About Elena

Most of the people I see come in with the sense that something is off — a tiredness that rest doesn’t reach, an anxiety that productivity doesn’t quiet, a version of themselves that feels far away from the one they remember being. That’s the work I’m interested in. Not just the symptoms on the surface, but the patterns underneath that are still quietly organizing your life — the experiences your nervous system is still processing, the beliefs that grew tall because no one ever pruned them, the strategies that used to keep you safe but are now in the way.

I’ve been a therapist for nine years. My MSW is from Portland State, and I licensed in Idaho the year I finished. I started in a busy group practice in Boise, where I learned a lot about what therapy looks like at scale — fast caseloads, structured intake, a lot of insurance billing, the kind of operational frame that’s good for the practice’s spreadsheets and not always for the actual work. I went out on my own in 2021. Partly that was the post-pandemic shift in private practice making it possible. Mostly it was that I wanted a slower, more attentive way of doing this work — a smaller caseload, time between sessions to actually think about each person, and a setting that doesn’t feel like a clinic.

My office is on the ground floor of a small building in Eagle, with a tall window that looks out into cottonwood trees and a chair that’s been part of a lot of conversations. I see clients there in person, and by telehealth for anyone elsewhere in Idaho. Most of what I work with is anxiety in high-functioning professionals — the kind that runs underneath an otherwise good life; depression after a major life shift, when the version of yourself you used to be feels far away; trauma that you’ve been carrying without quite calling it that; and the bigger transitions — divorce, grief, a career or identity change — that rearrange how you understand yourself. Sessions are 55 minutes, usually weekly to start, and less often once we’ve found a rhythm together.

I’m trained in EMDR and CBT, and my work is mindfulness-based — meaning I work with the body and the nervous system as much as with thoughts and meaning. People sometimes come in expecting therapy to be mostly about talking things through; what I’ve learned is that some of what’s stuck in us isn’t really verbal at all, and what feels like an unstoppable thought loop almost always has a state-of-the-body story underneath it. I call my approach The Roots Method because the metaphor stuck with me: most of what we hope to change about our lives is happening below the surface, and pruning the visible parts without touching what’s underneath tends to grow back. EMDR is for the experiences that are still being processed without your noticing. CBT is for the thought patterns that grew tall because they never got tended to. Mindfulness is the practice that lets you start to notice any of it at all.

What I try to do, week by week, is help you build enough trust in your own attention that you can start to notice what’s actually happening underneath — and then, gently and patiently, we work on that together. Not faster, but the changes tend to last. I’m careful, I’m warm, and I’m direct when it helps. If any of what I’ve described sounds like the kind of therapy you’re looking for, I’d be glad to talk.