Each day, you support vulnerable people at their worst. Now something within you feels broken. Maybe it’s your body—serious health problems your doctor says are stress-induced, or symptoms that showed up too soon and won’t go away. Or maybe you’re working until 2am just to stay afloat, feeling guilty when you try to rest, and wondering how much longer you can sustain this pace. Maybe you’re hiding in a bathroom stall trying not to cry before your next meeting, when it dawns on you: this can’t continue - you can’t keep giving everything you have, because soon, there won’t be anything left to give. You love your clients and believe deeply in this work, but unless something changes, you’ll sacrifice your health, your relationships, or pieces of yourself you’re not sure you’ll ever get back.
​
What if you had support from someone who gets it – someone with the skills and experience to help? Could you make a change?
If the answer is “yes,” you’re in the right place. Together, we’ll sort through the chaos, clarify your priorities, and use concrete strategies to repair what matters most—so you can live your own vision of a full, meaningful life.
Specialized Therapy Services
Public Interest Lawyers
The emotional toll might show up as perpetual rage against systems that harm the very people you’re trying to help, as relentless internal pressure to do more than you physically can, or as a deep, paralyzing dread that only worsens when you have a minute to catch your breath. You might feel yourself changing– every day, what you see and hear makes you a little more cynical and jaded, less optimistic and empathic. Your loved ones might not get it, or they might be at the end of their ropes, too. Still, you might hesitate to even try therapy, worried about the ethical and practical risks of talking candidly with someone who may not understand or share your professional responsibilities... When the job brings you to therapy, you shouldn’t have to wonder whether you can talk about work.
So, let’s start with some reassurance: what you say here, stays here. Here, therapy means freedom to speak openly about what you’ve seen and heard, with a therapist who can handle the stories you might tell and knows how to honor your profession’s confidentiality needs.
Therapists & Helping Professionals
Each day, you wake up filled with dread. You dread yet another back-to-back day of holding other people’s trauma; another day of pressure to “be the regulated one” even when your own nervous system is fried; or another day that ends too late yet leaves you even further behind. You might notice yourself searching for (and trying!) every paperwork shortcut, scrolling job listings between sessions, or fantasizing about rage-quitting… and it’s not because you don’t care, but because no matter how much you do, it never feels like you’ve done enough. Maybe you feel yourself changing – more irritable or jaded, less patient, a little number each time you hear another story that used to break your heart. Your loved ones might expect you to know how to handle it all, and colleagues may be just as burned out as you are. Still, you might feel a deep resistance to trying therapy, worried you’d be judged, or struggle to let go of your provider persona and become “a client.” You might fear that everyone else is managing better because they actually are better at this than you are.
But here’s the good news: feeling this way isn’t proof you’re failing, and it doesn’t mean you’re not cut out for this work; it’s a sign that you’ve been carrying too much, for too long, without enough support. Therapy can give you structured space to lay it all out, make sense of what’s happening, and start building a way of working and living that doesn’t burn you out.
About Emerge Calm
Emerge Calm is a small, specialized counseling and consultation practice for people whose work puts them in the path of crisis, trauma, and high-stakes decisions every day. The practice focuses on helping and public service professionals (attorneys, therapists, social service providers, and others in high-stress roles) repair what chronic stress and hostile systems have broken and reclaim a life that feels sustainable and meaningful again.
​
Therapy and consultation at Emerge Calm are action-oriented, present-focused, and trauma-sensitive: the work starts with the concrete, current problems and stays grounded in your current capacities and context. Rather than endlessly circling the past, this approach emphasizes clarifying priorities, building skills, and making practical changes that move you toward your goals, all within a relationship grounded in safety, confidentiality, and choice.
Meet the Owner
Welcome! Since 2011, I’ve worked in high-stress, high-stakes roles across child welfare, disability services, reentry, community-based mental health, and indigent defense, navigating complex systems, and sitting with people at their breaking points. That experience, combined with my current work as a faculty member and decision-making scientist, shapes how I show up in the therapy room: practical, grounded, and deeply familiar with what it means to care about your work in systems that don’t always care back.
My training includes an M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, a Ph.D. in Applied Psychology, and advanced training in EMDR, TF-CBT, DBT, ACT, motivational interviewing, and forensic practice. In my work, I use these tools in an action-oriented, present-focused, trauma-sensitive way. We start with the problems that are actually on your plate right now, work within the realities of your situation, and focus on concrete steps that help you move toward the outcomes you choose to pursue.
Consultation & Evaluation Services
Case & Process Consultation
Sometimes, what you really need is support in a professional context – a place to think through tangled dynamics, risk, and responsibility with someone who understands the work. Case and process consultation offers structured support for navigating complex cases, high-stakes or confusing client situations, and those lingering “something feels off” moments that are hard to name. This can include help clarifying options in difficult scenarios, shoring up documentation and workflow, or working through counseling ethics and practice standards when the line between “good enough” and “not okay” feels blurry.
Evaluation Services
Evaluation reports or testimony can be useful when what you need most is a clear, defensible assessment that can hold up in systems that don’t always value nuance. These services focus exclusively on answering psycho-legal and forensic questions, such as those that arise in immigration matters (VAWA, hardship, and asylum-related mental health assessments), level of care transitions and mitigation reports, as well as family, parenting, and custody evaluations. Because evaluation services always answer legal questions, these are completed only in collaboration with attorneys. These services are designed to translate complex psycho-social realities into clear, grounded opinions that can inform legal strategy and support client outcomes.
Contract Supervision
Other times, what you really need is a seasoned ally in your corner as you grow. Contract supervision is available for MS-LPC and MA-LMHC licensure candidates who have no access to adequate supervision in their work settings, as well as for licensed practitioners wanting to deepen skills in forensic counseling. Supervision focuses on developing solid clinical judgment, navigating real-world systems pressures, and building sustainable, ethical practice in challenging environments.
Organizational Services
Group Consultation
When something isn’t working at the organizational level, it often shows up first in the cases: inconsistent documentation, inconsistencies in process and procedure, or a team that only comes together after something has gone wrong. Group consultation services give agencies a structured space to think through patterns across cases, strengthen documentation practices, implement or refine case consultation processes, and respond thoughtfully in the aftermath of a crisis. These consultations are tailored for mental health, social service, and legal nonprofits, with an eye toward both client care and staff sustainability.
Custom Training
Some challenges call for shared language and skills across the whole team. Custom trainings are especially developed in response to organizational needs and priorities. Such trainings are most beneficial for agencies that want practical, immediately usable tools in areas like documentation writing, assessment, traumatic stress, and working with forensic or justice-involved populations. Trainings are developed in collaboration with your organization’s leadership so that examples, exercises, and takeaways match the realities of your setting—not a generic checklist that ignores the pressures your staff actually face.
