Relationship Therapy
for Adults, Couples,
and Families
Understanding your patterns and creating healing relationships. Boundary work and relationship repair expert serving clients inside the loop in Houston, TX and virtually in Seattle, WA.
Do you feel pressure to maintain the appearance of a happy, successful person, couple, or family, but behind closed doors you know you're struggling? Things are not what they seem from the outside, and you feel like you lack the skills to make the changes you need.
Maybe you're carrying an ongoing sense of dread or anxiety. A memory from the past keeps resurfacing. You feel consumed by guilt or a sense of failure, or you lost someone and think you should be over it by now. You wish your relationships felt more connected, more like a reflection of who you actually are. No matter how hard you try, you feel overwhelmed and depleted, and maybe you wonder why you can never say no to the people in your life.
As a couple, maybe you're fighting constantly, or you've stopped talking altogether. You wonder when you went from lovers to roommates. A big decision looms and you can't get on the same page. A betrayal or life change sits between you, unspoken. Or the person who used to be your whole world now feels like they live on a different planet since you had kids.
As a family, there may be a pattern of conflict or passive aggression that resurfaces every time you're together. A new marriage or a new baby has disrupted the rhythm you knew. A parent's death has left the family unsure how to move forward. Boundaries keep getting crossed, or you don't know how to navigate differing beliefs or expectations when you live states apart.
Whatever it is, you don't have to figure out what you're feeling, or what you want, on your own.
In therapy, we dig into the ways the past may be quietly dictating your present, often without your awareness, leaving you to repeat the same patterns again and again. You know something needs to change, but you don't yet know what.
Together, with patience, curiosity, and compassion, we explore the questions that weigh on you and the experiences that shaped who you are, as an individual, a couple, or a family. Over time, this work puts the tools for change and healing within reach, so you can build a life, and relationships, that feel truly your own.
My Specialities
I facilitate healing conversations for couples, adult family members, and individuals seeking to make sense of their relational world. Thriving, safe relationships are one of life's greatest sources of meaning, yet we often find ourselves stuck in cycles of conflict and confusion with the people we're closest to. Being close to someone fundamentally different from ourselves is hard work, and doing it well doesn't come naturally to most of us. Using Emotionally Focused Therapy along with trauma-informed and attachment-based techniques, we work together to transform the quality of your core relationships, moving from unhealthy conflict toward deeper connection, trust, and intimacy.
Relationships
From a young age, many of us learn that the only way to keep the peace is to fawn: to default to others' needs and bypass our own inner voice. When we lack attunement to and ownership of our own needs, we end up resenting the very people we're trying to please. Let's build an inner compass to find where you end and others begin, and how to communicate that with love and respect.
Boundaries
I offer guidance for those seeking a healing and liberating relationship with their sexuality, food, and body image, work that often means finding more ease, self-trust, and freedom in how you relate to your own body. I also support clients navigating an adult-onset ADHD diagnosis, examining their relationship with substances, or coping with the hormonal, emotional, and physical changes that come with aging, including perimenopause.
Mindy & Body
Most trauma experts agree that trauma isn’t necessarily the event that happens to you, it’s what happens to your sense of self in light of the event. Judith Herman frames trauma fundamentally as an experience of disempowerment and disconnection and an assault on a person's basic sense of control, safety, and connection to others. In our work we will start at the shallow end of the pool, slowly wading deeper as you feel comfortable, to reframe your experiences and help to rebuild inner trust and safety.
Trauma
“The quality of our lives depends on the quality of our relationships.”
About Ashlee
I have worked in the mental health field for 20 years, including nonprofit mental health executive leadership, and I’ve been a private practice clinician since 2013.
Personally, I have known life to be both brutal and beautiful, and my role as a therapist is informed by the belief that we don’t have to navigate the ebbs and flows of what life requires of us alone. An attuned witness is a powerful force of change.
Over the years, I have helped clients sort through everything from the loss of a loved one to complicated family dynamics, from anxiety and burnout to struggles with drinking too much, from dating to parenting to divorce, and everything in between.
I offer psychodynamic therapy to people who want to dig deeper and better understand what parts of themselves are unhealed and what unconscious beliefs drive their life and relationships — all on behalf of making their life feel more meaningful and fulfilling.
Featured In!
Let’s Work Together
I work from an intersectional and eclectic perspective that is based on depth work and relational psychodynamic psychotherapy. My main clinical orientation includes trauma-informed Attachment Theory, Depth Psychology/Object Relations, and Emotionally Focused Therapy.
I am LBGTQ+ affirming and deeply committed to anti-oppressive and culturally inclusive work. I am warm, direct, and collaborative, and I strive to provide a safe and healing environment for anyone in my care.
I offer virtual therapy to anyone living in either Texas or Washington State. For those near Houston, I have an office located in the Montrose neighborhood for in-person sessions.