Ana Kelley

I offer couples therapy for those who love each other but find themselves feeling misunderstood. They long to be close and connected but can’t seem to hear one another due to each person’s own defensive mechanisms. I also love working with women and their mothers. Even as adults, these relationships can impact us. I want to help families break cycles.

Attachment is something I’ve been studying since graduate school. Early attachment patterns actually play a huge role in our development, including our nervous system and how we view ourselves and others. I’m passionate about helping people create secure attachment, either in relationship with others or even within themselves (sometimes called “reparenting”).

As a person who struggled with anxiety most of my life, I understand that it’s not all in your head. You can’t logic your way through it and you can’t just “stop worrying.” However, there are reasons why your body has learned to be on alert. By honoring your system and how it helped you up until this point, we can create a new felt sense of safety. I use somatic techniques, not cognitive interventions, to treat anxiety.

I am IFS informed and utilize the concepts as I work with my clients to dive deeper into understanding the system that helped them survive. We carefully navigate your inner world with respect to all parts of you, as each part came to be for a purpose (to protect you). With compassion, we allow your system to guide us, incorporating somatic work to help you really tune in with your body so that it can communicate what it intuitively knows that you need.

I’m trained in Emotionally Focused Couples therapy and enjoy using this attachment based model to help couples get unstuck. By understanding your internal experience and how it plays into how you relate to your partner, we can help you both break the cycles you’ve been stuck in and find deeper, more meaningful connection.

Attachment theory underlies all the work I do. As humans, we are wired for connection. In life, insecure attachments can threaten our very existence, causing a trauma reaction in our bodies that lasts for years to come if not addressed. That’s why our work will focus on creating a different level of awareness, where you can begin to respond rather than react. where you can learn to trust. A life where you don’t have to just exist but can live fully and whole heartedly.