Lesley Shiver, LPC-MHSP
Lesley Shiver, LPC-MHSPWe all learn to adapt “safe” versions of ourselves to get through the painful parts of life. The adaptation is not the problem. It’s a solution, but it doesn’t have to be the only one…
Build a life of self sovereignty & self acceptance
Your Depth & Intensity Is Your Magic
What Makes You Different Is Your Magic
Therapy for ADHD women who are tired of viewing themselves as a problem to fix
Strip Away The Layers Of Bullshit That Was Never Yours To Own
Cultivating Clarity & Curiosity
For When Basic Therapy Just Barely Scratches The Surface
Therapy For The People Who Know They Want To Do Life Differently
In a world that tries to sell certainty as the only option or sign that you’re doing life “right”
You’ve Got A Pretty Good Idea Of What You Don’t Want Your Life To Look Like…
Because you don’t need to hide, fix, or change what makes you unique to build a life of deep, meaningful connections.
Knowing what you don’t want is genuinely a solid step in the right direction of course-correcting your life so that it allows you to live out your values and actually feels like your own.
It’s the whole trying to figure out what’s next that’s the hard part.
Because most of us only have working examples of the things we don’t want, and a whole lot less of what we do. And that part where we’re left hanging is really fucking uncomfortable.
And that messy, in-between feeling of I’m not quite who I was before and I’m not quite sure what’s next is complex and complicated. There’s often potential shame around what was, fear about what’s next, grief about not being sure where we belong, and just the general discomfort we typically have around not being sure what we’re doing and not wanting to make “mistakes”.
Knowing what you don’t want is incredibly powerful. It’s such a huge revelation in life that doesn’t get the credit it deserves based on just how much goes on in the background of these kinds of ah-ha moments. It takes a ton of courage and inner work just to get to that point.
And honestly, there’s a pretty solid hell yeah feeling that comes from being able to admit this sort of thing to yourself!
The thing that still sucks though?
It often brings up questions that can lead to a profound amount of anxiety - the dreaded “what now’s”.
Why should I care about clarity?
“Know thyself” - Old Greek Maxim
“To thine own self be true.” - William Shakespeare
“Who looks outside, dreams; Who looks inside, awakes” - Carl Jung
If you’re old enough to have ever experienced having a teacher or professor “bleed” red ink pen all over an assignment you’ve written, you know what it’s like to feel like
If you don’t know who you are through and through, and trust that knowing, you’re going to be really vulnerable to other people telling you who you are, who you aren’t, or who you can or can’t be.
Most of us don’t sit around saying, “Man, if I just had clarity around x, my life would flow with more ease!”
Not having clarity more often then not tends to look a lot more like:
-Staying in a job or relationship you hate or that doesn’t make you happy or feel fulfilled, because the idea of leaving sometimes feels worse than staying
-Taking 20 minutes to decide where to eat before you default to asking literally anyone else to choose
-Saying “yes” in the moment, then immediately regretting it or feeling resentful about it later, but not knowing why
-Feeling stuck in life, but not even knowing what to do about it, or how or what to change
Honestly, my goal for you is to help you build a strong foundation of self-knowledge and self-love that’s also coupled with an unshakeable sense of self-loyalty and courage to stay in your integrity, even when it’s hard or scary to do so.
This is a space where ALL of you is welcome.
Where you don’t have to hold any part of you back or apologize for being who you are.
An out-of-the-box therapeutic approach for people who never fit the mold, and don’t want their therapy to either.
An out-of-the-box therapeutic approach for people who never fit the mold.
And don’t want their therapy to either.
Reconstructing identity and grieving the things you were told were wrong about you.
And changing the narrative that says being “different” was ever a bad thing.
Knowing what you don’t want is genuinely a solid step in the right direction of course-correcting your life so that it allows you to live out your values and actually feels like your own.
It’s the whole trying to figure out what’s next that’s the hard part.
Because most of us only have working examples of the things we don’t want, and a whole lot less of what we do. And that part where we’re left hanging is really fucking uncomfortable.
And that messy, in-between feeling of I’m not quite who I was before and I’m not quite sure what’s next is complex and complicated. There’s often potential shame around what was, fear about what’s next, grief about not being sure where we belong, and just the general discomfort we typically have around not being sure what we’re doing and not wanting to make “mistakes”.
Look, there’s no roadmap that anyone can hand you to offer you certainty or tell you what you should or shouldn’t do in life.
You know that.
I know that.
Yet more often than not the therapy world is encourage to approach clients and therapy like everything, including life, has a formula everyone should follow in order to get it “right”.
And while yes, there absolutely is a wrong way to do things (aka: causing people harm, baseless experimentation, and withholding well-informed treatment from people who need it), approaching things—and people—this way inevitably forces them to abandon parts of themselves to fit into a mold that other people got together and decided is what “wellness” looks like.
And just for the record, the overwhelming majority of the voices getting to decide and shape what “normal” or “healthy” looks like isn’t exactly a group of people with backgrounds and experiences of most people.
So trying to approach every individual person’s life with the same basic types of therapy just doesn’t always cut it, especially when the client actually wants therapy to help them make real, lasting change in their lives.
Therapy doesn’t have to end up making you feel dismissed, like it “doesn’t work” on you, or like there are parts of you that you have to hold back because you feel like your therapist will judge you or won’t understand.
Listen, you don’t need another person on the internet to tell you all the things they think are wrong with you.
