http://www.theempoweredtherapist.com/

The Empowered Therapist, 12720 Hillcrest Road, Suite 106, Dallas, TX (2026)

01/27/2026

I tend to dislike all of the cliché statements that are offered to trauma survivors. This one about time healing all wounds really gets me, especially as someone who shares space with adults who are painfully carrying around aches from their earliest years. I can assure you, sometimes time magnifies and intensifies wounds, and doesn’t heal them.

Time isn’t the only thing that helps us to distance from our trauma. Many survivors will feel intimately close to their traumatic past for years after the trauma has ended. Trauma can grab ahold of us and keep us feeling stuck in the cycles and patterns our bodies created in an attempt to keep us safe. Time alone doesn’t tend to shift these patterns, and without tending to the here and now we are often left floating somewhere between where we’ve been and where we want to go.

What does time offer? Perspective. We can’t adequately address trauma until safety has been established. When someone shows up to therapy, they have experienced the perspective shift that accompanies time. Meaning, their right now self has awareness that something about what they endured back then is continuing to show up for them. Time has taught them that moving forward without addressing the pain is not an effective long-term coping strategy.

It’s time, plus resources, reflection, intentionality, body-based awareness, and gentleness.

To those of you letting time offer what it has to offer while you do the rest, I see you.

01/26/2026

I don’t know how else to tell you that we need to care about one another.

To those of you who understand that people’s lives matter more than anything else, I see you.

(IC: Slide 1: One of the issues with collective trauma is that we are all worried about different things, all at once; Slide 2: People aren’t often able to access flexible thinking when they believe their survival is on the line. And the reality is, some people’s survival is on the line, and some people are fearing the loss of their privilege- and these are not the same experiences; Slide 3: We need to understand the difference between losing access to safety and discomfort; Slide 4: So many people believe that their comfort is equally or more important than someone else’s ability to survive, and this is creating more division and more collective trauma; Slide 5: Let’s be clear: Everyone deserves safety, and safety and comfort are not the same thing. The answer we’re needing is one where everyone’s survival matters.; Slide 6: Collective healing is needed, but so is individual work. We need to look at our shadows, face our fears, and acknowledge the difference between safety and comfort.; Slide 7: Now is as good a time as any to recognize that people are dying because some of us are too afraid of taking a good, hard look at ourselves)

01/08/2026

To those of you feeling fearful, activated, exhausted, and ready for so much to be different, I see you.

(IC: Slide 1: If you notice increased activation, stress, or anxiety in your body today, that’s because you’re paying attention; Slide 2: We have to be cautious not to push away, override, or ignore the proportionate responses that come up inside of our bodies; Slide 3: For those who have a history of complex trauma, our internal responses can sometimes be disproportionate to the circumstances going on around us, but what’s not what’s happening here; Slide 4: Just know, that activation is a reasonable and aligned reaction to innocent people being killed by their own government; Slide 5: The immense violence going on worldwide is absolutely taking up residence in all of our bodies, and those of us who are looking right at it are going to be the most impacted; Slide 6: In order to keep looking at it, in an effort to see everything clearly, we need to also look away. We need to find relative safety with loved ones and ourselves. We need to attend to our activation before we are too flooded to function.; Slide 7: It’s okay if you can’t watch the videos, so long as you look directly at the systemic and cultural problems that got us here; Slide 8: As you are able, tend to yourself, your body, and your nervous system. No one wins an award for observing the most distressing content.; Slide 9: Take breaks so your mind reminds clear. Rest so your eyes can still see clearly. Disengage once in a while so you can reengage with a soft, yet ferocious heart.; Slide 10: We must embody change, so we know change is possible)

01/06/2026

For many of us, 2025 was a difficult year, but before you start chanting, “new year, new me,” hear me out.

A year can be genuinely difficult and still contain moments of alignment, meaning, or growth. Naming this does not polish a hard year or minimize pain. It simply widens the lens.

At a time when the world is encouraging reinvention and self-improvement, I want to gently offer another possibility. What if this year is not about fixing yourself, but about creating more space for who you already are? What if softness is not something to grow out of, but something to deepen?

Softness, in this context, is not passivity. It is the ability to hold a fuller sentence. This was a hard year, and there were moments that mattered. I struggled, and I also learned something about myself. I was stretched beyond my capacity, and I became clearer about my limits.

When we allow ourselves to add the “and,” something shifts.

Perhaps the year brought grief and also discernment. Loss and also clarity about which relationships to turn toward. Exhaustion and also a deeper understanding of what feels aligned. These experiences are not contradictions. They are the texture of a lived life.

Creating more space for who you already are means letting complexity exist without rushing to resolve it. It means allowing grief to sit beside determination. Letting fatigue coexist with hope. Trusting that you do not need to become someone else in order to move forward.

To those of you learning that the gray area is actually where we thrive, I see you.

01/05/2026

I promise you, softness is the answer.

To those of you beginning to see yourself through kinder eyes, I see you.

