Allison Rees

You made it, welcome! I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who came to this work with nearly a decade of crisis intervention experience - the kind of work that teaches you crisis and chaos isn't always an emergency, but often a transformation that needs space to unfold. I earned my degree in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology, and I've spent my career specializing in the places where high-stakes work meets human breaking points: occupational trauma, moral injury, burnout, and the complex territory of identity and transition.

I work particularly well with people in helping professions -first responders, military, healthcare workers, teachers, therapists, and LGBTQIA+ folks - anyone who's spent years being the capable one, the reliable one, the one who shows up no matter what. My training includes Brainspotting, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM), and somatic approaches that work with how trauma actually lives in your body and nervous system, not just in your thoughts.

Here's what matters: I get that asking for help doesn't come naturally when you're supposed to be the strong one. I understand that the hypervigilance that once kept you safe might now be keeping you isolated. And I know that sometimes the hardest part is figuring out who you are when you're not performing competence for everyone else. You don't have to translate your experience into therapy-speak with me, and you definitely don't have to pretend you're more okay than you are.

I work at the intersection of evidence-based trauma treatment and depth psychology, which is a fancy way of saying I care about both what works and what means something. I use Brainspotting, somatic and body-based approaches, mindfulness, parts work, and narrative therapy - all grounded in attachment theory, polyvagal science, and harm reduction philosophy.

My approach is collaborative and person-centered. I'm not here to tell you what your life should look like or hand you a worksheet and call it healing. We'll work together to understand how your symptoms; the anxiety, depression, exhaustion, disconnection, whatever brought you here, are actually survival strategies that made sense given what you've been through. Your nervous system isn't broken; it's been working overtime to keep you safe, and now we get to help it recalibrate.

I bring clinical expertise without the clinical distance. I'm warm, curious, and direct when it's useful. I believe in meeting you where you are, not where some treatment manual says you should be. And I take harm reduction seriously, which means I'm not interested in shame or judgment - I'm interested in what actually serves you and keeps you alive and moving forward.

First sessions with me are pretty low-pressure. We'll start by talking about what brought you here and what you're hoping therapy might help with - not in a formal intake way, but in a "tell me what's going on" kind of way. I want to hear your story in your own words, and I'll ask questions to understand what you've been dealing with and what you've already tried.

I'll also give you a sense of how I work and what our sessions together might look like. If you're curious about specific approaches like Brainspotting or somatic work, we can talk about those. If you just want to see if we vibe, that's totally fine too. The first session is as much about you getting a feel for whether I'm the right fit as it is about me understanding how I can help.

You don't need to come in with everything figured out or perfectly articulated. You don't need to have your trauma neatly packaged or know exactly what you want from therapy. Just show up as you are - tired, skeptical, hopeful, guarded, whatever. We'll figure out the rest together.