked at, not lived in. You have followed the script, you have checked all the boxes. You have achieved the dream. But it was never your dream.
The hollowness you feel is not a sign that you are ungrateful. It is a sign that your authentic self is suffocating. It is a wake-up call, a loving invitation to start building a life that feels as good as it looks.
What is one thing you do for an audience of one: yourself?
02/24/2026
Here’s what you’re actually getting February 27th:
→ Three Mirrors Assessment (15 questions)
→ Four Archetypes Assessment (20 questions)
→ The neuroscience of repetition compulsion
→ 3 practices: Mirror Reversal, Boundary Whisper, Self-Knowledge Inventory
→ 75-page working workbook
→ 30-day integration plan
→ Lifetime recording access
90 minutes with a trauma therapist who has 15,000+ clinical hours. $47. This is the workshop I wish I’d had in my thirties.
Comment NARCISSISM—or tap the link in my bio if you’d rather keep it private.
RelationalTrauma ReceivingLove
02/23/2026
You are the helper, the giver, the one who has it all together. People come to you with their problems, and you solve them. But when you are the one who is struggling, you are silent.
You learned that your needs are a burden. You learned that being needy is a weakness. You learned that you are on your own. Asking for help feels like a catastrophic failure.
But your refusal to ask for help is not a sign of strength. It is a response to relational trauma. It is the strategy of a child who learned that no one was coming to save them. It is keeping you isolated and exhausted.
What is one small thing you could ask for help with this week?
02/22/2026
Comment 'FEBRUARY Q&A' and I'll send it your way.
Ever spend years identifying your mother as the narcissist in your life — and then read something that makes you wonder if those same traits are living inside you?
Maybe you did a workbook assessment and scored high on multiple patterns and now you're wondering if having more than one means you're more damaged.
Or you read about "Hungry Ghost" dynamics and "bottomless wells" in relationships and suddenly saw yourself instead of just your partner — and it terrified you.
Here's what I need you to know: recognizing narcissistic traits in yourself is not the same thing as having narcissistic personality disorder.
The fact that you're scared about this? The fact that you're tearing up and worried about your impact on your patient partner? That's actually one of the clearest indicators that what you're experiencing is NOT NPD.
People with narcissistic personality disorder rarely have this kind of reflective distress about their impact on others.
This month's Q&A gets into the critical distinctions — and they matter.
We talk about:
- Why scoring high on multiple mirror patterns doesn't mean you're more damaged — it means you adapted in two directions (and why management + reflection mirrors are two sides of the same coin)
- The difference between narcissistic traits and narcissistic personality disorder — and why reflective distress is actually diagnostic
- What developmental hungers are — meaning the unmet needs from childhood that never got resolved — and why they can erupt in ways that look and feel narcissistic when you finally find someone safe
- Why recognizing these patterns is a wound, not a character defect
- Which mirror pattern to work on first when you have multiple high scores
This content was heavy. If you're reading this and questions are coming up for you about narcissistic traits in yourself, submit them. There's no timeline on asking these questions.
This is part of what we work through in Strong and Stable — where over 20,000 driven women are learning that recognizing yourself in uncomfortable mirrors isn't evidence of being broken. It's evidence of being human.
Comment 'FEBRUARY Q&A' and I'll send it your way.
02/20/2026
Your ability to read a room instantly? That's trauma-based hypervigilance turned into a superpower. Imagine using just 10% of that genius-level attention on yourself.
02/19/2026
“That is what abuse is: knowing you are going to get salt but still hoping for sugar for nineteen years.”
When safe feels boring and chaos feels like home—that’s not intuition. That’s trauma.
You can learn to taste the difference.
February 27th: Recalibrate your picker. Learn to receive actual sugar.
Comment NARCISSISM—or tap the link in my bio if you’d rather keep it private.
02/16/2026
That project you've been avoiding? You're not lazy—you're terrified.
Your perfectionism set the bar so high that your procrastination is trying to protect you from inevitable failure. As long as you haven't started, you can't disappoint anyone. As long as you're "about to start," you can live in the fantasy of perfection.
The last-minute rush gives you an excuse: "If I'd had more time..."
But you don't need more time. You need permission to be imperfect. Set a timer. Do B-minus work. Your worth isn't in the outcome.
02/15/2026
Comment HARD LETTER and I'll send it your way.
This is the letter I didn't want to write.
All month I've been talking about what happens when you're raised by a narcissist. But there's another story—one that's harder to tell and almost never gets discussed.
What happens when you realize you were the narcissistic one in your relationship?
Not because something is fundamentally wrong with you. But because when you finally land in a safe, devoted relationship after years of getting salt instead of sugar, something erupts. All those needs that never got met. All that care you never received. The bottomless well you didn't even know was inside you.
