Jenae Vaughn, LCPC
Mental Health Therapist
I help individuals and couples understand the patterns shaping how they feel, communicate, and connect so they can build confidence, healthier relationships, and a stronger relationship with themselves.
Ashley Scott, QMHP
Mental Health Therapist
You’re used to being there for other people, but somewhere along the way,
it became harder to figure out how to be there for yourself....
Maybe you second-guess your decisions, struggle to say what you really feel, or find yourself saying yes when you want to say no. You may know that you need stronger boundaries, but setting them brings guilt, anxiety, or fear about how someone else will respond.
Maybe you’ve spent so much time considering everyone else’s feelings that you’re still learning how to recognize and honor your own.
You may be confident in some areas of your life while quietly questioning yourself in others. You overthink conversations, minimize your feelings, struggle to advocate for what you need, or wonder why being vulnerable can feel so uncomfortable.
Sometimes these patterns are connected to experiences that taught you to stay quiet, keep the peace, protect yourself, or make other people comfortable.
And sometimes you know exactly what the pattern is, but knowing it hasn’t been enough to change it.
Maybe you’re also looking at your relationships differently.
You may be realizing that certain dynamics are unhealthy, noticing that you keep accepting things that hurt you, or wondering why the same types of relationships or conflicts seem to follow you.
Or maybe you and your partner care deeply about one another but struggle to communicate without becoming defensive, disconnected, frustrated, or hurt.
You want to feel more confident in yourself and your choices.
You want to communicate what you feel instead of holding everything in.
You want healthier relationships without abandoning yourself to keep them.
And you want to become a version of yourself who feels empowered enough to set boundaries, advocate for what you need, trust your emotions, and make decisions that reflect who you are becoming.
Therapy with me gives you space to slow down, connect the dots, understand what is underneath the patterns, and begin doing something different with what you discover.
How I can help
Self-Esteem, Confidence & Self-Worth
Sometimes low self-esteem is obvious. Other times, you’re functioning, accomplishing things, showing up for everyone, and still questioning yourself constantly. You may second guess decisions, compare yourself to other people, minimize your accomplishments, or look for reassurance before trusting your own judgment. Maybe you have spent so much time trying to become what other people need that you are still figuring out what you actually want. You may know intellectually that you deserve respect, healthy relationships, and space to have needs, but emotionally, believing that can be much harder. And when your confidence has been shaped by criticism, unhealthy relationships, trauma, rejection, or feeling unheard, simply telling yourself to “be more confident” usually isn’t enough. Therapy with me can help you understand what has shaped the way you see yourself, challenge beliefs that are keeping you stuck, and begin building confidence that comes from self-awareness rather than other people’s approval. We can work toward helping you trust yourself, advocate for yourself, recognize your strengths, and become more comfortable taking up space in your own life.
Boundaries, Emotional Expression & Self-Advocacy
You know you should speak up. But then the moment comes, and suddenly saying what you need feels much harder than you expected. Maybe you avoid conflict, soften everything you say, over-explain yourself, or agree to things because disappointing someone feels worse than disappointing yourself. You may have become so good at considering everyone else’s feelings that identifying your own emotions takes work. Sometimes you know something bothered you, but you don’t know exactly what you feel until hours later. Sometimes vulnerability feels uncomfortable because expressing emotion has not always felt safe, welcomed, or understood. Therapy can help you slow those moments down. Together, we can work on recognizing your emotions, understanding what they are communicating to you, expressing yourself more clearly, and setting boundaries without believing you have to apologize for having them. The goal is not to stop caring about other people. It is to learn that being considerate of someone else does not require abandoning yourself.
Trauma, Healing & Emotional Awareness
Trauma does not always show up as one obvious memory that you can point to and say, “That’s the problem.” Sometimes it shows up in the way you protect yourself. You may have learned to stay quiet, disconnect from your emotions, anticipate other people’s reactions, struggle with vulnerability, or question whether your feelings are valid. Experiences of being hurt, dismissed, controlled, silenced, betrayed, or repeatedly made to feel unsafe can shape the way you see yourself and the way you move through relationships long after the experience itself. You may understand what happened and still wonder why certain situations affect you so strongly. Healing often involves more than talking about the past. It can involve understanding how those experiences continue to influence your thoughts, emotions, choices, relationships, and beliefs about yourself today. Therapy with me can help you make those connections, slow down enough to process what you feel, challenge beliefs that developed as a result of what you experienced, and begin responding from who you are now rather than only from what you had to do to survive before. The goal is not to erase what happened. It is to help you grow, accept, heal, and reclaim more choice over what happens next.
