Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist | Founder, Tennessee Mental Wellness & Horizon Counseling
Corporate Workshop Trainer & Consultant
In-person in Nashville, TN & Gallatin, TN • Online throughout Tennessee
Hi, I’m Emily. I’m a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Tennessee Mental Wellness, based in Gallatin, TN, as well as its in-network sister practice, Horizon Counseling. For over 25 years, I’ve worked in the mental health field across settings ranging from wilderness therapy and residential treatment to community mental health and private practice. At the core of all of it has been one consistent calling: helping people experience meaningful, lasting change.
Who I Work With
I work with adults from all walks of life, but I am especially sought out by high-achieving professionals in Nashville and Middle Tennessee: leaders, entrepreneurs, athletes, and artists who carry significant responsibility in both their work and personal lives. My clients often look completely put together on the outside, yet feel the weight of stress, pressure, or disconnection beneath the surface. I create a space where they can slow down, be fully known, and do the deeper work that sustains both their success and their well-being.
I am bilingual in English and Spanish and welcome clients from all cultural backgrounds. While I no longer work with couples, the relational and systems lens that comes from my MFT training shapes everything I do. We don’t exist in isolation, and our struggles and triumphs are never created in a vacuum.
What I Specialize In
Performance, Burnout & High-Achieving Professionals
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being the person everyone else depends on. You are capable, accomplished, and driven, and yet something is off. Maybe you feel disconnected from the work or the people you used to love. Maybe you can’t turn it off, even when you try. I help high-achievers understand what is driving their patterns and build a more sustainable relationship with their ambition, their emotions, and themselves.
Trauma
Trauma does not always announce itself dramatically. Sometimes it shows up quietly as anxiety, people-pleasing, perfectionism, or a persistent sense that something is wrong with you. I use advanced somatic and brain-body approaches to help clients process and heal from trauma at a level that goes deeper than talk therapy alone.
Self Re-Discovery
Sometimes people come to therapy not because something dramatic has happened, but because they have lost touch with who they are. Underneath the roles, the responsibilities, and the achievements, there is a self-worth getting to know again. That process of reconnection is some of the most meaningful work I do.
Corporate Workshop & Organizational Consulting
In addition to my clinical work, I partner with organizations across Tennessee and throughout the U.S. to improve communication, reduce stress, and strengthen leadership and workplace culture. Drawing from my background in systems theory, interpersonal neurobiology, cultural anthropology, and my own experience building and leading multiple businesses, I offer a perspective that bridges human behavior and organizational dynamics. I have founded three successful businesses and completed hundreds of hours of training in business development, leadership, and organizational behavior.
How I Work
Brainspotting (Certified Practitioner)
Brainspotting is a brain-body approach that helps process trauma, anxiety, and emotional pain stored in the nervous system using specific eye positions. I am a certified Brainspotting practitioner, meaning I have completed not only the formal trainings but also extensive consultation hours and have been approved by the International Brainspotting Association. My Brainspotting training includes Brainspotting 1 and 2, Expansion Brainspotting, Assessment and Brainspotting, and IFS and Brainspotting.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) & Gottman Method
My graduate training focused heavily on EFT and the Gottman Method, both of which are grounded in attachment theory and relational systems. While I no longer work with couples, that relational foundation shapes everything I do with individual clients, helping them understand how their feelings and actions are shaped by, and in turn shape, their relationships at home, at work, and in their communities.
Integrated Care & Medical Family Therapy
My specialization in Medical Family Therapy gave me additional training in Integrated Care models that connect behavioral and medical health. I believe it takes a village to support anyone in thriving, and I strive to include clients’ medical providers and other supports in their care, collaborating to improve overall well-being.
My Style
I am warm, direct, and genuinely curious about people. I bring a systems lens to everything, which means I help clients understand themselves not just as individuals but as people shaped by families, cultures, and communities. My work is grounded in the belief that our brains know how to heal, and that therapy’s job is to create the right conditions for that healing to happen.
Background & Training
I earned my Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology, with a minor in Native American Studies, from Brigham Young University in 2002. As part of my undergraduate capstone, I lived in a Mayan village in the highlands of Guatemala for a semester, conducting a cross-cultural field study of depression among the Maya, research that resulted in two publications. That experience left me fluent in Spanish and deepened a love of cultures and people that continues to shape how I connect with clients today.
I went on to earn my Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy from National University in 2017, with a specialization in Medical Family Therapy. I am licensed as an LMFT in Tennessee, License #1386.
Specialized training includes:
- Certified Brainspotting Practitioner (International Brainspotting Association) — Brainspotting 1, 2, Expansion Brainspotting, Assessment and Brainspotting, and IFS and Brainspotting
- Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Gottman Method
- Medical Family Therapy and Integrated Care models
- Hundreds of hours of training in business development, leadership, and organizational behavior
About Tennessee Mental Wellness & Horizon Counseling
I founded Tennessee Mental Wellness in 2017 with a vision of bringing a boutique, trauma-informed, Brainspotting therapy practice to Middle Tennessee. As the needs of our community grew, I expanded that vision with the launch of Horizon Counseling in 2025, creating two distinct pathways to mental health care: one offering a more concierge, relationship-centered experience, and the other increasing access to excellent therapy for a broader population across Nashville, Gallatin, and Hendersonville. Today I lead both practices with a focus on clinical excellence and human connection. I am deeply invested in the people I lead, and I have built a team and workplace culture that prioritizes growth, support, and sustainability, because I believe that when clinicians are well cared for, clients receive better care.
A Little About Me
I love all things nature and laughter. My free time is split between comedy clubs and movies, laughing with friends and family, and getting outside. I grew up in inner-city Indianapolis but fell in love with the mountains in my twenties, when I learned to rock climb, backpack, snowboard, and hike. In the late 1990s I worked as an associate at a wilderness program, and the mountains have been part of my life and my heart ever since. Since moving to Nashville in 2014, I have come to love the landscape here: the rolling hills, paddleboarding on Old Hickory Lake, hiking the trails at Radnor Lake and Percy Warner Park, and being just a few hours from the Smokies whenever I need a bigger mountain fix. Outside of work, I find joy in the simple, grounding things: time outdoors, reading, yoga, travel, experiencing new cultures, laughter with close friends, and being with my husband and our blended family.
Why I Became a Therapist
Ever since high school, friends told me I was a good listener, and I found I genuinely loved holding space for them when they shared their problems. During undergrad, I worked at a residential treatment center and, in the summers, a wilderness therapy program for youth. I loved being part of a young person’s transformation and healing process, and that experience solidified my desire to become a therapist, specifically a marriage and family therapist. I knew that helping people understand how their family and cultural systems shape them, and how they in turn shape those systems, would let me have a bigger impact than viewing the problem as existing solely within a person’s brain.
What I Believe About Therapy
A few things I hold onto in this work:
- You have to feel it to heal it. Feelings can seem scary, and we often push them away because we haven’t learned to sit with them compassionately. But healing from emotional and relational pain really comes down to feeling our feelings with compassion.
- Our brains know how to heal, the same way our bodies know how to mend a broken bone. Sometimes we just need support to do it. Like a cast that sets a bone correctly, therapy helps facilitate the brain’s natural healing process.
- Trauma responses get in the way of healing. Anxiety, depression, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and procrastination are often adaptations to emotional or relational hardship. Even the ones society praises, like perfectionism, ultimately block the healing process.
Ready to get started?
You can schedule online at your convenience or reach us by email at admin@tnmentalwellness.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
Available in-person in Nashville, TN and Gallatin, TN, and online throughout Tennessee.
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