Brooke Jefferson, LMHCA

My approach to healing in therapy is less about fixing what is “wrong” with you and more about understanding how you learned to navigate the world around you — and how you may want to change that now. Many of the ways we cope, protect ourselves, or relate to others developed for good reason; they helped us adapt to relationships, environments, or experiences that asked something of us. But strategies that were once wise and necessary can become limiting when we carry them into new chapters of our lives. Our work together can be a place to slow down, get curious about what’s happening beneath the surface, and begin relating to yourself in new ways.

I believe you are the expert on your own lived experience, but that doesn’t mean you have to navigate the therapeutic process on your own. Whether you’re new to therapy or have felt frustrated by a lack of direction in the past, I’ll help us chart a path forward. I’ll offer reflections, notice patterns and connections, and present possibilities for where we might go next. My approach is trauma-informed and consent-based, with attention to your safety and what your nervous system can hold along the way. Ultimately, you’ll always be in the driver’s seat regarding where we go and how we get there.

I specialize in working with eating disorders, disordered eating, and body image concerns, as well as trauma, anxiety, identity exploration, and existential questions around career, meaning, or purpose. I’m especially drawn to where these experiences overlap — when struggles with food or the body are connected to trauma, perfectionism, belonging, identity, control, or the ways we’ve learned we need to be in the world in order to feel worthy or safe.

I take an experiential and body-centered approach, drawing from somatic therapy, parts work, Gestalt, mindfulness, and EMDR to help us explore what’s happening beyond words alone. I am EMDR trained, and my graduate training in Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling at Naropa University also makes room in our work for questions of connection to something beyond ourselves — whether you find that through nature, spirituality, community, or simply a sense that your life is woven into something larger.

When working with struggles around food and body image, my approach is grounded in Body Trust® and Health at Every Size® (HAES®) principles. I practice from a non-diet, weight-inclusive perspective and understand eating and body distress within the larger cultural systems that shape how we learn to think about weight, health, beauty, and worth. Together, we might work toward loosening rigid rules around food and movement, rebuilding trust with your body, making room for grief or anger about what diet culture has taken from you, and discovering what caring for yourself can look like outside of shame and self-surveillance.

Most importantly, I want therapy to be a space where you don’t have to perform, have the “right” insight, or arrive as a more polished version of yourself. You get to bring your uncertainty, contradictions, humor, anger, messiness, and whatever else is actually there. There is room for all of it.

Outside of the therapy room, I'm nourished by cooking something seasonal without a recipe, weeding my garden (and practicing the same mindfulness I teach my clients), reading literary fiction or love letters to the natural world, and spending time with my spunky English Bulldog, Eleanor. I feel most alive when I’m out finding cold rivers to jump into here in the Gorge, traveling to experience new cultures, and, most recently, learning the ropes of whitewater kayaking.