You might find yourself here because of…
Chronic Pain & Illness
I work with individuals living with long-term, complex, or hard-to-diagnose conditions that affect both body and mind. Many clients come to therapy feeling misunderstood, dismissed, or exhausted by the healthcare system. Psychotherapy offers space to explore the emotional experience of illness, your relationship with a changing or unpredictable body, and the ways physical experiences, emotions, relationships, and daily life intersect. My approach emphasizes greater awareness, agency, and self-trust while making room for the realities of living with ongoing medical concerns. When desired, I can also collaborate with your existing healthcare providers or help you consider additional support as part of a more connected approach to your care. I often work with people living with a wide range of health concerns, including chronic pain, cancer, autoimmune and connective tissue conditions, neurological and gastrointestinal conditions, POTS and other forms of dysautonomia, post-viral illness, and complex symptoms that may have taken years to understand or diagnose. My role is to support the emotional and psychological experience of living with medical concerns, not to provide medical treatment. With your permission, I can collaborate with members of your healthcare team as part of a more connected approach to your care.
Trauma & Life Challenges
Trauma can shape how we experience ourselves, our bodies, our relationships, and the world around us. I work slowly and collaboratively, creating space to explore these experiences through conversation while also paying attention to sensations, emotions, movement, protective responses, and patterns that emerge in the present. I work with experiences including: - Complex and childhood trauma - Medical trauma and distress related to medical procedures - Single-incident trauma, including accidents, loss, or violence - Vicarious and secondary trauma - Compassion fatigue and burnout Trauma can also show up through panic or chronic anxiety, dissociation, overwhelm, shutdown, numbness, difficulty feeling grounded or connected, and physical or sensory responses that may be difficult to understand or put into words. This work is carefully paced and guided by your capacity in the moment. We work with experiences in small, manageable amounts, with attention to what helps you remain present and connected to yourself. You maintain choice throughout the process—there is no expectation that you revisit an experience, tell a story before you're ready, or push through something that feels like too much.
Grief & End-of-Life Concerns
Grief takes many forms. We can grieve a person, a relationship, our health or physical abilities, a sense of identity, or the life we thought we would have. Some losses are clearly recognized by others; others can be difficult to name or carried largely unseen. I work with experiences including: - Grief following a death, whether recent or long ago - Anticipatory grief related to illness, caregiving, or approaching death - Pregnancy loss, infertility, and reproductive grief - Losses related to changes in health, function, independence, or identity - End-of-life concerns, including existential or spiritual questions - Caregiving, including the complex emotions that can accompany it - Meaning-making, legacy, and personal ritual There is no single way to grieve and no timeline you are expected to follow. Therapy offers a place to make room for what is present—sadness, anger, relief, fear, uncertainty, love, numbness, or experiences that are difficult to name—without requiring you to find meaning or move toward acceptance before you are ready. For those approaching the end of life, our work can also make space for whatever this chapter brings: questions about meaning and mortality, changing relationships and roles, fear or uncertainty, unfinished conversations, legacy, or the experience of living while knowing that time may be limited.
For people navigating the places where mind, body,
and lived experience meet.
Integrative, somatic and nervous-system-informed care for chronic pain and illness, trauma, grief, caregiving, and life's significant transitions.
Psychotherapy & Somatics
Classes & Workshops
Experiences & Retreats
About Jennifer Knowles, LPC-MHSP
My approach to therapy is rooted in:
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Sensorimotor psychotherapy: a body-centered approach combining talk therapy with attention to physical sensations, movement, posture, and patterns of response to explore experiences that words alone may not fully access.
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Neuro-integrative therapy: brings an understanding of the brain and nervous system into therapy, exploring how brain states, physical responses, emotions, and lived experiences influence one another.
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Integrative psychotherapy: considers the emotional, cognitive, behavioral, physical, and spiritual dimensions of your experience. Rather than following a single model, we draw from different therapeutic approaches based on your needs, preferences, and goals. Therapy is collaborative; you are an active participant in the process.
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Collaborative care: recognizes that psychotherapy may be one part of a larger system of support. When you choose, I can help you build a care team or collaborate with established medical and other providers to support more connected, whole-person care.
Before becoming a therapist, I was a teaching artist exploring collective and generational trauma. Through that work, I noticed how creativity and connection create space for reflection and growth—a foundation that continues to guide me today.
Each person brings a unique story and way of relating to their body and mind. Together, we'll explore what life feels like for you, building greater awareness, flexibility, and self-trust while discovering what supports you both within and beyond our sessions.
When we attune to our nervous system, we begin to reshape our experiences—not by changing what happened, but by changing how we live with what happened.
Let's Get Science-y for a Sec...
Your brain is remarkably adaptable. Through neuroplasticity, it is continually learning from experience and creating or strengthening neural pathways based on what you encounter. At the same time, your autonomic nervous system is constantly responding to information from inside and outside your body, influencing things like heart rate, breathing, digestion, attention, energy, and your responses to stress. Your brain and body use past and present information to anticipate what might happen next. When you encounter stress, uncertainty, pain, illness, or threat, your system adapts accordingly. With repeated or prolonged experiences, some of these responses can become familiar patterns—often happening before you are consciously aware of them. This is one reason therapy can involve more than talking about what happened. Physical sensations, movement, posture, breathing, emotion, attention, and thought can all give us information about how an experience is being processed in the present moment. Through somatic, neuro-integrative, and polyvagal-informed psychotherapy, we can bring greater awareness to these patterns and experiment with different ways of responding. Over time, new experiences can support new patterns—expanding your capacity for flexibility, connection, and choice.
“You are not a problem to be solved.”
Mind and body aren't separate.
Adaptation isn't pathology.
Not everything difficult can, or needs to, be fixed.
Sometimes the work is learning how to live differently with what has happened.