Get to Know Kate

Therapist in Austin, TX

Living in a world that isn’t designed for the way your brain works can be exhausting. You may ask yourself, “why is this so much harder for me than it seems to be for everyone else?” You may be told to focus or pay attention a thousand times while also being called lazy. When the reality is you are just trying to find a way through a world that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and left behind. The endless struggle of juggling deadlines, schedules, and demands from school/work, having trouble making and keeping friends, “being on” in social situations while still being misunderstood, or feeling emotionally maxed out, is depressing.

For some people, an ADHD or Autism diagnosis can bring a sense of relief and understanding, but it can also bring complex feelings, grief, a lot of questions, or even a desire to process experiences that “make sense all of the sudden.” I can help you through all of this! 

My approach is neurodiversity-affirming, which means I don’t view neurodivergence as something to be ‘fixed.’ Instead, we work together to understand how your brain works, identify the supports you actually need, and find day-to-day strategies that fit you. The context and your surroundings matter just as much, so we will take into account what may be helpful at school, at work, or in different social settings. 

I have specialized experience helping children, teens, and young people with ADHD and ASD, particularly related to social skills. I also work with caregivers of children and teens with ADHD and Autism to help manage life better and create changes to the environment to make life feel less hectic. 

We will talk through routines, social skills, stressors, executive functioning and emotional regulation skills, self-advocacy, and process the impact of masking. We will develop skills for you to advocate for yourself. 

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We will strike the balance between creating tools to make changes while also making space to explore the emotional aspects of your experiences as you come to understand your (or your loved one’s) neurodivergence. 

I’ll meet you with curiosity, empathy, patience, and acceptance. My goal is to help you build a relationship with yourself that feels compassionate rather than critical, and create ways of navigating life that honors your needs.

Going through intense, life altering or traumatic events can shape how we view the world, leaving us afraid of a complex and unpredictable world. Sometimes, events occur that overwhelm our capacities to cope. Whether it was a single event, or a series of experiences that impacted how you feel, how you think about yourself, or how you think about others, I can tell you: it does not have to stay that way. 

Sometimes, you logically know that what happened to you was in the past, but your body and mind don’t seem to be on the same page. You might feel anxious even when things are going well, have sleep disturbances, constantly second guess yourself, struggle with your self-esteem, or find yourself repeating patterns in relationships that you wish you could break. You may have become really good at holding everything together while quietly feeling overwhelmed inside. 

Living a life from a place of fear can be completely disorienting, let alone disruptive. It causes us to shut down, avoid new experiences, and close ourselves off to other people, even those who care. Being able to trust is hard. Especially when we have been hurt. How do we know who is safe and who is not? You may ask yourself, can I trust myself? How do I change something so deeply ingrained? 

In therapy together, we will begin making sense of the connection between what you’ve experienced, how you feel, and how you relate to yourself, your body, and the people around you. My goal is to help you understand your responses with compassion rather than shame and build a stronger sense of safety and trust in yourself. 

I am EMDR trained and take a trauma-informed approach to this work.

Depending on what feels right for you, our sessions may involve processing past experiences, exploring relationship patterns, building emotional regulation skills, working with self-doubt and talking back to negative beliefs, or simply learning to recognize what your mind and body are communicating.

We’ll move at your pace, and prioritize what is most important to you. My hope is that therapy can be a space where you grow your own power, self-trust, and connectedness to yourself and others.

Starting your life after high school ends feels like you have to put together a puzzle without seeing the picture on the box. Being on your own away from your family for the first time, working through changes in relationships, or just trying to understand who you are outside of the expectations you grew up with. The struggles might show up in a bunch of different forms. You might be sacrificing your own wants, needs, boundaries, or values, leaving you feeling disconnected from yourself and others. Noticing the people-pleasing tendencies, trouble making decisions without overthinking, or not feeling confident in yourself. All this while getting the message that you should have somehow figured it out already. 

Even though I can’t hand you the final picture, therapy can help make the process of putting the puzzle together easier. Life after high school is a time to explore and define your values and goals, grow into who you are, find your people, and build a foundation for a future you feel proud of. It’s a lot to take on, but luckily you don’t have to do it alone!

Together, we can slow things down. I’ll help you explore where these patterns come from, understand the expectations you’ve internalized, and develop a stronger sense of confidence in yourself. We can work on healing old hurts, creating new habits like growing self-compassion, finding your way through unexpected changes, working through big feelings, and learning to make decisions rooted in your own values. 

Sessions with me are collaborative, conversational, and judgment-free. We can tackle the hard stuff AND celebrate the wins. I’ll offer curiosity, empathy, validation, reflection, practical tools, and gentle challenges while making space for whatever you’re bringing into the room. As for strategies, I draw on ideas from several different therapeutic modalities, including EMDR, IFS (Internal Family Systems), ACT, CBT, and mindfulness to attend to your emotions, your thoughts, your strengths, your past experiences, and your goals. What it all means is that we have a lot of different tools to pick from that can help overcome any challenge that presents itself along the way!