Natosha Anderson

Maybe the depression has been sitting on you so long that it feels like your personality instead of something that happened to you. Maybe your moods swing further than other people's seem to and you are tired of apologizing for it. Maybe something happened years ago and it still gets a vote in how today goes. I'm Natosha Anderson, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Texas, and I have spent fourteen years doing this work. I earned my Master of Social Work from Stephen F. Austin State University, and I work with adults living with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD and trauma, grief, and the strain those things put on families. I want to say something specific about bipolar disorder, because a lot of people have had a hard time finding a therapist willing to take it on. I will. Fourteen years in, mood disorders are not something I refer out or tiptoe around. I see clients virtually across Texas, so you can do this from your own couch, on a schedule that fits around the rest of your life.

My style is warm, solution-oriented, and built around what you are actually able to do this week rather than what would work in some ideal version of your life. Early on I want the whole picture, and then we get practical. I use cognitive behavioral therapy for the thoughts that keep circling, behavioral activation when depression has shrunk your life down to the few things you can still manage, and Internal Family Systems when different parts of you seem to want opposite things and you cannot tell which one is really you. For trauma I use trauma-focused CBT, and we move at a pace you set. I also use motivational interviewing, which mostly means I am not going to argue you into a change you did not choose. Where mood disorders are involved, a good deal of the work is practical: tracking patterns, learning your own early warning signs, and building a plan that you and the people who love you can actually follow. And I lean hard on your strengths, because in fourteen years I have not met someone who did not already have some.

Our first session is mostly me listening and asking questions so I can understand what is happening and what you want to be different. We will talk about what brought you in now, what has been hardest lately, your history with all of this, what you have already tried, and who is in your corner. If you have been through the mental health system before and had a rough experience with it, tell me that too, because it changes how I work with you. There is no expectation that you arrive organized or that you share everything at once. You set the pace and I will keep to it. Before we finish I will tell you what I am hearing and what I think the work might look like, and we will pick one or two places to start rather than a long list. You will leave knowing what happens next.