Lauren Craney, LMHC

Lauren Craney is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Certified Somatic Trauma Therapist who works exclusively with adult women. She believes therapy should be a place where you can show up as you are—without having to have everything figured out, explain yourself perfectly, or feel like there is something wrong with you.

Her approach is warm, collaborative, trauma-certified, and rooted in curiosity and compassion. Lauren understands that many of the ways we cope today began as ways of protecting ourselves. Instead of judging those patterns, therapy can help us slow down, understand where they came from, and begin discovering what we need now.

Lauren works with women who may be carrying anxiety, trauma, emotional overwhelm, self-doubt, relationship and attachment struggles, or the weight of significant life transitions. Often, there is much more happening beneath the surface. Together, Lauren helps women explore the experiences, beliefs, protective parts, and nervous-system patterns that may be shaping how they feel, relate to others, and move through the world.

Rather than beginning with “What’s wrong with me?” Lauren invites women to ask something different:

What happened to me?
What has been protecting me?
What do my mind and body need now?

Her therapeutic approach integrates Brainspotting, Somatic therapy, IFS and Parts work, Mindfulness-Based CBT, and other trauma-informed approaches. Therapy with Lauren isn’t about fitting every woman into the same approach. She believes each person brings her own history, nervous system, strengths, needs, and way of experiencing the world—and therapy should honor that individuality.

Lauren also brings a neurodivergent-affirming lens to her work. She recognizes that differences in attention, executive functioning, sensory processing, emotional regulation, communication, and energy can have a profound impact on how a woman experiences herself and the world around her.

There is no single “right” way for a brain or nervous system to function. What has sometimes been labeled as procrastination, being “too sensitive,” overthinking, or simply not trying hard enough may actually be a sign that something deeper deserves understanding. Sometimes we don’t need more pressure to change. We need different supports, greater self-understanding, and more compassion for the way our own mind and body work.

Lauren’s professional experience extends far beyond the traditional therapy setting. Throughout her career, she has worked in schools, community organizations, inpatient and outpatient treatment settings, national agencies, and within the legal system through advocacy work. Her experience includes serving as a Guardian ad Litem and advocating for the needs, safety, and well-being of vulnerable individuals and families navigating complex circumstances.

Those experiences have shaped not only the therapist Lauren has become, but also the way she sees the women who sit across from her: as whole people whose stories, strengths, struggles, and ways of surviving deserve to be understood.

At the heart of Lauren’s work is a simple belief: therapy isn’t about telling you who you should become.

It is about helping you understand what has shaped you, make sense of the parts of yourself you may have spent years questioning, heal what you have carried, recognize the wisdom already within you, and reconnect with your own voice.

You don’t have to become someone else. You can begin by understanding yourself more deeply, trusting yourself more fully, and learning to truly believe in yourself.