You might be the person everyone relies on. You keep showing up, take care of your responsibilities, and try to make things work. But internally, you may feel overwhelmed, disconnected from yourself, or exhausted by patterns you can't seem to change.
Maybe your mind rarely slows down. Maybe relationships leave you questioning yourself. Maybe you're trying to understand how your past continues to affect your present, or why everyday life feels harder than it seems to for everyone else.
I work with teens and adults navigating trauma, ADHD, anxiety, relationship challenges, and the emotional weight of life experiences that have shaped how they see themselves and relate to others. I also provide affirming support for people navigating chronic illness and pain, as well as current and former sex workers.
My approach is trauma-focused, relational, and individualized. Together, we can explore the patterns beneath the surface, understand how your experiences influence your present, and work toward changes that feel meaningful and sustainable.
Experiences from childhood, relationships, and other difficult periods of life can continue to influence your sense of safety, self-worth, emotional responses, and relationships. Therapy offers space to explore these patterns, work through their impact, and develop a different relationship with yourself and others.
Whether you've recently been diagnosed with ADHD or have spent years wondering why certain things feel harder than they should, therapy can help you understand your patterns without adding more shame. We can explore executive functioning, emotional overwhelm, rejection sensitivity, masking, and the pressure to keep up with expectations that may not fit how your brain works.
Anxiety can look like overthinking, perfectionism, anticipating the worst, or feeling responsible for keeping everything under control. You may struggle to manage intense emotions, relax without guilt, or navigate uncertainty. Therapy can help you understand these responses and build more flexibility in how you experience and respond to stress.
The way you learned to connect with others can influence the relationships you build today. We can explore people-pleasing, attachment patterns, relationship anxiety, conflict, difficulty trusting yourself, and the fear of disappointing others. The goal is to help you better understand your needs, strengthen boundaries, and build relationships that leave room for you, too.
Living with chronic illness or pain can affect far more than your physical health. You may be navigating grief, medical trauma, uncertainty, changes in identity, frustration, or the emotional exhaustion of living in a body that doesn't always cooperate. Therapy offers space to process these experiences without minimizing your physical reality or expecting you to simply think positively.
Current and former sex workers deserve access to therapy without stigma, assumptions, or judgment. I offer a sex-positive space for exploring relationships, boundaries, privacy, burnout, anxiety, trauma, identity, and life transitions. Your work does not have to be the problem you're coming to therapy to address, and you do not have to justify your experiences to be understood.
Parenting can be meaningful and still leave you feeling overwhelmed, depleted, or disconnected from yourself. Whether you're navigating parenting with a partner or carrying the responsibilities of single parenthood, therapy offers space to explore burnout, guilt, co-parenting challenges, boundaries, and the pressure to meet everyone's needs while neglecting your own. We can also explore how your own upbringing and past experiences influence your parenting, helping you navigate difficult emotions, break unwanted patterns, and build a more sustainable relationship with yourself and your role as a parent.
Adolescence can bring its own combination of emotional, social, academic, and family pressures. I work with teens navigating anxiety, ADHD, emotional overwhelm, identity development, self-esteem, relationship challenges, and the effects of difficult experiences.
Therapy provides space for teens to better understand themselves, make sense of their emotions, develop coping skills, and navigate challenges without needing to have everything figured out.
You don't have to arrive at therapy knowing exactly what's wrong or what needs to change. You may have a clear idea of what you're struggling with, or you may simply know that the way things are now isn't working for you.
Our work will be shaped by your experiences, needs, and goals. We'll look at what's happening in your life today while making room to understand the experiences and patterns that may be influencing it.
The goal isn't to turn you into someone else. It's to help you understand yourself more fully and create more room for choice in how you live, relate, and move forward.
I offer virtual therapy throughout Illinois, with in-person sessions available on Tuesdays at Grove Counseling Center in downtown Downers Grove. To ask questions or inquire about current availability, email TherapyWithHeatherSmith@gmail.com