Sometimes we become so focused on meeting expectations, managing relationships, or making it through difficult experiences that we lose touch with ourselves along the way. I'm Katie Ellis, a Couples and Family Therapy intern at Northwest Relationships in Tacoma, and I want therapy to be a place where you can begin to slow down, feel understood, and reconnect with yourself.

In the therapy room, I work with individuals, couples, families, and children and teens, supporting clients navigating anxiety and OCD, neurodivergence, identity exploration, relationship challenges, and family-of-origin patterns. I especially enjoy helping couples look beneath recurring conflict to better understand their relational patterns and build greater emotional safety and connection. I'm also drawn to helping clients examine the stories and expectations they've inherited from family, culture, relationships, and religion, exploring which still fit or which they want to redefine or leave behind. This includes a particular interest in religious trauma and deconstruction, purity culture and sexual shame, and the ways these experiences can intersect with sexuality and LGBTQIA+ identity.

My approach is systemic and trauma-informed, drawing from Internal Family Systems, Narrative Therapy, Emotionally Focused Family Therapy, and the Gottman Method, in which I've completed Level 1 and Level 2 training. I really value parts work because it helps us approach your emotions and responses with curiosity and compassion. Together, we can understand what different parts of you need, untangle the stories and experiences that have shaped you, and create more freedom to live more authentically.

Before becoming a therapist, I worked as a technical designer at Savage X Fenty. That experience deepened my appreciation for creativity, identity, and self-expression. I'm now completing my graduate training at Antioch University, with continuing education in play therapy and obsessive-compulsive disorders. I'm supervised by Robin Beckley, LMFT, an AAMFT Approved Supervisor.

Outside the therapy room, I enjoy paddleboarding, painting nail designs, making candles, writing poetry, and hosting friends and family. A line from bell hooks guides my work: rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. I believe healing happens in relationships where we feel safe enough to be seen, understood, and fully ourselves.