Dr. Honey Williams

Therapeutic Approach

I offer individual therapy that is neurobiologically-informed, attachment-based, and non-pathologizing. My work is grounded in the belief that symptoms are not signs of something wrong with you, but rather reflections of how your system learn to adapt to cope and survive.

This means that rather than approaching your concerns as symptoms of a disorder or pathology to fix, I help you become curious about the deeper patterns at play. We collaboratively explore how your nervous system, lived experience, relational history, and the broader social and institutional systems you’ve had to navigate have shaped the ways you’ve learned to cope, stay safe, and maintain connection.

And just as we don’t work to “fix” you, we also don’t work to erase or relive what happened to you. My approach to therapy is the process of co-creating new, reparative experiences that restore and support your felt sense of safety, empowerment, and belonging — in your body, your sense of self, and your relationships.

Specialties

I specialize in helping adults understand, untangle from, and rewire the often hidden transdiagnostic effects of complex trauma, including PTSD, depression, anxiety, mood swings, dissociative processes, ADHD/executive functioning difficulties, self-destructive behavior, and distress associated with identity or relationships.

Most clients I work with don’t come to therapy because of one identifiable or clearly remembered traumatic event. Instead, they arrive feeling:

  • Emotionally overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, or chronically shut down or numbed out

  • Disconnected from parts of self and/or parts of self feeling “at war” internally

  • Trapped in patterns that do not feel like a choice

  • Unable to feel safe, close, or understood in relationships

  • Frustrated by therapy that hasn’t gotten to/helped with the root of the issue or confused by the different mental health diagnoses they’ve received across different treatment providers.

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom"

— Viktor Frankl

The Biology of Survival

When an experience overwhelms our capacity to cope (especially without support), our nervous system shifts into survival mode:

  • FIGHT – to confront or defend against the threat

  • FLEE – to escape the threat

  • FREEZE – to go numb, dissociate, or shut down when escape or defense isn’t possible

  • FAWN – to appease others and disconnect from your own needs to prevent abandonment or retaliation

These are biological, intelligent, automatic responses designed to protect you in the short-term. But when you can’t escape or find safety afterward, the body holds on to that activation—leaving you stuck in or oscillating between states of fight, flee, freeze or fawn.

This kind of stuckness can result from a single traumatic event or from chronic, relational, or systemic trauma (i.e. complex trauma). Over time, our brain’s threat detector (amygdala) becomes hypersensitive to potential threats, and your system learns to prioritize survival over connection, presence, learning, and rest.

Together, we bring compassionate curiosity to the parts of you that learned to survive and we support your system in learning something new — how to feel safe, connected, and empowered in the present.

Training & Experience

I have 8 years of clinical experience with diverse populations across a variety of clinical settings, including an outpatient psychiatry and behavioral health clinic, a long-term, state-run psychiatric hospital, college counseling, and group private practices. I completed a one-year, predoctoral internship at Montana State University Counseling Center before returning to Seattle to complete specialized training through a post-doctoral residency at Lighthouse Psychological Services. Throughout the various clinical settings, my training and clinical experience has focused on the psychological assessment and treatments for PTSD and complex trauma, dissociative disorders, depression, anxiety, traumatic grief, ADHD and executive functioning difficulties, substance use, self-harm, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and personality organization.

I have experience providing individual and group therapy, milieu therapy, crisis assessment and intervention, consultation, parent behavior management training, and comprehensive psychological testing and assessment.

  • Montana Psychologist License (2023)

  • Washington Psychologist License (2023)

  • Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology (2022)

  • Master of Science in Psychological Science (2018)

  • Bachelor of Science in Psychology (2015)