Meet Nicole Tyrpak

You may look like you have everything together. You may be accomplished, dependable, productive, or the person everyone else turns to—but underneath, you feel overwhelmed, disconnected, exhausted, or stuck in patterns you cannot seem to change. Maybe you grew up feeling unheard, unseen, unsafe, or invalidated. Maybe you have already “processed” your past, understand exactly why you respond the way you do, and still find yourself wondering: Why is this still happening?

I believe trauma affects the whole person, not just our thoughts or memories. Our bodies remember what our minds may already understand. Survival patterns can show up as anxiety, perfectionism, people pleasing, emotional overwhelm, dissociation, relationship struggles, or a constant sense that you should feel safe—but don’t. My work is about helping you move beyond simply knowing better and begin understanding what your body and nervous system have been trying to tell you, with compassion instead of criticism.

I was first drawn to counseling while working as a special education teacher in Title I schools, where I learned something that still guides my work today: before we can learn, grow, or change, we have to feel safe. 

Call out:

I believe every human being is worthy of love, acceptance, validation, and understanding. Helping clients recognize that worth, challenge old survival patterns, and begin returning to themselves is what continues to inspire me.

Who I Work With and How I Can Help

A lot of the people I work with have already done the work of understanding themselves. They may have been in therapy before, read the books, listened to the podcasts, followed the mental health accounts, and learned the language. They know where certain patterns came from, but they still feel stuck.

You may be:

• Disconnected from yourself or your body

• Exhausted from holding everything together

• Overwhelmed by emotions that feel difficult to regulate

• Stuck in the same relationship, work, or coping patterns

• Struggling with perfectionism or feeling like you always have to perform

• Frustrated because traditional talk therapy has only taken you so far

• Wondering why you keep reacting in ways that do not match what you logically know

My primary areas of focus include trauma, PTSD and CPTSD, eating disorders and disordered eating, substance use disorders, perfectionism and high achievement, narcissistic abuse, betrayal trauma, and personality disorders.

Our work may focus on understanding how your nervous system responds to safety and threat, recognizing the survival patterns underneath your reactions, processing emotions without becoming consumed by them, strengthening boundaries and self-trust, and reconnecting with the parts of yourself that may have gotten lost while you were busy surviving.

There is a lot of language online right now about trauma, “regulation,” safety, and healing. I want to help you move beyond the trends and understand what this work actually means in your body and your life.

My Approach to Therapy

There is no one-size-fits-all version of therapy. Every person comes into the room with different experiences, identities, relationships, traumas, bodies, and ways of surviving. My job is not to fit you into a therapeutic formula. My goal is to understand you as a whole human being.

My style is a combination of structured and exploratory. I am direct, honest, collaborative, compassionate, and I use humor. I also believe the therapeutic relationship is paramount. Before we can honestly examine painful experiences, old patterns, or the things you may not even have words for yet, there needs to be trust and enough safety to do that work.

I also do not believe mental health exists separately from the world around us. Culture, identity, family, relationships, community, access, discrimination, and larger systems all influence our experiences. As a biracial Asian and Caucasian woman, I understand personally what it can feel like to exist between identities and within systems that do not affect everyone equally. I bring that awareness into therapy without assuming that my experience is yours.

The question is not always “What is wrong with me?”

Sometimes the better questions are: What happened? What did I learn I had to do to survive? Is that pattern still serving me? And what do I actually need now?