Annie Wright - Relational Trauma Specialist
Helping ambitious and driven professionals heal relational trauma and build thriving lives on solid foundations.
About Annie
I know what it's like to build a life that looks impressive but secretly feels awful...
I’m Annie Wright, LMFT, and I specialize in what very few therapists get and very often haven’t lived themselves: how growing up where achievement was your only source of worth—the only escape, the only thing that earned positive attention—creates adults who, later on, might sabotage everything good with workaholism, who can’t stop destroying their relationships and themselves with the very patterns that once saved them.
For me, it started on an island off the coast of Maine with one parent who could charm a room then literally endanger you the next moment. And with another parent who just couldn’t protect me. And then I was legally disowned at 11.
So what do you do when people aren’t safe and the threat of poverty feels worse? What feels good when the most important early relationships feel downright dangerous? In my case, and in others, achievement can become everything. Your ticket out. The one thing that makes you good enough. The safest thing to attach to.
So many of us then become really driven and ambitious. I sure did. Becoming valedictorian and the first to go to college (let alone the Ivy League). Two Brown degrees, running every student organization and securing all the internships. I was on track to earn that high school epitaph they’d all voted me for: “Most Likely to Succeed.”
But I was using achievement like a drug, like the addiction it can be—80-hour weeks to avoid feeling abandoned, constant motion to outrun the grief. Compulsive school and work activity to keep any awareness of the relational trauma reality I’d lived through on the back burner. Destroying my mental health and relationships with the same workaholic drive that saved me early on. Sabotaging anything good that got too close. Missing life while building a resume. Still that eleven-year-old who learned achievement was safer than any human.
Sound familiar?
When the cracks started showing...
But then, in 2005, I was serving in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan when the 2005 Andijon massacre occurred. It became really dangerous to be there. So we were evacuated out. It was the time when everything I’d built to keep myself safe and numb—the achieving, the eating disorder, the constant motion suddenly – suddently wasn’t enough.
The workaholism that had been my lifeline stopped working. The disordered eating couldn’t numb what was breaking through. Twenty-five years old, watching my carefully constructed life collapse in a country falling apart, and for the first time, I couldn’t outrun or out-achieve the pain.
I had a choice: keep using the same broken tools that were now failing me, or do something I’d never done—actually feel what I’d been running from since I was eleven.
And it was then that I changed the trajectory of my life. Starting with a one-way ticket to Esalen. One carry-on suitcase. It was supposed to be a month-long workscholar program to “figure things out” and hopefully build a life that felt worth living.
Four years later, I was still there but this time as a full-time staff member. Because it turns out, when you finally stop running, there’s a lot to catch up with. A lot to heal.
It was there on the cliffs of Big Sur that I did my first round of deep healing work...
For four years I effectively enrolled in Relational Trauma Recovery 101 curriculum. Learning the basics of being human I’d never had the chance to learn during a childhood colored by chaos.
For four years, I finally felt everything I’d been numbing since I was little. The grief of a childhood that never was. The rage at parents who hurt me couldn’t protect me. Literal years of tears. Held by a community that could witness without fixing—people who’d sit with you through the pain—so much shifted. I learned that relationships could heal, not just hurt. That vulnerability could be met with compassion instead of exploitation. I learned what secure connection felt like. What I deserved relationally. Things like respect, attunement, support, kindness. I built real self-esteem from nothing. Piece by piece, I put together what had happened to me. Understood how abnormal it was.
I was literally learning how to People—how to Human—for the first time. I did my work. For years. And it was also during that time that I graduate school, training to become the therapist I’d desperately needed as a child. Also, fun fact, I met my now-husband, also a staff member there at the time, outside the dining lodge. Fourteen years later, we’re still going strong and have an extraordinary daughter, an Esalen child.
Truly, those four years were the most transformational of my life. By the time I left Big Sur to move to the Bay to finish my post-degree licensing journey, I thought I’d done “the work.”
But there was more to come…
The second wake-up call...
Having found my calling in trauma therapy and becoming a relational trauma recovery specialist, in 2019—not long after I was fully licensed—I founded Evergreen Counseling – a boutique, trauma-informed therapy center in the Bay. My daughter was three months old.
(Who starts a business with a three-month-old? Someone whose relational trauma still insists that rest equals danger. That’s who.)
My Esalen healing had given me something I’d never had: confidence, clarity, and the capacity to build genuine professional success. And I built it. Fast. From zero to a multi-state, multi-million-dollar company with 24 employees in under five years. A full therapy caseload of Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and driven women as clients while also running the company.
And, predictably, as I built this business, my old friend workaholism came roaring back. My last lingering relational trauma symptom—the one I’d somehow convinced myself wasn’t really a “problem.”
Here’s what nobody tells you about workaholism—it’s the most socially acceptable form of feeling-avoidance. Nobody questions your 80-hour weeks when you’re “building something meaningful” or your company is celebrating “heroic hours” or your job security is attached to your billable hours. It’s the perfect hiding place for us ambitious women who’ve done our therapy but haven’t touched this final, most insidious survival strategy that often haunts those of us from relational trauma backgrounds.
