Awaken Through Connection
Past therapy may not have given you more than what you could get from a good friend and a few self-help books. You may have avoided therapy for that reason.
You already know how to cope, solve problems, and get things done.
What has changed is the ground under that. What used to make sense no longer does. The old rules no longer produce the same results. What you could once overlook is now in the way. What was supposed to bring satisfaction and safety is starting to feel empty.
You do not want better coping skills. You want to understand the change, and find a path that has excitement, stability, fulfillment, and clarity in it.
I would like to meet you.
What This Is
This is not more tools for a life that already runs.
You already cope. You already solve. What is asked for here is different: a place to look at the shift itself. Why the old map stopped matching the ground. What those rules were doing for you. What a next stretch of life would require if it had to include clarity, stability, and a reason to want it.
We do not spend the hour stacking strategies. We stay with what is actually changing—inside you and around you—until it can be named, and until a direction becomes honest instead of inherited.
The work is coming back into contact with what is already yours: the truth you have always known, the purpose you have always had, the power that makes you who you are, and the gifts that have been in you all along.
All of you is welcome in the room. The past, the struggle, and the feeling around the shift. Also your strength, your sense of what will work and what will not, and the particular skill you already bring. This is something we do together. You are not raw material. You are a partner.
Your pace will be respected. You will not be left to wander. We take the time it takes. We stay with what is hard without turning the hour into an excavation or a place to get lost. The care is real. So is the aim: understand the change, and leave with a direction.
If you want help managing symptoms or getting through the week, there are good people for that. If you want help understanding the change and choosing a path on purpose, that is what this is.
How I Work
Most therapy starts from this premise: something in you is dysregulated, unfinished, or unskilled. The work is to soothe it, process it, or teach you to cope with it.
I work from a different one. The truth is that nothing is wrong with most people who are willing to sit down and look at this. If something were fundamentally wrong, you would not have the insight—or the discomfort—that brought you here. Those are not symptoms of a defect. They are what make the work possible. Discomfort is not dysfunction. You are having a sane reaction to what you have lived and what is shifting now.
I also work from this: you already know the truth, and you already have a way through. When you are met with accurate information, safety, a clear perspective, and respect, that knowing can come back into view. If you feel as if you do not know, or do not have the answers, that is not because they are gone. Not knowing was part of the skill that helped you survive and arrive here. It did its job. It is not the whole of you.
For a long time, questioning, discomfort, living by a story you had to believe in order to survive, or the sense that you were running someone else’s script, got named as anxiety, depression, trauma. Then “health” meant learning to cope well enough to continue as before. Sometimes that naming is accurate, and some people live with conditions that need to be managed with medication and therapy that helps them get through the week. That work is real. It is not the only thing that can be happening. For many people on this page, the pain is not proof of a broken mind. It is what it feels like when the old arrangement no longer fits.
I am not installing a new self. I am helping you recover contact with what is already yours—including the skill that once had to stay hidden in order to get you this far.
This is not the right offer for everyone. If you need help managing symptoms or getting through the week, that work matters, and it is not what I am for. If you want to understand the change and leave with a path you can stand behind, that is what I am for.
Who I Sit With
1
Adults
People who already function, and who can feel that the old map no longer fits.
2
Clinicians, Helpers, Healers
Therapists, healers, and other practitioners who need a space for clarity that is not peer chat, is completely safe and confidential, and not another training.
3
Case Consultation
For therapists, healers, and other practitioners who want another set of eyes on the work they are doing with someone—what is happening in the room, what is being carried, what the work is asking of you, and what to do next.
About
Hi, I'm Lynette. I live in Toledo. I am a licensed independent social worker in Ohio (LISW-S), and I teach social work at the undergraduate and graduate level.
I know what it is to sit in the other chair. Every therapist should. I will not tell you I understand something when I do not. I will not assume your experience lands the way mine would. I do not work from behind a polished version of myself. I am not opaque, and I am not above struggle.
I am transparent when it serves you. What I share is for the work in front of us, not so I can sort myself out in your hour.
I will not know you on the first visit. You will tell me what you need to tell me when you are ready. You can ask me questions. I will answer. That is how trust is built.
People I sit with often say the work helped in a way they did not expect, or in a way that actually took. Training is part of that. So is the work I have had to do on my own when help was not there, and with excellent help when it was. The larger part is this: I know the person across from me already has what they need to get where they want to go. My job is not to be the healer, the guide, or the expert. It is to work with what is already in you until the way is visible again.
I work this way because I have spent years inside ordinary therapy—as a clinician, a teacher, and a person in the chair—and I have found that the usual approaches are not enough for the time we are in. I know the discomfort, confusion, and disorientation that come when the map no longer matches the ground. I will not ask you to do work I have not done, or that I have not had to do with someone else’s help.
If you want to see whether this is a fit, we start with a conversation.
Time and Cost
We start with a phone conversation. The point is to get a sense of each other and decide whether there is a path forward.
I do this work because I am focused on the person. Money is part of the arrangement. It is not the point. We will be direct about it.
Money is an exchange of what each of us can actually bring. I bring the best of what I have to give. You bring an amount that is the best you can honestly offer. The number will not be the same for every person. If it is truly someone’s best, the exchange is equal. A large sum that costs a person nothing and a small sum that costs them something are not the same gift. I am interested in the second kind of honesty, not in a single price that pretends everyone is standing in the same place.
Insurance
I am in network with Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, and Medical Mutual.
If you want to use insurance, you need to know your own benefits. I will give you the number your plan uses for me so you can call and confirm that I am in network and what you will owe.
When I file a claim, I have to accept the rate I contracted with the plan. If you have a deductible, I am required to collect that from you until it is met. That is usually about $97 to $120 per visit. If you have a copay, you pay that copay.
Billing insurance also means I must give a mental health diagnosis. The plan may ask for notes from our time together. Many people are not concerned about that. If you are, we should talk about it before we start.
Paying directly
If I am not in network with your plan, or you would rather not use insurance, we will look at how often we need to meet, what you can actually sustain, and agree on a rate. My standard rate is $150 an hour. I do not use one number for every person, for the same reason I do not use one approach for every person. We will come to an agreement that can hold for both of us.
Money is part of the work. We can say so out loud.
Start Here
If this sounds like the room you have been looking for, we start with a phone conversation.
The call is to get a sense of each other and decide whether there is a path forward. You do not need to arrive with a finished story.
Bring what you can say now.
Email me at: awakencounselingllc@gmail.com
Once I get your email, I will respond and we will find a time to talk. You can share as much or as little as you would like. I will be watching for you!