LMFT, 4 years of experience
Hi, I’m Annika Jackson, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. I specialize in working with teens and adults navigating anxiety, trauma, relationship issues, identity shifts, and emotional overwhelm. My approach is collaborative, compassionate, and grounded in trauma-informed care. I believe therapy should be a space where you feel safe, seen, and supported as you learn to better understand yourself, heal from the past, and move toward the life you want.
In our first session, my goal is to create a space where you feel safe, seen, and not rushed. We’ll talk about what’s bringing you to therapy, go over your history at your pace, and start identifying what you’d like to work on. I’ll ask some questions to get to know you better, your strengths, struggles, and what support has (or hasn’t) worked in the past. You don’t need to have all the answers or know exactly where to start; we’ll figure it out together. My approach is collaborative and nonjudgmental, and I’ll always check in to make sure the pace and process feel right for you.
My greatest strengths as a therapist lie in creating a warm, grounding presence where clients feel safe to be fully themselves, even in the messy or vulnerable moments. I have a deep respect for the complexity of each person’s story and use a trauma-informed, emotionally attuned approach to help clients build self-awareness, regulate emotions, and break long-standing patterns. I’m especially skilled at helping clients connect the dots between past experiences and present challenges, while offering practical tools and compassionate challenge to support meaningful change. Clients often tell me they feel truly seen and empowered in our work together.
I work best with clients who are feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or disconnected, often after a big life transition, relational rupture, or long-standing pattern of people-pleasing or self-doubt. Many of my clients are high-functioning on the outside but struggling internally with anxiety, burnout, or unresolved trauma. They may be navigating identity shifts, complicated family dynamics, or learning how to set boundaries and speak up for themselves, sometimes for the first time. My ideal clients are ready to slow down, get curious about their emotional world, and build a more compassionate relationship with themselves.
I have extensive experience using trauma-informed care (TIC) as a foundational approach in my clinical work, particularly with clients navigating complex trauma, anxiety, depression, family dysfunction, and identity challenges. My work has spanned individual, group, and family therapy settings across various levels of care, including outpatient, IOP, and PHP. In my practice, trauma-informed care is not just a technique—it’s a lens through which I understand each client’s story. I emphasize safety, trust, empowerment, choice, and collaboration in the therapeutic relationship. I strive to create an environment where clients feel respected, emotionally safe, and understood without judgment, especially when exploring experiences that may have been invalidated in the past.
I incorporate Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) principles into my work with clients experiencing depression, anxiety, relational distress, and life transitions. My training in IPT has been especially useful for clients whose symptoms are closely tied to role transitions, grief/loss, interpersonal conflict, and attachment injuries, common themes across much of my caseload. While I often use an integrative approach, IPT serves as a structured and effective lens through which to help clients understand how their relationships impact their mental health and vice versa. My goal is to help clients build stronger, more fulfilling connections while reducing symptoms of depression and emotional dysregulation.
I regularly integrate Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) into my clinical work, particularly with clients who present with high levels of self-criticism, shame, trauma histories, and perfectionistic or people-pleasing tendencies. CFT has been especially helpful for clients who intellectually understand their emotions but struggle to treat themselves with kindness or feel deserving of care and healing. I use CFT principles to help clients develop self-compassion as a healing resource, especially when other approaches like CBT or insight-oriented therapy fall short in addressing the deep emotional roots of shame and self-judgment