Trauma-Informed Therapy for High-Achieving Women
You've Been The Strong One For Long Enough
Online Trauma-informed Therapy | NC, TX, MD, GA, SC & FL
Everyone who knows you would say you’re doing great…You'd say something different if anyone actually asked. You'd say you haven't slept through the night in months. That your body has been holding tension in places you didn't know had names. That the version of you people compliment is the one you can't stand being alone with anymore.
This is trauma-informed therapy for high-achieving women who have spent years functioning through anxiety, chronic stress, and unnamed grief. It is for the ones who don't fall apart. Who learned early that falling apart wasn't an option. Who are starting to notice what all that holding-together has actually cost.
You don't have to explain the shape of your life before we get started. You don't have to translate what it's been like to be the most qualified person in the room and still feel like you're the one being measured. You don't have to justify why you're here when your life looks fine from the outside.
You just have to be tired of surviving well.
Where you might startEvery woman I work with is carrying something different.
Take a look at what you're navigating right now. We can go from there.
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Trauma Therapy
Sometimes trauma looks like a packed calendar. Sometimes it looks like being praised for how composed you are while your body has been bracing since morning.
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Anxiety Therapy
The overthinking. The 2am spiral. The chest tightness before a meeting where you know exactly what you're doing.
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Grief Therapy
The losses that don't get ceremonies. The identity you left behind. The person who never became who you needed them to be.
Most therapy stops at the point where the real work has to start.
And still, the patterns keep running.
That is not a failure of insight. It is the ceiling of what insight can do without a body-based method to move what talk therapy cannot reach. For women who have been high-functioning through pain for a long time, understanding is often the part that came easiest. What did not come easy is the shift itself.
Mental Lift is built for that gap. The work here uses Brainspotting to address trauma, chronic stress, and unnamed grief where they actually live. In the body. Underneath language. Below the story you have already learned to tell about yourself.
That is where lasting change happens, especially for women who have spent years being told that self-awareness would be enough.
Why the work here is different…You already understand your patterns. You can trace them back to where they came from. You have done years of that work, in therapy or on your own, and you can articulate it better than most therapists could.
Meet your therapist…Katrina Wilkes, LCSW
I am a licensed clinical social worker and certified Brainspotting practitioner working online with high-achieving women across North Carolina, Texas, Maryland, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida.
I built Mental Lift to be the practice I wish had existed when I was the one looking for support. A therapist who understood what it took to build a life that looks fine from the outside. Who worked with the body as much as the mind. One who did not need me to explain the weight of being the strong one before starting to help me put it down.
That practice did not exist. So I built it.
Questions worth asking
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Trauma-informed therapy for high-achieving women recognizes that most of what looks like anxiety, chronic stress, or difficulty resting is actually the nervous system doing what it learned to do to keep you safe. Regular therapy often focuses on managing symptoms. Trauma-informed therapy works underneath the symptoms, at the level where the responses originally formed. At Mental Lift, that means using Brainspotting alongside talk therapy to reach what words alone often can't.
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Most of the women I work with are carrying more than one at once. Anxiety and trauma often share a nervous system origin. Grief for what you never got to have shows up as both. You don't have to sort it before you reach out. Part of the work in the first few sessions is naming what's actually happening so we can move at the pace your body can hold. If you're not sure where to start, start anywhere.
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Brainspotting is a body-based therapy modality that works with the areas of the brain that hold trauma, chronic stress, and unprocessed grief. It doesn't require you to retell your story in detail. It doesn't require you to be articulate about what you're feeling. Most of my clients came to Brainspotting after years of talk therapy that helped them understand their patterns but didn't actually shift them. Brainspotting works underneath language, which is often where the real work has to happen.
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I am an out-of-network provider, which means clients pay directly and I can provide superbills for potential reimbursement through your insurance carrier. Many clients find that out-of-network reimbursement covers a meaningful portion of the session fee. I can walk you through what to ask your insurance company during our consultation.
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Sessions happen through a secure, HIPAA-compliant video platform. Before each session, you receive a private link. You need a quiet space, a stable internet connection, and about an hour. Online trauma therapy is fully licensed and clinically equivalent to in-person work for most clients. I am licensed to see clients living in North Carolina, Texas, Maryland, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida.
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Talk therapy is often incredible for understanding why you are the way you are. But understanding alone rarely moves what the body is still holding. That's the gap Brainspotting addresses. It works at the level where trauma actually lives, not where you've learned to explain it. Most of my clients come to me having done years of talk therapy first. This tends to be the work that finally moves what talk therapy couldn't.
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Yes. Trauma is not measured by how bad it looked. It is measured by what your nervous system had to do to survive it. High-achieving women often minimize what they went through because they have kept functioning through it, and functioning is often mistaken for healing. Your body knows the difference. If something in your past taught you to brace, to perform, to never fully rest, that is what we can work with. You do not have to qualify. You just have to be ready.
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There is no single answer, because trauma therapy timelines depend on what you are working with, how long you have been carrying it, and what pace your nervous system can integrate. Some clients feel meaningful shifts within a few weeks. Others do longer-term work over months or more. What I can promise is that we work at the pace your body can actually hold. Not the pace you have been forcing yourself to keep.
One day, someone will ask if you're doing great, and you'll actually mean yes.
The version of you that isn't managing the gap between how you look and how you feel is not far. She's not a different woman. She's the one you've been working around for years. This is where you stop working around her.
