About Me.
Hafa Adai! I'm Emily (they/she). I'm a queer, multiracial and indigenous woman. A survivor of complex trauma living with structural dissociation (AKA dissociative identity disorder), and I live alongside chronic illness & physical disability.
These intersections of my identity greatly inform how I experience the world.
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I'm a trauma coach because mental health care should be more accessible and I'd like to offer people a different path towards healing. ​As a trained trauma therapist, I've worked with clients for a handful of years processing past trauma, and my passion lies in helping others stand in their authenticity, live life fully, and feel confident in their relationships.
Education & Experience
2023 - Present
Licensed Professional Counseling Candidate
Oklahoma Sex & Relationship Institute
Edmond, OK
I provide trauma & DID, sex, & relationship counseling at OKSRI in Edmond, OK. I began as an intern seeing adults and couples in 2022 during my final year of graduate school, and I started my candidacy in 2023. I plan to attain full licensure by 2027.
Graduated 2023, Summa Cum Laude
Counseling, MA
University of Central Oklahoma
During my graduate degree, I was trained in cognitive-behavioral therapy and narrative techniques for adults, couples, adolescents, and children. I provided supervised counseling in the University's clinic for 2 years prior to beginning my internship at OKSRI in 2022 where I began using relational-cultural therapeutic techniques as well as Internal Family Systems.
Summer of 2019
Intern
Legacy Counseling Center
Dallas, TX
I completed an internship at Legacy Counseling Center in Dallas, TX where I worked alongside case managers providing care to homeless adults living with HIV/AIDS. I assisted with intake, housing placement, resource gathering & distribution, as well as helping to care for the emotional needs of Legacy's clients.
Graduated 2019, Cum Laude
Human Development & Family Science, BS
University of North Texas
Trained in human development and family life education, I held several positions working with adults & youth from underserved communities including low-SES populations, children in foster care, homeless adults living with HIV, and young adults on the autism spectrum. I found working with people in need of support to be an incredibly rewarding experience.
Why Coaching?
As a trained therapist, why did I decide to become a coach?
As both a client and a therapist, I've found therapy can be very inaccessible. Systemic issues create significant gaps between therapists and their clients, and there can be many reasons why someone may choose coaching over therapy.
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I have a love/hate relationship with therapy. I believe it has the power to work when done well. I also know it's often not done well - especially when professionals are working with clients they're not adequately trained to help.
I've learned that many therapists simply don't understand complex trauma. Many of the people I've worked with have had at least one bad therapy experience, but most have too many to count.
My hope is that Healing Collective can offer an alternative path to healing for people living with complex trauma who cannot access or have been harmed by therapy in the past.
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Barriers to Accessing Care:​
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Therapists often don't have the same degree of trauma as their clients. Many come from social & economic privilege and they cannot fathom having to go without basic needs like: food and safe housing, living in a body that has never once felt safe, or existing within a system that is literally designed to kill you because of your skin color or your ability level.
The gap in lived experience between providers and their clients can leave clients feeling misunderstood or taken advantage of, which can have severe and long-lasting impacts on a client's health and wellbeing.
I've seen it happen, and I've lived it.
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Therapists are often forced to choose between providing quality care or making enough money to sustain themselves due to a lack of employment benefits, inadequate insurance reimbursement, exploitative hiring practices, and more.
And becoming a therapist isn't cheap. Unpaid internships, testing & licensing fees, and paying out of pocket for supervision is a huge financial burden. This means many therapists come from privilege and often lack personal experience and insight into their clients' struggles.
The therapy field also has a long history of causing great harm to marginalized populations - much of which is still happening today. For some, even just the idea of therapy is a sticking point.
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My intention in coaching is to offer a unique approach to living alongside life's challenges in a safe, supportive, and non-pathologizing way that allows clients to feel empowered in their journey. My hope is that our work, while not therapy, can be deeply therapeutic.
If you are interested in knowing more about my story as a survivor, the following section details some of my history and why I chose to work in mental health
Please take a moment to consider your intention in reading and respect your own comfort level.
Please take caution as some of this information may be triggering to readers.
TRIGGER WARNING
This next session contains information about my story as a survivor of complex trauma living with DID and why I decided to become a trauma therapist and coach.
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It includes mention of negative self-talk, incest, substance use, self-harm/SI
I'm a survivor of complex trauma
Growing up in an incestuous family, you aren't your own person. You have to pretend the horrible things that are happening aren't actually happening, and it can be quite the mindfuck.​
I began therapy at 14 and spent thirteen years trying to figure out what was "wrong with me" because nobody tells you that you're a survivor - you find that out on your own.
Why am I so anxious and depressed? Why are friendships and relationships so hard? Why do I have thoughts that nobody else seems to have? Why do I either have no feelings or way too many? Why am I so out of control? What the fuck is wrong with me?
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On the outside, I looked "fine". I could hold down a job, achieve good grades, and I'd never been past-due on a bill. On the inside, I was miserable. I spent countless years feeling suicidal that the word barely meant anything anymore. I turned to drugs, self-harm - anything I could do to punish myself for existing.
No matter how many therapists I saw, no matter how many sessions I had... things weren't getting better. I felt crazy and it made me hate myself even more. The worse it got, the more judgmental my therapists became. They seemed to imply I wasn't "trying hard enough" or that "if [I] would just stop doing" X, Y, or Z that my problems would go away.
After years of failed therapy, I decided: fuck it, I'm doing this myself! I spent years reading books, finding podcasts, and taking a deep dive into my past. If you'd asked me at the beginning of that journey if I was a survivor of incest, I would have laughed in your face. The mind can do amazing things to block out what it knows you don't have the space to handle, and it took years to uncover these lost memories. The work I did allowed me to have more compassion for the parts of me that struggled silently (or maybe not so silently...) for so many years. This was the answer I needed. My life finally makes sense.​
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​On my journey I've discovered: it wasn't me after all. It baffles me to this day that no therapist ever successfully figured out I had CPTSD and DID, I did all that work on my own. I learned the problems I faced were a reflection of the harm done to me, rather than a reflection of my character. I wish I'd had a therapist who could have told me that sooner. Some days I wish I could erase all the bad therapy I had, because it reinforced so many of the negative beliefs I had about myself and the world. But I also recognize that all that shitty therapy? It made me the person and the therapist I am today. I wouldn't be able to help survivors the way I do now if I hadn't gone through the depths of hell first.
We cannot take away or change the hurt that's been done to us, but we can shift our perspective and how we move through the world with it.
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Thank you for allowing me to share my story with you.