Check Out Megan Thomson’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Megan Thomson.

Megan, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I was raised in a few different places- spending the most amount of my childhood in the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest. As a child, I often felt like an outsider during these cross-country moves, unsure of where I belonged. That thread of disconnection followed me into early adulthood, until I began to find healing and a sense of home within myself through therapy. I’ve known what it’s like to move through seasons where joy feels far away.

Counseling is a second career for me. I was an elementary school teacher early on and then took a break from full time work while I had my three children. I experienced postpartum anxiety and depression after each of my pregnancies and it was the care of a loving, attuned therapist that brought me back to myself during this time. It’s this intimacy with my own darkness that cultivated a desire to walk with others through theirs- to not only hold space for them, but to accompany them in their emotional truth and undo their aloneness. I went back to graduate school for counseling when my youngest child was one. I fall more in love with the human experience the longer I am a therapist and I’m profoundly humbled by the sacredness of this work.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Some of this I described earlier. I’m continually working through my own generational trauma and the ways this impacts me as a woman, mother, spouse, and friend.

In my 30’s, I was diagnosed with OCD, and it was like a lightbulb went off that described everything I was experiencing in my head. OCD can be really underrecognized and undersupported in the field, and it’s one of the reasons I work with OCD and anxiety as a therapist now. Unfortunately, we tend to see something like OCD and anxiety as a problem to be solved, whereas I really think that it’s a messenger, if we learn how to listen deeply to it.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a trauma-informed therapist who specializes in perfectionists who have anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). My clients are typically highly sensitive deep feelers, parents, and young adult women. Although I am trained in Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) which is the “gold standard” for working with OCD and I do exposures with clients, I am also trained in AEDP which is a relational, experiential therapy that helps people heal by safely feeling and transforming emotions so that new experiences of connection and resilience emerge. This means that I go beyond fixing and treating anxiety, and get deep into the core of why anxiety is there in the first place and what emotions might be lying underneath it. I am highly relational and believe the best work in therapy is done in the context of a safe, attuned therapeutic relationship.

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Being a therapist involves a great deal of your own internal work and I encourage anyone considering entering the field to engage in their own therapy process.

Pricing:

• As a private pay provider, I’ve intentionally chosen to work outside the constraints of insurance so I can offer care that is thoughtful, flexible, and truly client-centered.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://meganthomsoncounseling.com