Like someone who's been starving walking into a fully stocked grocery store for the first time—wanting to tear everything off the shelves. Not because you're greedy. Because you're starving.
In this month's personal letter, The Letter I Didn't Want to Write, I share the chapter of my marriage I'm least proud of—when very young parts of me showed up demanding everything my husband couldn't possibly provide. And what the actual work looked like to change that pattern.
This isn't about shame. It's about seeing the pattern clearly enough to do something about it.
And if this resonates:
I'm teaching a live workshop on February 27th called Loving When You Were Raised By or Partnered With a Narcissist. We'll explore all the patterns—including this one that nobody talks about—with frameworks to understand your specific wiring and how to work with it.
$47. Lifetime replay. 75-page workbook.
The letter is honest about what I'm not proud of. The workshop shows you how to work with these patterns when you recognize them.
Comment HARD LETTER and I'll send both, or click the link in my bio to learn more about the workshop if you’d rather keep it private.
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My name is Annie Wright. I’m a licensed psychotherapist and consultant supporting individuals, couples, and families from the Bay Area and beyond.
I received multiple undergraduate degrees from Brown University, my graduate degree in psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and my coaches training from the Coaches Training Institute.
In between degrees and training, I’ve also served in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan, spent several years as a Washington DC-based healthcare consultant, lived and studied for nearly four years at the world-famous Esalen Institute, served as a non-profit leader in the women and girl’s empowerment space, launched a mental health center here in Berkeley, California, and had my clinical thoughts, opinions, and writing published in outlets such as Forbes, NBC, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and more.
Because of my diverse professional background, I bring a robust variety of skills and a strong commitment to social justice in my work as a psychotherapist, coach, and consultant.
So that’s what you should know about me professionally.
What you should know about me personally is that I chose to become a psychotherapist because therapy has been (and continues to be) profoundly invaluable in my own journey from adversity to healing. I do this work because I care deeply about helping others who feel hopeless, stuck, and lonely – like I did at many points in my life coming from very challenging and adverse beginnings. I do this work because I strongly believe that everyone deserves a skilled, fierce ally and lots of resources to support them when life gets tough (as it inevitably does).
And I do this work because, at the end of the day, I can’t not do this work.
Not only is this work my passion, it’s also the story of my own life path. Honestly, from the time I was a little girl reading every book I could about the Holocaust, Salem witch trials, ancient mythology and fables in the local library of the Maine island village I grew up in, I’ve been fascinated and drawn to stories of human suffering, of people triumphing over adversity, and by what it takes to move forward to build a beautiful, healed life despite early disadvantages, abuse by those in power, and trauma of the mind, body, and soul. I’ve identified with the pain I saw in others and also resonated with the yearning for something better. I’ve been deeply inspired by models and examples of people who didn’t just survive but thrived despite circumstances, and cultivated a hunger for learning, for resources, for practices that would support me in doing the same.
Along the way, my personal passion to heal my own life grew to professional and formal academic pursuits.
Some of these pursuits included running an Ivy League student advising program (not to mention becoming the first in my family to go to college), interning at an international conflict resolution organization, leading girl- and women-serving non-profits, being an educator and public servant in Central Asia, doing a 180 with my life and career at age 25 by saying goodbye to a lucrative but unfulfilling corporate consulting job and moving from Capitol Hill to Big Sur, California to wash dishes and bake bread in the Esalen kitchens, study psychology and spirituality, and live in a yurt under a eucalyptus grove by the sea. Years later, I’m now a licensed psychotherapist, mental health clinic founder, and published writer.
I wholeheartedly believe that crafting a life of connection, meaning, and fulfillment is possible no matter where you start out in life and that everyone deserves to be skillfully supported in pursuit of this.
As a psychotherapist, coach, and consultant, I work with individuals, couples, and families from the Bay Area and beyond to help them transform their challenges and move forward in creating a life that feels empowered, connected, hopeful, and possible. It’s a privilege and an honor to support my clients – all brave and determined people who want to make sense of their past and to move forward in creating more fulfilling, meaningful lives for themselves.
I truly love the work that I do.
I’m so glad you’re here and that you’re exploring the possibility of working with me. I encourage you to read about the ways we can work together which includes therapy (which I offer through my group counseling practice), coaching, consulting, workshops or online products. As you consider working with me, I also invite you to explore the most frequently asked questions people have when considering my services, check out my many years of blog posts to learn more about how I think and work, and if you’re still not sure I’m the right fit for you as a helper, you can also contact me to set up a complimentary 20-minute initial consult call so that I can answer any additional questions you might have about working with me in any capacity.
