​Hi, I’m Lindsay Vaughn (not the Olympic skier, if you were wondering).  Growing up as a sensitive kid in a dysfunctional family, I developed some pretty powerful strategies to take care of myself.  Bearing the emotional load for my family was a big job for such a small person, especially since I didn’t know that some of the feelings I had were not my own.  The protective strategies I developed to turn down the volume on my feelings got me through my early years, and even helped me succeed in many ways.  I became highly functional, good at compartmentalizing, incredibly organized, and pretty hard to rattle.  The tough, calm exterior I developed was a far cry, no pun intended, from the kid who teared up several times a day when she was young.  By the time I was 20, I thought, and most of the people around me thought, that I was unflappable.  As I entered my graduate program and started doing my own therapy, though, I had to look at things a little more closely.  I came to realize that my need to control my feelings also manifested in a need to control my circumstances, and sometimes the people around me.  That didn’t go over so well in my relationships, and it caused me a lot of unnecessary stress as I worked to dictate the movement of all the chess pieces that made up my life.  I also came to realize that it might be a good thing to welcome and explore my feelings, rather than shove them into some internal, well-guarded box.  Slowly, I came to appreciate the fact that I could feel the things that I had previously tried to avoid, and consequently, I felt more alive.   

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Today, I am a lot more comfortable with feelings of anger, sadness, fear, and shame, and I am grateful that I get to provide a container for others to get more comfortable, too.  I believe that there can be great emotional, physical, and spiritual consequences when we deny or stuff our feelings, but unfortunately, our society is really set up to encourage the stuffing and denying.  As a therapist, I often work to counter that influence, by educating people about the good things that come from being open, authentic, vulnerable, and even sensitive.  I tell them about the joy, excitement, creativity, and intuition that can be unlocked in this process.  I aim to provide a space where it is safe to explore uncharted territory.  I give permission for all feelings and all parts of a person to show up in the room.  Within this framework, my clients are able to find their way to their true essence, over time, and they generally feel more alive then, too. 

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I believe, wholeheartedly, in the synergistic effect of an interdisciplinary approach to mental health, and I always encourage my clients to take advantage of the services offered by other practitioners on my team, so that they may experience healing in mind, body, and spirit.