Unhealthy Relationships & Relationship Patterns
Sometimes you know a relationship isn’t healthy before you are ready to admit what that means. Maybe you repeatedly feel dismissed, drained, confused, controlled, criticized, or responsible for keeping the relationship together. Maybe you constantly explain yourself, question whether you’re overreacting, or accept behavior you would tell someone you love not to tolerate. Or maybe the relationship is over, but the experience changed the way you see yourself. You may struggle with boundaries, trusting your judgment, becoming vulnerable again, or understanding why you stayed as long as you did. Therapy is not about judging the decisions you made. It is about understanding them. Together, we can identify relationship patterns, connect those patterns to your experiences and beliefs, explore what healthy relationships actually look and feel like, and strengthen your ability to recognize and communicate what you need. Because healthier relationships do not begin only with finding healthier people. They also involve becoming increasingly confident in what you will participate in, what you will communicate, and what you will no longer abandon yourself to maintain.
Young Adults, College Students & Life Transitions
Young adulthood comes with a strange expectation that you should somehow know what you’re doing while simultaneously figuring almost everything out for the first time. College, work, relationships, friendships, independence, family expectations, identity, money, and decisions about the future can all collide at once. You may be questioning who you are outside of your family, your relationship, your accomplishments, or what everyone expected you to become. Maybe you’re comparing yourself to people who seem further ahead. Maybe you’re trying to build confidence while making decisions that actually affect your future. Or maybe this season has exposed emotions, relationship patterns, or experiences you finally have enough distance to recognize. Therapy can give you a place to sort through those questions without having to already know the answers. Together, we can work on emotional awareness, confidence, relationships, communication, boundaries, decision-making, and understanding the patterns that are influencing the person you are becoming. You don’t have to have adulthood figured out. You can learn yourself while you’re building it.
Couples, Communication & Rebuilding Connection
Sometimes couples love each other and still have no idea how to talk to each other when something actually hurts. You may keep having the same arguments, misunderstand one another’s intentions, become defensive, shut down, or avoid conversations until resentment builds. Trust may have been damaged. There may be things you both want to forgive but don’t know how to move through. Or maybe neither of you can identify one major problem, you just know that somewhere along the way, you stopped feeling as connected, understood, or secure with one another. Couples therapy with me is not about deciding who is right. It's about slowing the relationship down enough to understand what is happening between you. We can work on communicating more clearly, recognizing the emotional patterns underneath conflict, expressing vulnerability without attacking or withdrawing, and creating more opportunities for each partner to feel heard and understood. When trust has been damaged, we can also explore what accountability, repair, rebuilding, and forgiveness may realistically require. The goal is not simply to communicate “better.” It is to build a relationship where communication helps create greater trust, understanding, emotional safety, and connection.
Therapy with me looks like
I want therapy to feel safe enough for you to be honest and useful enough that something can begin to change.
My style is nurturing, direct, thoughtful, and collaborative. I care deeply about creating a space where you feel respected and understood, but I also believe growth sometimes requires looking at things we would rather avoid.
That may mean I gently challenge you, point out a pattern that keeps showing up, or ask you to consider a perspective you have not thought about before.
Sometimes support looks like helping you recognize when fear is making the decision, when you are being much harder on yourself than you would ever be on someone else, or when an old pattern is showing up again.
I do not believe therapy should feel like you are talking for an hour while I sit silently on the other side of the room.
We will talk, explore, make connections, and work toward practical change.
Depending on what brings you in, we may use mindfulness, communication strategies, goal-setting, coping skills, relationship
exercises, or other tools that help you apply what we discuss outside of sessions.
With couples, I incorporate Emotionally Focused Therapy and Gottman-informed approaches to help partners understand both the
emotional experience underneath their conflict and the concrete skills that can help them interact differently.
With individuals, I may use solution-focused strategies and trauma-informed care while exploring how your history, relationships, and family patterns may be shaping what is happening today.