About Ilyse

Connection is the antidote to trauma. In trauma we endure isolation, in healing we find community.

Ilyse Kennedy, LPC, LMFT, PMH-C, SEP, EMDRIA certified

(She/Her)

Therapist & Owner

Therapist bios tend to start with accolades. We believe that accolades build trust.  That the longer someone has been in the field, the more books they have read, and more importantly, written, the more trainings they’ve done, a better therapist they’ll be. Sometimes this is true.  The longer I’ve been a therapist, the more I’ve realized that it is not my accolades that make me a good therapist and I won’t be the right therapist for everyone. For those I am right for and who believe me to be a good therapist, it is my presence and the relationship we build together that makes me so.

 

Before I introduce you to my accolades and labels, I want to share my human qualities with you. As therapists, first and foremost we are human, and continue to be human as therapists. I am deeply feeling, some would say “too sensitive.” What was once a negative as a child and teen has become a gift in my chosen profession. I’m a recovering people pleaser, another quality that lends itself to this profession and that the profession has also allowed me to heal. I have found throughout the years, I have healed alongside the people I work with. I believe that healing is an unfolding process that may never be complete and as therapists, we must tend to ourselves in order to tend to our people. I take my self care and healing seriously because I take the care of my people seriously. I believe in the trauma therapy I offer because I have experienced this type of therapy myself (If you’re interviewing multiple therapists, ask them about their own time in therapy, and don’t shy away from skepticism if they are offering something they haven’t experienced themselves).

 

I make as much space for laughter in the therapy room as I do for tears.  I believe feeling in to our grief and pain actually allows more space for us to feel in to our joy. I believe that mental health and social justice are intrinsically connected, especially in relation to trauma therapy.  I deeply care for humanity and believe we should all have access to safety.  I know and understand that not everyone has access to safety. I also understand my own privilege as a white woman while holding space for the intersection of my marginalized identities (Jewish, queer, autistic, ADHD). With an ever unfolding understanding of social justice and care for humanity, I also know I won’t always get it right. In our understanding of humans through any lens, but especially social justice, we will not always get it right. I make a lot of space for rupture and repair. Many of us did not receive proper repair throughout our lives. While uncomfortable, receiving those repairs in the therapy room can be one of our most healing experiences.

 

I feel an intense connection with music and would fully understand if in lieu of therapy, you seek out a Taylor Swift concert instead. In a previous life, I worked in the music industry but found I didn’t appreciate the treatment of artists and those lower down on the totem pole. It caused me to lose my passion for something I loved so deeply. You may find me quoting great philosophers of our time such as Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers in session. I am a mother of three which has helped me to be a better therapist and human. Through motherhood, I’ve learned the importance of attunement, presence, and connection which I also bring with me to the therapy room.  I am also a connoisseur of the reality television arts—as a trauma therapist, nothing calms me at the end of a long day quite like the sound of women screaming at each other. Perhaps it excites the parts of me that would never yell at another human or flip a table full of perfectly good food.

 

I deeply believe in therapy as a tool for healing because of my own experiences in therapy. I had the privilege of beginning therapy at 10 years old and have used it as a tool throughout my life. I didn’t understand what I was getting from therapy as a young child, but the delight my therapist displayed towards me as I talked to her about all that inhabited my inner world—from friendship to *Nsync—carried me through my adolescence. As I grew in to a depressed teenager, though I didn’t fully express the extent of my pain, her care and delight helped me survive in many ways. She offered me safety, care, and unconditional acceptance. For some of us, therapy may be the one place we experience this. I am honored to carry on what my therapist gave to me. It is an absolute honor to be someone’s safe person. It is something I don’t take for granted.  It was this therapeutic relationship that lead to my seeking therapy later in life as I moved through deeper struggles and trauma.

 

I don’t believe we are ever fully “healed.” This may be disappointing for some to hear, but don’t close the page just yet. As humans we are ever evolving. I believe our inner worlds are rich and layered and the more hurts we’ve experienced, the more parts of ourselves we had to develop to contend with these hurts and protect us from being hurt again. Most of my people come to me for long term, deep work.  Stephen Porges, who developed Polyvagal Theory, posits it takes at least 10 sessions for clients to feel safety in the therapy room.  While I can offer safety, therapy is vulnerable and we are often touching in to new territory that can cause our sense of safety to ebb and flow. It is not the conscious mind that determines whether we feel safe, we must experience it on a nervous system level. It is in the safety we co-create between us that healing lives. When we create the felt sense of safety, it is something we can come back to as needed.

