Inner child therapy in Stillwater, Minnesota — and online
You've read the books. You can name your attachment style. You can explain, with real precision, exactly why you do the thing you keep doing — and you keep doing it anyway.
That gap between understanding and change is where inner child work lives. It's the work I specialize in, and it's the work that tends to move things when other therapy has felt like a useful conversation that didn't quite land.
How the work unfolds
- 01
Name the adaptation
The part of you that learned to scan the room, keep the peace, or handle it alone was doing something useful. We start by understanding what it was protecting.
- 02
Trace it back
We look at the experiences that shaped it — often not one dramatic event, but a long accumulation of small ones.
- 03
Feel it in the present
Old patterns live in the body as much as the mind. We slow down enough for you to notice what your nervous system is doing right now.
- 04
Offer something different
You practice giving that younger part what it didn't get — attunement, permission, protection — from an adult self who can actually provide it.
- 05
Bring it into real relationships
The point isn't a tidy story about your childhood. It's saying no without a three-day hangover of guilt, and staying yourself inside a hard conversation.
Who this is for
Thoughtful, capable adults — most often women — who look steady from the outside and are quietly exhausted by the work of holding it all together. People ready to look underneath, not just cope better.
I don't provide crisis care or treatment for severe or persistent mental illness. If that's what you need, I'll gladly point you toward the right provider.
Common questions
- What is inner child work, really?
- Inner child work is depth therapy focused on the parts of you formed by early experience. Rather than only managing today's symptoms, we work with the beliefs, needs, and protective strategies that got set down long before you had words for them — and that still run quietly underneath your adult relationships.
- Is this only for people with a traumatic childhood?
- No. Many of the people I work with describe a good childhood. What they carry is little-'t' trauma: patterns of not being seen, being needed too early, or learning that love required managing everyone else. That shapes an adult nervous system just as surely as anything dramatic.
- How is this different from CBT or talk therapy?
- Cognitive tools are useful and I use them. But if you already understand your patterns and still repeat them, insight isn't the missing ingredient. Inner child work goes underneath the 'why' and works with what your body and beliefs are still organized around.
- How long does it take?
- This is depth work, so it's usually measured in months rather than a handful of sessions. Most clients meet weekly at first. You'll notice small shifts early — a pause before the automatic yes — well before the larger ones.
- Do you work with men?
- Yes. My practice is primarily women, and I welcome men who are ready for relational, depth-oriented work.
- Do you offer this online?
- Yes. I see clients online throughout Minnesota, alongside in-person work in the Stillwater and St. Croix River Valley area.
Begin where you are.
You don't need to know exactly what to say.
See fees