In relationships
Make room for your needs.
Noticing when disagreement makes you rush to apologize or go quiet, and learning to consider what you think and feel alongside the other person’s needs.
Licensed psychotherapist · Published author · Speaker
Relational trauma recovery
for driven and
ambitious women.
I’m Annie Wright, LMFT, a licensed psychotherapist specializing in relational trauma: the lasting effects of harmful experiences in close relationships. My work brings together clinical expertise and my own recovery from childhood relational trauma.
You can be capable, ambitious and still find yourself bracing for rejection, apologizing before you know what you’ve done, or feeling guilty the moment you stop working. I help people understand these responses and work toward a life with more room for their own needs.
Experience behind the work
Clinical depth.
Real-world experience.
- Clinical hours
- 15,000+
- Practicing Jurisdictions
- 16
- Advanced trauma training
- EMDRIACertified EMDR therapist
Licensed in 15 U.S. jurisdictions, including Colorado for telehealth only, and registered to provide telehealth in Florida under Fla. Stat. 456.47. View licensure details.
Entrepreneur & founder
Founded, scaled and sold a multimillion-dollar, multi-state mental health company.
Author
A forthcoming book from W. W. Norton & Company.
Relational trauma recovery
More room to choose
how you live.
Harmful relationships can shape what feels safe long after you’ve left them. You might keep the peace by setting your own needs aside, work harder whenever you feel uncertain, or find yourself expecting closeness to come at a cost.
Recovery involves understanding those responses and developing ways to respond that fit your life now. In everyday terms, that can mean:
In work and rest
Keep ambition from becoming everything.
Examining the fear or guilt that arrives when you stop, without assuming that loving your work is the problem. Having a life beyond being useful.
In how you treat yourself
Find another response to shame.
Recognizing harsh self-criticism, questioning the old expectations behind it, and considering what you need when you make a mistake or feel overwhelmed.
There isn’t one prescribed version of recovery. The question is what your history is costing you now, and what kind of support fits your needs.
Learn, read or work together
Different ways to engage with Annie.
Start with self-paced education, spend time with the writing, or ask about individual support or a speaking engagement. These are different ways to engage, not steps you have to complete in order.
Online courses · The signature program
Fixing the
Foundations.
When the same patterns keep appearing in different relationships and different chapters of your life, it can help to look beyond the latest situation.
Fixing the Foundations is my signature educational course on relational trauma: the lasting effects of harmful relationships, often beginning in childhood. It explores foundational patterns rather than treating each difficulty as an isolated problem.
Explore Fixing the FoundationsFocused courses
Begin with a subject
that matters to you.
Normalcy After
the Narcissist
Understanding narcissistic relationship patterns and the effects they can leave behind.
Explore this coursePicking Better
Partners
Recurring patterns in attraction and partner choice, including the relationships you keep finding yourself in.
Explore this courseSane After
the Sociopath
Making sense of manipulation and betrayal, and the questions they leave about trust and your own judgment.
Explore this courseIndividual work & events
Therapy, coaching and speaking.
Clinical care, professional support and educational presentations are separate services. Each page explains the work and how to ask about fit.
Individual therapy
Clinical care
for your own life.
Therapy for the relationship patterns, difficult memories and emotional strain you want help understanding and addressing. Read about my approach, licensed locations and the practical requirements.
Explore therapyExecutive coaching
A place to think
about how you lead.
Individual coaching for professional decisions, working relationships and the responsibilities you carry. This is non-clinical support for your leadership and goals, not psychotherapy.
Explore executive coachingSpeaking
Bring the conversation
to your audience.
Talks on relational trauma, ambition, family patterns and the inner lives of driven women. For conferences, workplaces and other audiences, we can discuss the topic and format that fit your event.
Explore speaking & presentationsArticles, essays & ongoing writing
Follow a question.
Stay for the writing.
Start with the difference between ambition and compulsion, the family patterns that follow you, or the possibility of a different adulthood.
Meet Annie
My clinical specialty.
Part of my own history.
I grew up with relational trauma and poverty. Achievement was something I loved, something I was good at, and the safest thing I knew to attach to. It helped me get out. It also became armor against shame.
“I had to face the past in order to have a future.”
Today, I’m a relational trauma specialist and EMDRIA-certified EMDR therapist with more than 15,000 clinical hours. My expertise comes with lived experience, not instead of it.
Facing the past
Leaving wasn’t the same as healing.
Brown and the Peace Corps changed my circumstances, but they didn’t resolve what I’d lived through. I bought a one-way ticket to the Esalen Institute on the cliffs of Big Sur, with one suitcase and a few thousand dollars in savings. One month became two, then nearly four years of working, apprenticing and studying alongside my own recovery.
Another layer of recovery
I loved the company. I couldn’t rest.
I founded, scaled and sold a multimillion-dollar, multi-state mental health company. I loved building it, but workaholism and an identity organized around work were another layer to confront. Selling the company and moving my family to coastal New England changed our circumstances. I also had to change what I asked achievement to do for me.
A life beyond work
Still ambitious. With room for more.
My partner, our daughter, nourishing friendships and a community I love are part of the life I’ve built. My choices aren’t a template for yours. For me, recovery involved both changing my circumstances and facing the shame and painful feelings I’d kept asking achievement to protect me from.
There’s more to the story, and to the training behind my work.
Read Annie’s story & credentialsYour next step
Choose a subject to explore.
Or start a conversation with Annie.
Explore an educational course, keep reading, or ask about individual support or a speaking engagement. You don’t need to send your personal history to ask a practical question.