Laura Nye

I am a Licensed Independent Social Worker with Supervision Designation (LISW-S) and a Licensed Independent Chemical Dependency Counselor (LICDC) with extensive experience treating mental health, trauma, substance use, and co-occurring disorders. I earned my Master of Social Work from The Ohio State University and am currently pursuing a Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) with a Clinical Specialization at California Southern University.

My clinical experience includes trauma and PTSD, anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, grief and loss, emotional regulation, relationship concerns, substance use disorders, and complex co-occurring presentations. My work draws from EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), CBT, DBT, ACT, motivational interviewing, and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), but I don't believe therapy should feel like a therapist applying a technique to you.

I’m active, curious, and engaged in the therapy room. I ask questions, notice patterns, and often want to understand why something makes sense for you before we decide it needs to change. I pay attention to the comment you almost skipped over, the contradiction that doesn't quite make sense yet, or the same pattern appearing in seemingly unrelated areas of your life. Sometimes that takes us somewhere neither of us expected.

You do not need to show up with the right words or have everything figured out. You can disagree with me, tell me something isn't helpful, say you aren't ready to go somewhere, or tell me you don't want therapy to become another assignment. I would much rather have an honest conversation than have you feel like you need to be a “good therapy client.”

My goal isn't to tell you who you should become. It's to help you understand yourself, recognize what may no longer be working, and figure out what actually helps you build the life you want.

I don’t believe therapy should feel like someone sitting across from you telling you what you need to do differently. My approach is curious, collaborative, and individualized. I want to understand how you became the person you are, what your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and coping strategies have been doing for you, and where they may no longer be working.

I tend to go deeper than simply managing symptoms. We may look at patterns in relationships, past experiences, beliefs about yourself, the ways you protect yourself, or why you keep doing something even when part of you knows it is hurting you. I use approaches including EMDR, IFS, CBT, DBT, ACT, and ERP, but I don't believe in forcing every person into the same treatment model.

I am active and engaged in sessions. I will ask questions, notice patterns, challenge you when it may be helpful, teach you what is happening in your brain or nervous system, and sometimes offer a completely different way of looking at something. At the same time, therapy belongs to you. You are allowed to disagree with me, tell me something doesn't fit, or say you aren't ready to work on something. My goal isn't to turn you into a different person. It's to help you understand yourself well enough that you have more freedom to decide how you want to live.

The first session is really about helping me understand you, not deciding what's wrong with you. Of course, there are things I need to ask as part of an assessment, but I don't want our first meeting to feel like an interrogation or like we're racing through a checklist.

I want to understand what brought you in, what life feels like for you right now, what has and hasn't helped before, and what you hope will be different as a result of therapy. I may ask questions that seem more specific or go in a direction you weren't expecting because I'm trying to understand the patterns underneath what you're experiencing, not just collect symptoms.

You do not need to show up knowing exactly what you want to work on, and you don't have to tell me your entire life story in the first hour. We will go at a pace that makes sense for you. By the end of the first few sessions, I want us to have a shared understanding of what is happening, why it may be happening, and where it makes the most sense for us to begin.