Therapy for the people everyone else leans on.

You know the language. You have said the words “that sounds really hard” more times than you can count. Which makes being on this side of it strange — and, for a lot of helping professionals, quietly embarrassing. It isn't. Holding other people's worst days is real work, and it accumulates.

Why this is different

I led counseling services for a 48,000-student system and supervised a team of clinicians, so I am not learning your world from a textbook. Documentation load, ethical weight, the client you are still thinking about on Saturday, the guilt that shows up the moment you rest, the politics of an understaffed department — you will not need to translate any of it.

You also will not be treated as a colleague who should already know better. In this hour you are not the practitioner. You are the person.

Who this is for

• Counselors and therapists, including supervisees and private-practice owners
• Nurses and other healthcare professionals
• Educators, faculty and school staff
• Ministry leaders, chaplains and clergy
• Social workers and case managers
• Other helping professionals whose work is carrying people

Compassion fatigue, burnout, depression — and why the label matters

These get collapsed into one word, usually “tired,” and that costs you accuracy. Compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress relate specifically to repeated exposure to other people's suffering — intrusive thoughts about client material, numbing, dread before certain sessions. Burnout is depletion tied to prolonged occupational demand: exhaustion, cynicism, and a drop in your sense of effectiveness. Depressive symptoms extend past the job into the rest of your life and tend not to lift when the caseload does.

They overlap and they can coexist. Naming which is dominant changes what we do — whether the work is boundaries and workload, processing what you have absorbed, or treating symptoms that need clinical attention in their own right. See also anxiety and burnout therapy and depression and life transitions.

What we work on

Usually some combination of: the specific cases or situations that are sitting on you, boundaries you know how to teach and struggle to hold, resentment you would rather not admit to, the identity question underneath it all — who you are when you are not being useful — and what a sustainable version of this career actually looks like, including the possibility that it looks different from the one you are in.

About confidentiality

Your sessions are confidential and protected under Texas law and the ethical standards governing licensed professional counselors. As with any therapy, confidentiality has legal and ethical limits — situations involving imminent risk of serious harm, suspected abuse or neglect of a child or vulnerable adult, court orders, and any release you authorize, such as billing through insurance. I will go through this with you clearly in our first session, and you are welcome to ask about it on the consult call.

Therapy here is therapy, not clinical supervision and not a fitness-for-duty evaluation. If you need one of those, or if a working relationship between us would create a conflict in your professional community, I will tell you and help you find someone appropriate.

Practical details

Virtual sessions for adults located anywhere in Texas, which for most helping professionals also means appointments that fit a working schedule — see how online therapy in Texas works and the fees and accepted insurance plans. I also provide workshops and staff training for teams carrying this kind of load.

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