To give you their “Top 3 Reasons Why Life Is Hard,” followed by their “3 Step Proven Method For How I Beat My Trauma, And How You Can Too!”
I’m not going to tell you that your trauma, your anxiety, depression, ADHD, or life situation are “simple”. Which means I’m not going to be able to hand you a “100% foolproof system” that will cure you in 8 sessions.
You, your experiences, and your situation are far too important to reduce down into a palatable 3 step program.
And you are far more brilliant and resourceful than the majority of the people on the internet would ever have you believe.
YOU are not broken. YOU have the internal resources to create and build what you’re wanting life to look like. YOU, my friend, ARE the secret sauce.
I know you may not believe that yet. But it’s true, and I stand by it.
Because no matter the background, demographic, privileges or limitations a client is working with, a good portion of my work has been, and probably will always be, getting people to see how incredible of a human they are, and that they are wildly capable of building a life that reflects their hopes rather than their fears.
Your people-pleasing habits probably have less to do with character flaws and far more to do with self-preservation and survival.
When you’re able to tell yourself the correct story about who you are and why you do the things you do, you can let go of the shame you feel for simply being human and feel like you’re actually worthy of the things you want in life.
Who We AreWho I Tend To Work With
I work primarily with queer, neurodiverse adults that come from complicated family backgrounds and/or were raised in high control religious environments.
These clients learned growing up that in order to survive and maintain relationships, they had to edit or erase parts of themselves—that who they are as a person is somehow fundamentally flawed. They learned to say and do the right things to avoid unwanted attention or repercussions. Basically how to perform life really well.
And that usually works out alright… until it doesn’t anymore.
I typically work with women and femmes that struggle with low self-compassion, little to no self-confidence, and who have a hard time feeling like they’re allowed to be a priority, even to themselves.
Many of them come from complicated family backgrounds and/or were raised in strict religious environments.
These clients often learned that the “right way” to do life involves erasing their own needs or identity, devoting themselves to living a life that puts literally everyone else’s needs above their own, and to smile while doing it.
To do life any other way (or so we were told) was to risk some form of 1) being seen as a wretched bitch that no one wants to be around, 2) being bad/unlovable, or 3) would result in them dying alone and full of regret.
Until one day they realized that whole “right way” of doing things isn’t feeling so right anymore.
And what we were promised we’d get if we were “good” isn’t real…
How I Work
My approach is intentionally varied and adapted for the individual client that’s in front of me—this is not a one-size-fits-all sort of therapy experience.
It’s also not cold and clinical. I incorporate both traditional, evidence-based modalities, and tools that don't typically show up in a therapeutic context like Human Design, Astrology, the Enneagram, and Tarot.
In therapy, these tools aren’t used to label, predict, or pathologize. Instead they’re used as a way to help build language and meaning around experiences that may have previously felt isolating, wrong/bad, or shameful. A lot of clients have said it’s helped them put words to things they’ve felt their whole lives but haven’t been able to name.
Ultimately, I want you to leave our sessions with more clarity, more compassion for yourself and others, and feeling like you’re working towards building a life that’s entirely yours based on your values and integrity.
No more living a life around your fears of what people will think, say, or do. No more compulsive self-editing or chronic self-erasure.
Instead, trusting your own instincts, your own authority, and your own read on your life.
Meet Lesley
I was trained inside a clinical tradition built on systems that pathologized difference and concentrated power. I think it's worth naming that directly — because those same systems have likely shaped how you learned to see yourself, and what you've been told wellness is supposed to look like.
My work begins with the belief that there is nothing wrong with you that needs to be corrected or managed into compliance. What I'm interested in is what got buried: the parts of you that learned to disappear, to doubt, to shrink in order to survive. That's the territory we work in together.
The fact that I'm the therapist doesn't mean I know you better than you do. You are the authority on your own interior. I'm here to offer a different kind of attention — one that takes your experience seriously, moves at the pace your nervous system can tolerate, and treats your history as meaningful rather than pathological.
My approach draws on depth psychology, somatic awareness, and tools like the Enneagram and Human Design alongside more traditional modalities — not as a fixed protocol, but as a way of listening more fully to what you're actually carrying.
If you've been misread, dismissed, or reduced to a diagnosis in a therapy room before, I understand why you'd be cautious. You deserve a space where your full complexity is welcome — not managed, not explained away, and not rushed toward resolution before you're ready.
I'm Lesley — a Licensed Professional Counselor in Tennessee and Florida.
My work is for people who have spent a long time not quite trusting themselves. People who've learned somewhere along the way, that shrinking or disappearing was the safer option. People who are tired of masking or performing and are ready to explore underneath.
I don't think there's something wrong with you that needs to be fixed. I think there's something buried that wants to be found.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with trying to understand the “why” behind everything.
I’m not someone that’s content to stop at surface-level explanations or engage in social niceties forever.
I want to know what makes people tick, what they believe, their fears, their hopes and dreams for the future.
And I’m genuinely amazed by how wonderful, resilient, and unique everyone is. And sometimes just as equally amazed that anyone ever had the audacity to make them believe otherwise!
It’s truly an honor to get to sit with people, sometimes in their hardest moments, and get to see the subtle shifts in perception or awareness that, over time, open up their hearts and minds to believe in themselves.
And the sheer magic of the moments that follow.
We believe everyone deserves a safe space to be heard, understood, and encouraged. Our practice centers on warmth, respect, and real-world strategies that fit your life.