My tipping point?
A major health scare. Missed milestones with my daughter—not just missing a recital, missing watching her learn to walk. A marriage that felt more like a business partnership. Those all-too-familiar 2 AM anxiety spirals, forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth: I’d healed my relationship with food, learned to feel my feelings, could set boundaries—but I’d never actually healed my relationship with work.
Those 80-hour weeks weren’t just building the practice. They were my drug of choice. The way I numbed difficult emotions, proved my worth, and avoided the scary vulnerability of actually being present in my life. Still that eleven-year-old who learned work was the only relationship that wouldn’t abandon her. The only source of safety.
For so many of us driven and ambitious women from relational trauma histories, this is the final frontier. The last piece we somehow think we can skip because, well, at least we’re productive while we’re avoiding ourselves. Right?
The 201 work: When the first round of healing isn't enough.
I need you to understand something: I’m not just “better.” I’m genuinely happy in a way I didn’t know was possible for someone like me.
My marriage is so much stronger. As the sole breadwinner killing myself with work, I used to resent my husband for not being as miserable as I was. Now? I can appreciate that all the career success I’ve had (and will continue to have as a working mom) is because of him. We actually enjoy each other. I’m not taking my exhaustion out on him anymore.
As a mother? I’m at the 8:05am bus drop-off and 4pm after-school pickup. Every day. Every softball practice, every field hockey game. Every night, cuddling her to sleep. She knows my favorite thing (besides her) is sitting in my corner of our big blue couch on a snowy Sunday, reading my Kindle while the woodstove blazes and her dad makes bacon. She plays with her Barbies next to me. I’m modeling what she needs to see: a big, ambitious career without the unsustainable self-sacrifice.
And our little town? It’s basically Stars Hollow. We host spontaneous dinners. Have playdates multiple times a week. Show up for each other’s kids’ musical theatre performances. I’m even in a book club. (Check that box off the middle-aged mom list!)
I’m building work that feels like mission, not survival. Writing because the words need to come out, not because I need another achievement. I sleep through the night. Read novels without guilt. Rest without earning it first.
This is what’s possible when you do the real work. Not just feeling less bad. Actually feeling good.
The life on the other side of this work...
I need you to understand something: I’m not just “better.” I’m genuinely happy in a way I didn’t know was possible for someone like me.
My marriage is so much stronger. As the sole breadwinner previously killing myself with work, I used to resent my husband for not being as miserable as I was. Now? We actually enjoy each other again and are stronger than ever. I’m not taking my exhaustion out on him anymore.
As a mother? I’m at the 8:05am bus drop-off and 4pm after-school pickup. Every day. Every softball practice, every field hockey game. Every night, cuddling her to sleep. She knows my favorite thing (besides her) is sitting in my corner of our big blue couch on a snowy Sunday, reading my Kindle while the woodstove blazes and her dad makes bacon. She plays with her Barbies next to me. I’m modeling what she needs to see: a big, ambitious career without the unsustainable self-sacrifice.
I devoted myself to healing my physical health and my profound burnout. The result? Feeling more fit and vital than I ever have before. And our little town? It’s basically Stars Hollow. Stunning, safe, completely community-centered. We host spontaneous dinners and playdates. Have the world’s best neighbors. Show up for each other’s kids’ musical theatre performances and family festival days around town. I even have time to be in a book club. (Check that box off the middle-aged mom list!)
I’m now building v2 of my career that feels like a life-giving personal mission, not anxiety-driven economic survival and proving. I sleep through the night for the first time in six years. Read novels without guilt. Actually take vacations. No joke: I wake up every day not really believing this is my life now.
This is what’s possible when you do the real work. Not just feeling less bad. Actually feeling as good as your resume looks.
Building v2: A big ambitious work life from a healed place...
Today, I’m still CEO of Evergreen. Still see a select handful of therapy clients as a relational trauma recovery specialist. I’m publishing my first book with W.W. Norton, developing my signature course on relational trauma recovery, authoring a weekly Substack, loving my executive coaching work. Keynoting at state psychology conferences
It’s a big, ambitious work life—but here’s what’s different: I work “only” 40 hours a week now. Not 80. I stop checking emails at 4pm. Every day. Non-negotiable.
I’m now okay with slow, sustainable, steady career building now. It doesn’t need to all have happened yesterday. I refuse to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs anymore—because that goose? That’s me. And if I want to live the life of my dreams, I can’t run myself into the ground anymore.
I will always be ambitious and driven. Turns out it wasn’t just a trauma response. It’s a huge part of who I am. But now the work isn’t driven by that desperate need to prove I deserve to exist. It’s fueled by what feels like a personal mission I’m on this Earth to do.
And the shift that surprised me most? I measure success by how much peace and contentment I feel, not what I produce and how much I’m making annually.
