Cindy Tollen

Ever feel like your life has hit Ctrl + Alt + Delete? Maybe you’re the person everyone calls when they need something. You’re the caretaker, the fixer, the peacekeeper, the one who can somehow manage everyone else’s problems while ignoring your own. You may struggle with anxiety, people-pleasing, boundaries, codependency, or simply feeling responsible for everyone’s happiness. And maybe you’re exhausted.

I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas, and I work primarily with women who are ready to understand themselves, their relationships, and their patterns in a deeper way. I especially enjoy working with people-pleasers, anxious humans, caretakers, and those navigating the complicated effects of addiction within their families. I believe your patterns make sense when we understand where they came from. That doesn’t mean they have to stay forever.

My job isn’t to tell you what to do with your life. It’s to help you slow things down, get curious about what’s happening, build awareness, and develop the tools to make choices that are more aligned with who you are and how you want to live. I bring warmth, compassion, honesty, and humor into the therapy room. Because therapy can absolutely be meaningful and serious work but life is too serious to take ourselves seriously all the time. There’s room for laughter here, too. You don’t have to arrive with everything figured out. You just have to be willing to start where you are.

My approach is trauma-focused, collaborative, and grounded in the belief that you are the expert on your own life. I integrate Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Motivational Interviewing, Somatic Experiencing, and mindfulness-based practices based on your individual needs and goals. I’m interested in the whole picture not just your thoughts, but also your body, nervous system, relationships, behaviors, and the experiences that have shaped you. We’ll explore the patterns that may have helped you survive or cope in the past, while also asking whether those same patterns are still serving you today. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it’s a very enthusiastic “absolutely not.”

Therapy with me is not about fixing you. You are not broken. It’s about developing a deeper understanding of yourself, learning to recognize your needs, building healthier boundaries, working through difficult emotions and experiences, and creating new ways of responding. I want therapy to be a place where you can be honest without being judged, challenged without being shamed, and supported without being told what you “should” do. And yes, we will probably laugh along the way.

Think of the first session as getting to know each other not an audition. We’ll spend time gathering information about what brings you to therapy, what you’ve been experiencing, your history, relationships, strengths, and what you hope will change. We’ll begin identifying priorities and co-creating goals and a treatment plan that makes sense for you. We’re also figuring out whether we’re a good therapeutic fit. That matters to me! You should feel comfortable being yourself in therapy, especially when we’re talking about the things that are difficult, uncomfortable, or maybe a little embarrassing to say out loud.

You don’t need to have the perfect words. You don’t need to tell your entire life story in 53 minutes. And you definitely don’t need to convince me that your struggles are “bad enough” to deserve support. Come as you are. We’ll start with where you are, figure out where you want to go, and work together on how to get there. No judgment. No perfection required. And occasionally, a little humor for the road.