About Me
Hello! I’m Dr. Edwards, a licensed psychologist specializing in complex relational trauma, attachment, and psychological assessment. I work with adults who have learned to second-guess, override, or disconnect from themselves—often after years of adapting to other people. Many of my clients are thoughtful and self-aware yet still overfunction, people-please, shut down, or lose touch with what they feel and need when relationships become uncertain or emotionally charged. I help clients understand these patterns without shame, reconnect with their own experience, and develop greater self-trust, agency, and choice.
I received my Ph.D. in Clinical Health Psychology from the University of North Texas and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at The Menninger Clinic, affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine. There, I assessed and treated adolescents and adults with complex clinical presentations and collaborated with interdisciplinary teams to provide comprehensive assessment and treatment planning. This experience shaped how I approach both therapy and assessment: by understanding the whole person and how developmental history, relationships, emotions, protective strategies, and the body interact.
In my private practice, I integrate attachment-based, psychodynamic, somatic, emotion-focused, and mentalization-based therapies. I am also a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner and provide psychological and attachment assessments for people seeking a deeper understanding of how they experience closeness, vulnerability, protection, and support. Whether through therapy, adjunctive somatic work, or assessment, my aim is to help clients understand how they learned to survive and develop ways of living and relating that do not require them to abandon themselves.
My Approach
Therapy with me is collaborative, person-centered, and grounded in helping you reconnect with and trust your own experience. Many of the people I work with already understand their patterns but still find themselves second-guessing their feelings, overfunctioning for others, shutting down, or losing touch with what they need when closeness or conflict feels threatening. Rather than viewing these responses as flaws to eliminate, we approach them as protective adaptations and become curious about what they have been trying to do for you.
I tailor our work using Psychodynamic Therapy, Mentalization-Based Treatment, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Somatic Experiencing®, and Attachment-Based Therapy. Together, these approaches allow us to attend to your thoughts, emotions, bodily responses, relationships, and the meaning you have made of your experiences. Our work goes beyond understanding why your patterns exist. It supports your ability to recognize what you feel and need, remain connected to yourself during difficult relational moments, and respond with greater choice rather than automatically returning to old survival patterns.
My Philosophy and Values
At the heart of my practice is a therapeutic relationship grounded in curiosity, empathy, honesty, and mutual respect. For people who have learned to doubt, minimize, or disconnect from their own experience, therapy can offer a different kind of relationship—one in which they do not have to perform, please, or disappear to remain connected.
We make room for your thoughts, emotions, bodily responses, and protective patterns without judging them or forcing them to change before they are ready. My role is not to tell you who to be, but to help you understand how you learned to adapt, reconnect with what you feel and need, and develop greater freedom in how you choose to live and relate.