So here’s what I’ve learned through my own journey and thousands of clinical hours with driven women: You can absolutely still have that big, ambitious life. It’s just infinitely more sustainable when you’ve done the psychological healing work first.
That’s what I help my clients create. Not smaller dreams but stronger foundations to support the big life they’re actually building. The kind of psychological infrastructure that lets you have both—the impressive career and the life that actually feels good.
Because you deserve both. We all do.
Who I can help
I specialize in driven, ambitious women who mirror my former self—people who’ve built impressive lives that secretly feel unstable.
Maybe you can lead a team of 20 through a crisis without blinking, but when your child melts down in Target, your whole body reacts like you’re the one having the tantrum.
Maybe you finally get the promotion, the launch succeeds, you get the recognition—and instead of feeling proud, your brain immediately jumps to “what’s next?” Like stopping means disappearing.
Maybe you’re who everyone calls in crisis, but you have no idea who to call when you’re drowning.
You might be someone who:
- Reads every text five times before sending. Analyzing for criticism that probably isn’t there.
- Finds marriage harder than managing twenty direct reports.
- Reaches for wine, work, or your phone the second you feel… anything.
- Hears your mother coming out of your mouth when you snap at your kids. That voice.
- Can’t rest without guilt. Even on vacation. Even when sick.
- Always “fine” when anyone asks. Been giving that answer since you were eight.
If you’re reading this thinking “How does she know my life?”—that’s not coincidence.
These patterns are predictable responses to growing up in environments that weren’t emotionally safe.
The part of you that keeps pushing forward no matter what? That deserves respect. It saved you. Got you here. But those same survival strategies that once protected you might now be keeping you from the life you actually want.
I get it because I’ve been there. Used work to avoid feeling anything. Had to learn—the hard way—how to build actual stability from the inside out.
That’s what I help ambitious women do now. Stop killing the goose that lays the golden eggs—which is you. Build a life you actually get to enjoy before you die, not just an impressive LinkedIn profile that hides how empty you feel. Where connection is real, not performed. Where rest isn’t failure. Where you finally feel as good as you look on paper, instead of like a fraud waiting to be found out.
My expertise as a relational trauma recovery specialist
With over 15,000 clinical hours guiding ambitious women—Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, entrepreneurs, executives—I bring both clinical expertise and lived experience to this work. My insights on trauma recovery, sustainable success, and nervous system healing have been featured in The Information, Forbes, Business Insider, NBC, Inc, and more.
I specialize in:
- Healing relational trauma: The patterns you can’t see but feel everywhere. Why conflict makes you shut down or explode. Why intimacy feels dangerous. Why praise never lands. How early attachment wounds show up in your boardroom, bedroom, and everywhere between.
- Evidence-based transformation: EMDR that rewires trauma responses. Somatic work that releases what your body’s been holding for decades. Methods that create cellular-level change, because insight alone never saved anyone from their patterns.
- Breaking survival strategies: The hypervigilance that has you reading every micro-expression. The chronic busyness that keeps feelings at bay. The emotional armor that protected you then but isolates you now.
- Building internal security: Trust that doesn’t depend on being needed. Worth that exists without proving it. The revolutionary ability to disappoint people and still sleep at night.
- Designing integrated success: Where your ambition serves your life, not the other way around. Where professional excellence and personal fulfillment actually coexist. The radical idea that you can have both.
How We Can Work Together To Heal Your Relational Trauma
Therapy
Weekly therapy sessions and EMDR intensives for California and Florida residents ready to do the real work—not just talk about it. For when you’re done managing symptoms and ready to heal what’s actually broken.
Executive Coaching
Strong and Stable
A premium newsletter for ambitious women doing the work. Essays that hit different. Workbooks that actually change things. Community conversations with people who get it. Direct access to me through monthly Q&As. The support system you needed but never had.
Fixing the Foundations
Building a Life That Actually Works, Not Just Looks Good
You don’t have to choose between ambition and peace. But you do need to understand why your childhood still runs your Tuesday afternoon.
If you’re reading this, something here resonated. Maybe it’s that you’ve built everything you said you wanted but still feel like you’re waiting for your real life to start. Or that Sunday nights fill you with dread even though you run your own company.
This isn’t about your professional capabilities—those are unquestionable. It’s about understanding why success hasn’t fixed what you thought it would. Why the next milestone never brings the peace you expected. Why you still feel twelve years old when your mother calls.
The work I do helps driven women understand how early patterns—when safety meant being invisible, when love required performance, when you became the family stabilizer at age nine—still determine your Tuesday. They’re why you over-explain texts. Why you can’t receive compliments. Why rest feels like failure.
This isn’t about scaling back your ambition. It’s about building the internal foundation to hold it. To disagree without panic. To be seen without armor. To stop pre-gaming every conversation in your head. To trust that you’re allowed to take up space without earning it first.
When you’re ready to build that foundation, I’m here.
