Welcome to The Awakened Heart Therapy

In-Person Anxiety Counseling in Tempe, Somatic Therapy, and EMDR Therapy for Adults

“I wake up already tense. Before my feet hit the floor, my mind is running. What did I forget? What am I going to mess up today? How am I going to get through all of this? Part of me is always on alert. Scanning. Planning. Trying to stay one step ahead of what could go wrong.”

You’re here because you’ve worked so hard to figure yourself out, but you still feel stuck. Right now, you’re working hard to hold it together on the outside. You show up. You get things done. People rely on you. Even on your hardest days, you still push through. That’s just what you do.

But inside, It feels like you are barely holding things together. Anxiety, overthinking, guilt, and pressure don’t let up. You replay mistakes late at night. You worry about disappointing people. You feel stuck in fight or flight. Sometimes the pressure feels so intense, you freeze and can’t get anything done.

Sometimes you feel numb. Sometimes your emotions feel overwhelming or unpredictable, and leave you questioning yourself. You may look around and quietly wonder: Why does life seem easier for everyone else?

If you’re looking for a highly trained and experienced therapist in Tempe who offers more than traditional talk therapy, you’re in the right place. For over 25 years, I have helped people with anxiety, trauma, phobias, and the lasting effects of difficult life experiences, in many clinical settings.

Since beginning private practice in 2015, I have focused on helping adults experience meaningful, lasting change through EMDR therapy, somatic therapy, parts work, and other experiential therapy approaches. I have completed more than 450 hours of advanced training and consultation because I have always been interested in one question: What actually helps people fully heal?

Over the years, I learned one therapy approach after another because each offered an important piece of the puzzle. Eventually, I realized that no single approach fully explained or healed the whole person.

Today, my work reflects an integration of those approaches—helping people understand their story, reconnect with what their body is still carrying, and gently transform the ways they learned to stay safe.

Many people searching for somatic therapy in Tempe aren’t simply looking for another therapy technique. They’re trying to understand why years of insight, traditional talk therapy, or coping strategies helped them understand their problems—but they don’t actually feel different.

I actively guide people who feel stuck in patterns of anxiety, overthinking, and self-criticism to create meaningful, lasting change by working at the level of the nervous system and underlying patterns. If you’re looking for in-person somatic therapy in Tempe, and want to work with a licensed therapist who specializes in trauma and nervous system healing, you’re in the right place.

Rather than working only with thoughts, with experiential therapy, we also work with the nervous system, emotional experience, and the protective patterns that developed to help you feel safe and in control. This creates the opportunity for deeper, more lasting healing—not simply managing symptoms, but changing the underlying patterns that keep anxiety, trauma reactions, and self-criticism stuck in place.

I help people who have spent years working hard to hold everything together on the outside, finally experience what it feels like to become calmer, more authentic, more grounded, and able to trust themselves again.

My Tempe private practice specializes in:

Nervous System Healing

Anxiety Counseling

Somatic Therapy

Trauma Therapy

EMDR Therapy

Phobia Treatment

Why Do I Understand So Much About Myself… But Still Feel Stuck?

Maybe you’ve spent years trying to understand yourself. Perhaps you’ve become so good at thinking your way through life that you rarely notice what’s happening in your body until you’re overwhelmed. Maybe you’ve become an expert at living from the neck up.

You know what happened in your past. You know why it happened. And yet your body still reacts before you’ve had time to think. If this sounds familiar, there is nothing wrong with you.

Many people grow up learning—often without anyone saying the words—that fully feeling their emotions wasn’t safe, helpful, or welcome. Over time, thinking, analyzing, planning, fixing, or staying in control become understandable ways of protecting yourself.

Those strategies may have helped you stay safe and belong. Over time, they can become the protective parts of you that work tirelessly to keep you from having to feel pain again.

The challenge is that those same protective parts can also keep you from experiencing the healing, connection, and freedom you’re longing for. Understanding is an important part of healing. It’s just not the whole story.

My Ideal Clients

The people who find me often identify as the “responsible child” in their families—whether they were the oldest child or simply the one who learned to carry more than their share. You may be the person everyone relies on. The responsible one. The helper. The fixer. The one who learned to keep things running smoothly and take care of others, even when it came at the expense of yourself.