 

I move slowly in this work. When we finally seek therapy, we often feel an urgency to heal. We are finally ready to do the work that once felt so scary. It is a big step to walk through the door or appear on the screen  

 

Who I Work With

 

I work with teens and adults who have experienced many hurts and difficulties throughout their life. It may be as covert as feeling something was “off” with your childhood and never quite knowing what or as overt as human trafficking. I believe it is the hurts we have experienced and our nervous system responses to those hurts that show up as “symptoms.” It is often the parts of ourselves who are trying to protect us that look like symptoms.

 

I work with people who experienced difficult childhoods and are contending with this as they become parents themselves, whether you are pregnant with your first child or raising teenagers. Becoming a parent opens up many wounds we didn’t know were there, or we thought we’d bandaged properly. When we look in the faces of our own children, we see just how small and innocent they are. There is grief in recognizing the ways we want to pour in to our own children that we didn’t receive. You may be taking in information from the likes of Dr. Becky and Big Little Feelings but recognizing you are still getting triggered or having a difficult time parenting. I aid parents in healing from their own childhoods or other hurts as they parent their children. First and foremost, this healing is for you and we can acknowledge healing these cycles of trauma will greatly benefit your children (and their children and their children). It is difficult work but I truly believe that in healing parents, we heal the world.

 

I enjoy working with, and specialize in working with, dissociative disorders. Some of us experienced hurts that have caused the brain to fragment in order to protect us. For some, this means disconnecting the experience of the body from the experience of the brain. Dissociation can cause the brain to fragment in such a way that we have different “parts” or “alters” who do different jobs and aid in our functioning. This can be scary as we may lose time, not have access to certain memories, and “parts” of us may be interacting with the world in ways that feel upsetting for other “parts.” I aid those experiencing dissociation in healing from the hurts that caused the dissociation in the first place. For some, the goal is integrating, while for others the goal is system organization or even just a place to feel seen, heard, and understood in all your beautiful multiplicity.

 

I enjoy working with other folks who identify as neurodivergent. As an AuDHD therapist, I have found my own strengths and difficulties as neurodivergent. We all fall in different places under the umbrella and hold different traits. I help folks hold space for, and come more in to those traits. Many of us were made to feel as though we had to fit in to a neurotypical world which caused great harm and damage. I want the therapy room to be a space where you feel free and open to experience the accommodations you need from asking to dim the lights, to adjusting our therapy to the processing speed that works for you. Whether you have been formally diagnosed or self diagnosed, you deserve a space to feel seen and comfortable in the unique ways your beautiful brain works.

 

I enjoy working with healers who are moving through their own healing. As healers, we create a container for so many other people and don’t often have space for ourselves. We may be contending with layers of shame in all that we are holding alongside our clients. I offer you a space to hang up your therapist or healer hat and be held in all of your humanity. You may know all my “tricks” but many healers are drawn to working with me because of my skill in helping you to allow your intellectual parts to rest so you can drop in and be with the deeper parts that may get stirred in session watching you work with the tender parts of others and neglect your own. Healers deserve sacred space to move through our own hurts just as we create that space for others.

 

I enjoy working with couples who are experiencing difficulty due to their own histories. We often hear the trope “you must heal yourself before being in relationship” actually, relationships can be healing and we can heal within them. We come to relationship with our own histories, hurts, and attachment patterns. Many of us did not witness healthy relationships growing up and may not know a healthy, fulfilling relationship is possible. For those who come from backgrounds of trauma, couples therapy can be a powerful tool in healing from our histories and building a safe container for future resilience. Relationships aren’t easy and no matter how much you have endured, you deserve ease within relationships.

 

How I Work

I believe in three pillars of therapy: somatic, parts healing, and memory reconsolidation. While general talk therapy can be helpful for addressing our daily stressors, our systems have learned a way of being that is deeply ingrained for our survival. Those ways of surviving likely saved us when we were up against immense threat. In healing, we must let our nervous systems know we are no longer being chased by the bear, so to speak.

