Our Approach
Our approach to therapy and coaching is relational, process-oriented, and grounded in a deep belief in your capacity for growth and healing. We don’t believe therapy is about someone else telling you what to do or who you should become. Instead, we walk alongside you with curiosity and compassion, helping you reconnect with the wisdom, strengths, and resources that already exist within you.
The name Unraveling Free comes from this belief: that when we take the time to gently unravel the experiences, beliefs, and patterns that have shaped us, we can create more freedom to live in alignment with who we are and what matters to us.
Our work begins with getting to know you and creating a relationship where you feel safe enough to be honest, curious, and fully yourself. From there, we’ll explore not only what you’re experiencing, but what may be underneath it—how your past experiences have shaped your beliefs, relationships, emotions, and ways of moving through the world.
Because we live our lives in our bodies, we also pay attention to what your body is communicating. We may explore your nervous system, physical sensations, emotions, and automatic responses to better understand what your body has learned to expect and what it may need now. Our goal is not simply to help you understand yourself, but to support change that can be felt more deeply—in your body, your relationships, and your everyday life.
You are not a problem to be fixed.
The ways you think, feel, and respond have developed for a reasons. Many of the patterns that may be causing you difficulty today once helped you navigate relationships, environments, or experiences that felt overwhelming, uncertain, or unsafe. They may have required sacrifice, disconnection, or putting parts of yourself aside—but they also helped you get here.
Rather than trying to get rid of these parts of yourself, we want to understand them. What are they trying to protect? What did they learn along the way? And what might become possible if you no longer had to rely on those same strategies in the same ways?
We also believe you should have a voice in your own healing. You have full agency in our work together, and we will never ask you to explore something before you’re ready or move toward an outcome that doesn’t feel right for you. This is your process, and our role is to support you in discovering what healing, growth, and freedom look like for you.
If your relationship with faith has changed, is changing, or feels complicated, you are welcome here. We will never impose our own beliefs or expectations onto your process. We welcome people across identities, backgrounds, abilities, sexual orientations, and gender identities, and we strive to create a space where you can explore who you are without having to earn your belonging.
HOW WE DO WHAT WE DOTherapeutic Modalities
Beyond processing your experiences together, there are additional modalities we often bring into sessions to help deepen the healing process and to help with areas of “stuckness.” If you want to learn more about the specific therapeutic modalities we bring into sessions, you can read more about IFS, Brainspotting, and Somatic Experiencing below.
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Internal Family Systems (IFS), sometimes called “parts work,” is an evidence-based approach built around the idea that we all have different parts of ourselves that develop throughout our lives. Examples of different “parts” could be an inner critic, a part of you that works hard to please others, a part that always needs to be in control, or a part that wants to hide when things feel overwhelming.
These parts often develop in response to our experiences, relationships, and the ways we learned to cope as we grew up. They are usually trying to protect us in some way, even when their strategies no longer serve us. Sometimes they can become so strong that we feel overwhelmed, stuck, conflicted, or disconnected from ourselves. Rather than seeing these parts as problems that need to be silenced or fixed, IFS helps us approach them with curiosity and compassion and understand what they’re trying to do for us.
IFS also recognizes a deeper sense of Self—the part of you that can step back, listen, and respond to your inner world with curiosity, compassion, and wisdom. From this place, we can begin to understand and care for the parts of ourselves that have been hurt or have had to work especially hard to protect us. As these parts feel safer and less burdened, they can become less reactive and more able to contribute their strengths to our lives.
Every part of you has a story. Every part deserves to be understood rather than judged, and you don’t have to get rid of any part of yourself to become more fully who you are.
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“Where you look affects how you feel.”
Brainspotting is a body-based therapy approach built around the idea that where we focus our eyes can influence what we notice and experience internally. In a Brainspotting session, we use a specific eye position while you tune into what you’re experiencing in your body, emotions, or memories. Bilateral music—alternating between the left and right sides—may also be used to support the process.
Rather than relying solely on talking through an experience or trying to make sense of it cognitively, Brainspotting can help you slow down and pay attention to what is happening beneath the surface. With the support of a therapist, you can gently explore experiences, emotions, and patterns that may feel difficult to access or put into words.
Brainspotting is often used as a trauma-focused approach and can be especially helpful when you feel like you understand something intellectually but still don’t feel different emotionally or physically. The goal isn’t to force anything to come up or to relive painful experiences, but to create space for your mind and body to process what you’re ready to work with at your own pace.
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Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-based approach that recognizes that stress and difficult experiences can affect not only our thoughts and emotions, but also the way we experience our bodies. Sometimes we can understand what happened to us intellectually and still find ourselves reacting in ways that feel automatic, overwhelmed, disconnected, or difficult to explain.
In Somatic Experiencing, we slow down and become curious about what’s happening in your body—your breathing, sensations, tension, impulses, and shifts in emotion. Rather than forcing yourself to relive or talk through difficult experiences, we work gently and gradually to build a greater sense of safety, connection, and capacity to be with what you’re experiencing.
SE can be especially helpful when you feel stuck in patterns that you understand intellectually but still experience physically or emotionally, including feeling chronically on edge, overwhelmed, shut down, disconnected from yourself, or caught in automatic reactions. By developing a greater awareness of and connection with your body, we can create opportunities for deeper change that goes beyond insight alone.
You can find more information about Somatic Experiencing here.
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