Breanna Smith

I work with adults and couples navigating religious trauma, LGBTQIA+ identity, relationships and consensual non-monogamy, life transitions, and the stressors that don't always have a name but still take up space. Maybe you've tried therapy before and it felt clinical, like someone was checking boxes instead of hearing you. Maybe you've never tried it at all because being seen feels more frightening than what you're already carrying. Either way, you don't need to have the words yet. You just need to show up. My work is trauma-informed, which means I pay attention to how past experiences, systems, and relationships that were supposed to be safe have shaped who you are now. Healing happens when you feel met, not managed. My work is grounded in feminist theory and relational-cultural therapy, the belief that your struggles didn't happen in a vacuum. They were shaped by the relationships you've been in, the systems you've moved through, and a world that's often asked you to be smaller or quieter than you are. We look at all of it together. I also draw on attachment theory and psychodynamic thinking to understand where your patterns came from, and present-focused tools to help you build a life that actually feels like yours. Depending on what you need, I'll bring in grounding and mindfulness practices to help you slow down enough to hear yourself again. I don't hand people a roadmap or rush them toward an answer. More often I'm sitting with someone while they find their own way back to themselves. Clients tend to say they felt understood faster than they expected. If you've felt unseen in therapy before, that matters, and it'll be different here. I'm empathetically direct, so you always know where you stand with me. I won't just nod along if I see something worth naming, and I won't soften the truth to the point that it loses its use. I have "You do not yield" tattooed on myself, not as a performance of a motto but as something I actually carry. It speaks to what I see in almost everyone who reaches out for support: a quiet, stubborn refusal to give up on themselves, even when it doesn't feel that way from the inside. I don't take lightly the courage it takes to ask for help, and I'll meet you there.