 

Somatic

 

I am trained in Somatic Experiencing therapy and have my Somatic Experiencing Practitioner certification. This way of working focuses on body sensation to aid in moving trauma through the body. You may have heard the phrase or book, “The Body Keeps the Score,” this way of working helps us to focus on what arises in our bodies in connection to trauma and process what is stuck to relieve symptoms of PTSD. Through exploration of body sensation, we aid in orienting the nervous system to safety and having the disconfirming experience of moving through traumatic memory (at a distance) while experiencing safety.

 

Parts Healing

 

I am trained in Internal Family Systems Therapy and have written a book on this way of working titled, “The Tender Parts.” Have you ever found yourself saying, “a part of me wants to go out tonight but another part of me wants to stay in”? In parts work, we more deeply explore the hopes and fears of those parts. Internal Family Systems considers that we are each beings of multiplicity and we have many parts within us who do different jobs. If you have seen the Pixar film, “Inside Out,” this is a great example of what we explore with IFS.  We may have parts of ourselves who are people pleasers, self critics, depressed parts, or serve other functions. Often, these parts developed to keep us safe in response to hurts we experienced. In IFS and parts work, we get to know these parts better so they are better able to function within our system rather than holding the belief that they just get in the way.  We might also be able to integrate and unburden these parts, if that is your goal, so they no longer have to do these jobs.

 

Memory Reconsolidation

 

I am an EMDRIA certified EMDR practitioner. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing. It is a type of therapy that targets specific traumatic memories to aid us in reprocessing them so they no longer feel at the forefront of the mind and cause us “symptoms.” We use back and forth eye movement, or other means, to activate the right and left side of the brain while we bring the memory online at the same time the nervous system is experiencing safety. When we experience trauma, the memory does not store properly, so we develop a sensitivity to outside stimulus that feels reminiscent of the traumatic material. This could be smells, sounds, visuals, etc. This sensitivity causes us to become activated even when our conscious minds know the stimulus does not mean the trauma is happening in that moment. EMDR aids us in tucking the memory back in to our brains so we are not as activated and distressed.

  • Trauma

  • PTSD

  • Complex PTSD

  • Intergenerational Trauma Healing

  • Depression

  • Anxiety

  • Stress

  • Life Transitions

  • Self Harming Behaviors

  • Suicidal Ideation

  • Dissociation

  • Dissociative Identity Disorder

  • Borderline Personality Disorder

  • Maternal Mental Health

  • Perinatal Mood Disorders

  • Pregnancy Loss

  • Infertility

  • Relationship Violence Survivors

  • Sexual Assault Survivors

ADVANCED TRAINING

  • EMDRIA Certified EMDR Clinician

  • EMDR Child Specialist

  • Internal Family Systems (Level 3 Trained)

  • Somatic Experiencing (Provisional SEP)

  • Nurturing the Heart With the Brain in Mind (Year long IPNB Intensive)

  • Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

  • Theraplay

  • Certified Positive Discipline Parent Educator

  • Maternal Mental Health Intensive - Seleni Institute

  • Holding in Psychotherapy With Karen Kleiman

  • Gottman - Level I

  • Relational Life Therapy

  • Brains in Session

  • Tracking Neural Networks

  • Directive Group Play Therapy

  • Minding the Heart

  • Sandtray

  • Expressive Arts in Play Therapy

  • Interpersonal Neurobiology Immersive Training with Julianne Taylor Shore

  • Dissociation Training With Kathy Steele, Delores Mosquera, and Ana Gomez

  • Mental Healthcare for Trans+ Clients

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

  • American Counseling Association

  • Austin In Connection

  • Southwest Sexual Health Alliance

  • EMDRIA

PRESENTATIONS

  • Boss Babes ATX Community Caucus-Panel Moderator - "On Self Care and Social Justice"

  • Bonding With Baby: An Attachment Workshop for New Parents

  • PSI Conference: Processing Birth Trauma, a Relational Approach

FEATURES

EDUCATION

St. Edward's University - M.A. in Counseling - Licensed Professional Counselor - Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

Loyola Marymount University - B.A. in English - Journalism

My current fee is $200 for a 50-minute session and $240 for an 80-minute session.

areas of expertise

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Contact Ilyse