You learned, somewhere along the way, that being responsible, capable, or helpful was connected to feeling safe, valued, or worthy. Your identity has become organized around responsibility, competence, and taking care of others, making it difficult to know what you need or want for yourself.

You may worry that you’ll “fail” at therapy or not do it right. You may worry that something is fundamentally wrong with you. You also might worry your problems aren’t “bad enough” to deserve therapy.

You tend to turn things inward, questioning yourself, overthinking, and trying to get things right. You take on responsibility that isn’t actually yours. You have an inner voice that is constantly criticizing you, second-guessing you, or telling you you’re not doing enough.

You have already tried to think your way through this, and are starting to realize that your nervous system needs attention and support. Somatic therapy in Tempe can help your nervous system finally slow down. If you’re looking for a Tempe therapist or anxiety counseling in Tempe, you may be ready for something deeper and more transformative than just coping strategies.

What’s it like to work with me?

Clients often tell me I am welcoming, warm, caring, and gentle during the therapeutic process, and that my office feels calm and grounding. They experience therapy with me as a space that feels safe, steady, and paced in a way that allows them to explore deeper patterns – without becoming overwhelmed.

Many clients come to therapy worried they will be judged, shamed, or misunderstood. Because of my own experiences with anxiety and trauma, along with decades of clinical experience, I don’t judge or shame others. Instead, I bring deep empathy and big-picture understanding that comes from lived experience with these problems and from doing my own experiential work to heal from them. I take the time to listen and understand, because everyone deserves that, and because misunderstanding doesn’t lead to work that is effective.

Many people are also looking for active guidance during EMDR therapy or somatic therapy, because they have felt alone, or overwhelmed, and didn’t know if they were “doing it right.” I am fully present and highly attuned, and I actively guide clients through their emotions and experiences during experiential therapy to help teach skills and build confidence. Experiential therapy shouldn’t mean being left alone to figure it out yourself. When people feel overwhelmed or alone in the process, it can become harder to stay connected to the work.

Experiential therapy works beneath the surface, creating meaningful and lasting change.

Many of the people who find me are insightful, thoughtful, self-aware, and have already spent years trying to understand themselves. The problem isn’t that they lack insight. The problem is that insight alone hasn’t created lasting change.

Many of the clients I work with have not gotten the results they were hoping for in previous therapy, and are looking for a deeper, more effective approach. Something beyond insight, talk therapy, and coping strategies. Experiential types of therapy might be just what you are looking for, the missing pieces of integration.

Many clients come to me after traditional talk therapy has helped them understand their problems, but they still feel stuck in the same emotional patterns. Experiential therapies help bridge the gap between understanding a problem and actually feeling different. My approach combines active guidance with experiential and nervous-system-focused work to help people move beyond understanding their problems and begin experiencing meaningful change.

No homework. No simplistic or superficial quick-fixes. This is deep, lasting work, gently paced so it feels manageable. As a Tempe therapist specializing in somatic therapy and anxiety counseling in Tempe, I can patiently and actively guide your nervous system in processing experiences that may still be influencing how you respond to life today.

Clients move from feeling anxious, self-critical, and responsible for everything…to feeling calmer, more confident, able to trust themselves, set boundaries, and be who they actually are.

They move from organizing their lives around fear and avoidance…to showing up more fully, with more ease, confidence, and self-acceptance.

Clients consistently report significant changes in how they experience themselves, their emotions, and their ability to move through their lives.

With 25 years of clinical experience, I am one of a small number of therapists working at the intersection of EMDR, somatic therapy, and nervous system healing. This integrated approach goes far beyond surface-level coping, helping to resolve the deeper patterns that keep anxiety, trauma, and phobias in place.

If you’re looking for a Tempe therapist, somatic therapy in Tempe, anxiety counseling in Tempe, or EMDR therapy in Tempe, please request a free 20 minute Consultation below!

We can have a brief, no-pressure conversation to see if this feels like the right fit.

You can read more about working with Taana Abbitt (EMDR Therapist) or EMDR Therapy.