Bonnie Dodge,
LCMHC-A,
(she/her/hers)
“One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your own soul.”
— Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
I believe therapy is sacred.
I also believe therapy can involve swearing occasionally, be spiced with laughter and tears, and include admitting that sometimes the person who is always holding everything together needs somewhere to put it down. You can know you're safe now and still carry a nervous system that hasn't quite caught up.
As a neurodivergent lesbian who grew up in the South, I bring both lived experience and professional training to my work as a trauma therapist. I am trained in Brainspotting, with a clinical focus in trauma and neurodivergence.
Therapy can be a place to put down the roles you carry, loosen your grip on having it all together, and be met exactly as you are. I believe healing happens through relationship, through being seen, understood, and witnessed without judgment. The therapeutic relationship itself can become part of the healing: a place to slow down, reconnect, and discover that you don't have to do all of this alone.
You may be highly capable and genuinely struggling at the same time. You may be the insightful one, the steady one, the person everyone turns to for perspective or support. From the outside, you may look like you're doing just great, while privately feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, or like you're working much harder than anyone realizes.
You may have spent years feeling like you're “too much” or “not enough,” just can’t get it right...too sensitive, too intense, too distracted, too particular, too much in your head, or somehow never quite doing enough.
Maybe you understand your patterns so well that you could explain exactly where they came from, and yet, you're still stuck in them. Insight has never been your problem.
Your nervous system did not read the book.
Knowing why something happens doesn't always make it easier to shift. Sometimes your mind understands long before the rest of you catches up. You can know intellectually that you're safe while some deeper part of you is still bracing. Other times, something shows up in your body before you have words for it. We don't have to figure it out right away. We can slow down and become curious about what you're noticing.
We'll use what you already know about yourself as a starting point and explore what needs to shift, not by forcing yourself to change, but by creating enough safety, curiosity, and connection for something else to become possible.
My approach is collaborative, relational, and deeply attuned. I draw from contemporary psychodynamic, somatic, relational, and neurobiological perspectives, along with mindfulness and practical therapeutic tools. I'm particularly interested in how our histories, relationships, bodies, and nervous systems shape how we experience ourselves and the world around us.
I believe in the wisdom of the body. We can pay attention to tension, sensation, movement, impulses, and shifts in how you feel without immediately trying to override or explain them.
Sometimes the answer is profound and sometimes the answer is, “You need a sandwich and eight hours of sleep.” Both are worth investigating.
With Brainspotting, we use your felt experience, body responses, and visual field as guides to explore what may be difficult to access through words alone. Rather than forcing an answer, we follow what emerges and allow your system to process at its own pace.
I understand the ways we learn to adapt, protect ourselves, stay vigilant, or become exceptionally good at holding things together. These patterns often make perfect sense in the context of what we've lived through, even when they no longer serve us in the same way.
They don't need to be forced away. They deserve to be understood.
I don't believe you need to be fixed. There is nothing inherently wrong with you. Our work is about understanding the patterns that have helped you survive, reconnecting with the wisdom you already carry, and creating more space to exhale into being human.
You don't have to hold it together here. You just have to show up.
When I'm not working, I'm probably in a worn-out flannel somewhere in nature, hammocking with my dog, reading with my wife, writing angsty poems, or baking while listening to 2000s rock. And if I'm traveling, I'm probably looking for another sea critter to add to my tattoo collection.
Bonnie’s Specializations: