Angela Francis

Being human is hard. Sometimes we don’t even realize how much we've been struggling until something forces us to slow down, and we can no longer ignore all the emotions we’ve spent years avoiding by staying “too busy” to feel. This became clear to me when life abruptly stripped away my distractions, leading to my own mental health crisis. In that stillness, I began to see how deeply I had "learned" that safety meant being accepted by others. And I realized that I had spent so much of my life attuning to other people’s needs that I'd lost all sense of who I was outside of my relationships. Relearning how to listen inward became a turning point. My own healing journey has included yoga, meditation, and a lot of meaningful therapy with a few incredible therapists. Yours may look entirely different, because there is no one-size-fits-all approach to healing. I consider it a privilege to help clients discover what healing looks and feels like for them.

I believe that every individual holds an innate capacity to heal and thrive. Mental health issues are the result of a combination of biological factors, psychological experiences and education, and social influences. In our attempt to secure safety through acceptance, many of us develop false personas, the preservation of which often requires engagement in self-abandoning behaviors. This, in turn, impacts our self-worth and causes psychological confusion about who we are at our core, which can express itself in symptoms of depression and anxiety, or other so-called "disorders." If you are part of a marginalized community, and/or are late-diagnosed (or questioning diagnosis) neurodivergent, you may have spent the better part of your life masking for the comfort of others and are realizing that you're tired of doing so, but don't know how to stop. As a late-diagnosed ADHDer married to a late-diagnosed Autistic partner, I understand this journey all too well. You are not alone.