(IC: Slide 1: Engaging with ourselves with gentleness allows us to soften to ourselves, it doesn’t make us soft; Slide 2: Complex trauma survivors are intimately aware that no one is going to save them, and honoring this concept as a truth allows them to feel a sense of control in an otherwise chaotic world.; Slide 3: Of course, this easily gets generalized into believing that no one will ever be available for you, which reinforces that you only have yourself to count on; Slide 4: And this is a problem since complex trauma survivors are often the most self-critical people around. When all you have is your own self-evaluation, and you are relentlessly hard on yourself, then you’re not likely to see a way out of your own suffering; Slide 5: You won’t feel safe enough to access healing if you are stuck in a vacuum of your own self-rejection; Slide 6: Isolation plus self-hatred, isn’t a recipe for healing; Slide 7: When we begin to consider all of the ways we have kept ourselves safe, we can begin to see ourselves more fully; Slide 8: Looking at ourselves with tenderness changes how we see ourselves, others, and what’s possible)

01/01/2026

At a time when everyone is creating new year’s resolutions and saying things like, “new year, new me”, I encourage you to consider the ways you can be *even* softer with yourself this year, honor your grief just a little bit more, and invite more of you to exist than ever before.

Dear ones, it’s our softness that creates a safe place for us to land.

To those of you learning that tough love was never actually the way forward, I see you.

Feel free to use any of my intentions as your own, and/or drop your intentions for 2026 in the comments!

12/31/2025

May 2026 be the year you allow your pain and your possibilities to co-exist.

Looking for glimmers, finding hope, and honoring our right now experience is crucial for our healing. Believe me, I know first-hand how annoying, difficult, and undesirable it can be to look for the good around you when the feelings within you are filling you with discomfort. And yet, when we slow down and attend to this present moment- when we look for something beyond our pain, we see that so much more actually exists.

And dear one, more of you exists too. When you offer your suffering comfort, when you look for glimmers as a resource, when you access a little more hope today than you had yesterday- this is healing.

I see you and all of the ways you made it through this past year. And the one before that. And so many before that one. We’re in this together.

Healing with intention looks like being intentional with how you show up for yourself, and I hope you’ll be so freaking intentional with yourself in 2026.

December 2026 you will thank you, I promise.

To those of you learning how to live beyond the traumatic experiences and the pain you carry, I see you.

12/30/2025

To those of you learning how to be in healthy connection with your family and peers, I see you.

(IC: Slide 1: Moving away from enmeshed family patterns is not an act of betrayal or abandonment but a necessary step towards personal well-being and healthier relationships.; Slide 2: The real threat lies not in the differentiation but in the stagnation of remaining enmeshed, which profoundly impacts our sense of safety with ourselves and others.; Slide 3: If we don’t start showing up differently, we can expect to repeat the patterns that were developed for us in childhood.; Slide 4: In order to find safety in relationships, we often need to first find our sense of self, separate from others.; Slide 5: Differentiating from our family does not mean disconnecting from love or belonging. It means evolving into an autonomous individual capable of forming connections with other self-differentiated individuals.)

12/29/2025

Grad school was tough, but you were never alone. You had professors, supervisors, and classmates by your side. And even if you felt overwhelmed or unsure, there was likely someone there to offer direction. You likely were given some sort of framework for how to move through your program. You probably had someone you could ask questions or who you could passively learn from by watching their progression.

Running your own therapy business feels different from grad school in many ways. Suddenly, there’s no curriculum to follow, no program structure to guide you, and no peer group to lean on. Without any intentional or formal business training, therapists are left to navigate private practice all on their own, and not only can this feel scary, but it can also be financially unstable and bring about all sorts of fears of inadequacy.

The Entrepreneur Collective was created to change how therapists feel as they navigate entrepreneurship.

Together we will build community, offer one another support, and build strategies to help you grow your business and feel confident in your entrepreneur identity.

Check out the link in my bio for more info!

To the therapist entrepreneurs looking for a way to feel less stressed and more resourced in 2026, I see you.

12/26/2025

Listen, I know change can feel so scary. Especially when our survival strategies were set when we were really young. If you were responsible for your own safety when you were a child, you might find yourself death gripping your patterns, behaviors, and ways of thinking. All of this is a protective strategy, and while it makes sense that you’re showing up this way, healing doesn’t tend to happen until we allow some things to shift.

Experimentation is key when we’re trying to heal from something we should have never had to endure. Allowing yourself to be curious, take measured risks, and try on new things, helps you to learn what you want, like, and need in adulthood. If survival was our focus, we likely didn’t get to learn about ourselves in developmentally appropriate ways, so in order to feel more resourced we often have to explore in the ways we missed out on when we were young.

To those of you learning how to let some of your patterns, assumptions, and fears go so you can find more of yourself, I see you.

(IC: Sometimes in order to grow we have to let go of the things that helped us to survive)

The Empowered Therapist

01/27/2026

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