Therapists for Burnt-out Women | Melissa Milligan, CCC, RN

You smile. You answer the text. You get it done, and done well. You say you're fine, and people believe you, because you've had the practice. From the outside, steady. Inside, you're juggling a hundred small things, hoping nothing slips.

Somewhere back there, keeping the peace felt safer than being honest. So you stopped saying what you needed. You say yes when you mean no, then sit quiet in the car after, wondering why. You talk yourself out of your own feelings. It's not that bad. Others have it worse. I'll deal with it later.

You can read a room in seconds, catching a shift in tone before anyone's said a word. But ask what you need, and there's a long pause. Not avoidance. Just years of practice pointed the other way.

Counselling is where you stop performing fine. Not looking after anyone in this room.

We go slow.

We get curious about what's underneath, the patterns keeping you last on your own list.

You can learn to take your needs seriously now, not once you've earned it.

You've held it together a long time. There's room for you here too.

I'm a Registered Nurse and Counsellor with 15 years in healthcare, working with nurses, healthcare workers, and women who've built their whole identity around holding everyone else up. My years in acute care and the ER showed me what happens when caring for everyone else leaves you depleted. I know that culture from the inside.

My approach is warm, but I won't dance around what needs saying. We'll get curious about what's underneath the performing-fine, the reflexive yes, the exhaustion you've been overriding for years, and build the practical skills to actually shift it. I believe you can do this. I'm not afraid to have the hard conversations that get you there.

One-on-one sessions focused on burnout, identity, boundary-setting, and self-abandonment. One-to-one sessions, online, from wherever you actually are — your living room after the kids are down, your car between shifts.

We start with whatever brought you here, in whatever order it comes out. You don't need it organized. From there we work on the pattern underneath it, using whatever fits: EMDR, attachment work, nervous system regulation. Some sessions are practical — a conversation you're dreading, a boundary you can't hold. Some go quieter and further back.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — an evidence-based protocol for healing trauma stored in the nervous system, for the things that still land in your body when you remember them.
Some experiences don't file themselves away properly. Years later, a smell in a hallway or a certain tone of voice puts you right back there. EMDR works directly on those memories, using eye movements or gentle tapping while we hold the moment in mind. You don't have to narrate the whole thing out loud. Nurses often bring me the call that went badly, the patient they still think about, and the shift that changed how they walk into work. This is what I use for that.

Body-based work that helps you recognize and release what stress and trauma hold in your physical experience. For when you know the problem but knowing hasn't changed anything.
You can understand exactly why you're anxious and still lie awake with your jaw clenched. Insight lives in the head; a lot of this lives lower down. We work with what's actually happening — the held breath, the braced shoulders, the flat numbness that shows up in place of feeling — because your body has usually reached its conclusions before you have.

An attachment-based approach that helps you understand and shift long-standing emotional patterns. For the part of you that stopped asking.
This one is about attachment: what you learned about needing people, and what it cost you. If reaching for support feels dangerous, or you shut down before anyone can get close enough to disappoint you, that came from somewhere. EFIT slows the moment down and helps you feel the emotion underneath the shutdown — instead of managing around it for another decade.