Angela Martin, LMFT | Women's Mental Health Therapist

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Sometimes the story you've been telling yourself no longer seems to fit. Perhaps your narrative has changed regarding a relationship, your health, your family, or your sense of self. Maybe it's time for a new chapter.

Angela Martin, LMFT, works with women ages 18 and older who are navigating changes and challenges. Her approach is grounded in the belief that the stories we tell ourselves shape how we understand who we are, our relationships, and the possibilities available to us. Therapy can provide a place to slow down, become curious about those stories, and begin creating a new narrative, one that feels more aligned with who you are and what you value.

Women navigate significant changes in life. Relationships evolve, families change, careers shift, and the roles we've filled no longer fit. Perhaps these changes involve a pregnancy or a lack thereof, a challenging postpartum period, perimenopause, menopause, or aging. Some changes feel welcome. Some do not. Often, they're complicated.

Anxiety, emotional or relational challenges, and major life transitions can all affect the way you see yourself and the life you're living. Perimenopause and menopause can add another layer, as physical and hormonal changes intersect with mood, identity, relationships, and everyday life.

Therapy can offer a place to generate a story that fits about these experiences, without shame or the expectation that you should simply handle it. Together, Angela and her clients can explore what is happening, what matters most, and what might need to change, while focusing on and drawing upon the clients' strengths.

Relationships can be both deeply meaningful and deeply complex. Sometimes the challenge isn't deciding whether you care about someone; it's figuring out how to care for yourself while staying connected to the people who matter. The goal is to develop a stronger sense of yourself within your relationships, so that closeness and individuality can exist together.

Angela helps clients explore the space between closeness and independence, including patterns of codependency, difficulty setting boundaries, and the fear that saying what you need might damage an important relationship. Therapy can be a place to ask questions like: What actually is a healthy boundary? What do I need? What belongs to me, and what belongs to someone else? How do I learn to love and value myself?

Not every difficult experience arrives with warning. Trauma can come through sudden loss, unexpected changes in health or well-being, or an experience that leaves you feeling that the world you knew no longer exists.

These experiences can affect much more than how you feel in the moment. They can change the way you see yourself, your relationships, your sense of safety, and what you imagine for the future. Sometimes the effects are obvious. Other times, they show up in ways that are harder to understand.

Therapy can provide a place to make sense of what happened, process difficult emotions, and begin finding ways to live with what has changed.

Angela believes that therapy should be a place where you can be honest about what is happening in your life without having to defend, minimize, or apologize for what you feel. Her approach is empathic, supportive, hopeful, and shame-free, with an emphasis on identity, relationships, and the stories that shape how we understand ourselves.

Narrative therapy can help you become curious about those stories, notice the ones that no longer fit, and begin creating preferred narratives that better reflect your identity, values, and hopes.

Angela also draws from solution-focused therapy, Internal Family Systems, EMDR, and mindfulness. These approaches offer different ways of understanding what you're experiencing and creating meaningful change.

Solution-focused therapy is a goal-directed approach that helps clients build positive futures and new narratives. It seeks to discover practical solutions based on clients' personal strengths, instead of dwelling on past problems.

Internal Family Systems views the human mind as a collection of different sub-personalities or "parts" (like characters within your internal story), led by a compassionate, undamaged core "Self," the truest you--the main character, so to speak.

Angela believes that mindfulness ought to be practical and accessible. Mindfulness doesn't just mean sitting quietly for twenty minutes with your eyes closed. Sometimes it means having a tool you can reach for when anxiety shows up in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday, during a difficult conversation, or when your thoughts won't seem to slow down.

Wondering what EMDR can do for you? This 10-minute introductory video provides a brief explanation: https://youtu.be/Pkfln-ZtWeY?si=ei1Ur_G7qC9UUsDG

Together, you and Angela can explore what feels most useful for you rather than trying to fit your experience into a single approach.

You don't have to arrive with the right words, a clear diagnosis, or a plan for fixing everything. You can simply arrive as you are.

Early sessions are a chance for Angela to get to know you, understand what brought you to therapy, and begin making sense of the experiences and relationships that matter most to you. Together, you'll explore what you want to be different and what might help you get there.

Some sessions may involve talking through a difficult relationship or major transition. Others may involve looking at a familiar story from a different perspective, exploring a part of yourself that feels stuck, processing a traumatic experience, or learning a practical way to respond when anxiety shows up.

Therapy with Angela sometimes comes with an additional member of the team: Tess, a 60-pound, honey-blonde Goldendoodle who considers herself a “co-therapist.”

Tess provides comfort, reassurance, connection, and, occasionally, a little comedy. She has a particular talent for sensing when someone needs extra comfort and has been known to position herself between family members during difficult moments, offering what Angela calls a canine bridge between people.

Tess is still working on her own boundaries. Her enthusiastic greetings and occasional attempts at a non-consensual snuggle keep Angela on her toes, comforts clients, and provide a reminder that even therapy dogs are works in progress.

Angela has become a big proponent of animal-assisted therapy and invites clients to see whether Tess can provide additional support for them during sessions. However, if you're not an animal person, that's completely okay. Tess can settle into a “down” for the session and let you and Angela have the room to yourselves.

Angela's work includes support for:

• Women's mental health
• Anxiety and emotional challenges
• Major life transitions and adjustments
• Relationship concerns and codependency
• Boundaries and differentiation
• Perimenopause and menopause
• Perinatal concerns
• Trauma and loss
• Health and well-being–related challenges
• Identity and self-understanding

Maybe you've been carrying something for a long time. Maybe something has changed and you're not quite sure what to do with it. Or maybe you've simply reached a point where you want to understand yourself, your relationships, or your life a little differently.

You don't have to know exactly what you need before you reach out. If you're ready to begin, Angela would be glad to talk with you about whether therapy with her might be a good fit.

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
Specializing in Women's Mental Health
Co-Founder, Two Sparrows Therapy & Counseling, PLLC
Abilene, Texas | In-Person & Online Therapy