Marlys Hersey

I work with creative, self-aware adults navigating anxiety & overthinking, grief, ADHD & other neurodivergence, relationship struggles, and major life transitions and reinvention — people in the middle of real change.

Therapy with me is grounded, direct, and collaborative. We slow down enough to understand what’s happening beneath the surface — and then we figure out how to move you forward.

I have a master's degree in clinical mental health counseling and have worked in inpatient rehab, community mental health, and private practice. And I've had several other careers before this: massage therapist, editor and writer, writing instructor, park ranger, all of which inform how I show up as a therapist.

I'm integrative, pulling from multiple frameworks depending on what you actually need. The undercurrent is a balance of acceptance and change: we work with who you are, why that makes so much sense given what you have experienced and what you learned to do to survive, and we work toward who you want to be, your preferred version of yourself and your life. I tend to use several modalities pretty regularly: IFS, mindfulness practices, DBT, and Solution-Focused Therapy.

I'm warm, genuine, pragmatic, and direct. And a little irreverent. I laugh. I swear. I'll validate you and I'll challenge you — often in the same session, because if you want different results, you have to try different things.

In our first session together, we'll talk a lot about what brings you in to therapy now, how you would like things to be different, what's working and what's not. We'll start to map out treatment goals that serve as guideposts for our work together.

You don’t have to show up polished or overly polite here. No masking. No performing. Bring the doubt, the contradictions, the irreverent humor. Bring your questions. We’ll work with what’s real.