Tonya Toutge

Do you feel like you are living your very own “Once upon a time”…but the “Happily ever after” part seems elusive? Real life is often no fairy tale. Tonya wants you to know that she will hold space for your story with the honor that it deserves and she will respect your identity, culture, agency, and pace. Tonya uses a trauma-informed lens to look at events that have happened in your story, along with Internal Family Systems (IFS) or ‘parts work,’ Somatic Experiencing (SE)* or nervous system work, and likes teaching clients about the powerful tools of mindfulness and meditation. Tonya enjoys being creative in therapy and will explore with you to find what works for you. Tonya provides therapy to female, male, and non-binary clients from age 15 and up. Tonya generally works at her best with individuals who are navigating life transitions or coping with death/loss, trauma, stress and anxiety. She also has a special interest in working with educators struggling with work related stressors, college and graduate students, parents and their adult children, adolescents (and their parents!), and individuals in the LGBTQIA+ community. Tonya is licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist which means she seeks to understand you in the context of the systems that influence and impact you. She holds graduate degrees in both Counseling Psychology and Theology and is comfortable working with clients with a wide range of spiritual/faith expression or none at all. Tonya is currently training to be a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (currently training at the Advanced level). *SE is a “bottom-up” treatment modality that brings the nervous system into the conversation in contrast to talk therapy alone which is a top-down approach to treating mental health distress. SE can help people with trauma, but can also be used to address anxiety, stress management, low self-esteem, difficulty concentrating, feeling numb/dissociation, relational trauma, developmental trauma and much more. It is a slow and gentle way to work toward lowering distress and coping better.