About
Become Known to Yourself
My therapy is built on insight and awareness.
I teach you how to BECOME KNOWN to yourself.
All of who you are. The good and the bad, as you see it, become seen and understood with a caring eye.
You arrive already able to explain yourself. Being known reaches a place that explaining never gets to.
Why the Skills You Learned Ran Out
You have done therapy before, and it helped. CBT gave you something real, and so did DBT, or ACT, or whatever combination of tools carried you through the years that needed carrying.
Then you found the ceiling.
Those skills manage what shows up day to day. Whatever keeps sending it up is still down there, untouched.
On a first call, I hear some version of the same sentence: “I have done the surface work, and I need to get to the root.”
Heal the Root and the Branch Changes on Its Own
Picture your coping strategies as branches. The anxiety, the perfectionism, the anger, the numbing, the vigilance that never quite switches off.
Every one of them grew from a root, and every one of them grew for a reason that made sense at the time. We find those roots together: the experiences that made the strategies necessary in the first place.
Your compassion and understanding heal them.
Then the branches change on their own. They no longer need to function in the same way, so they find other ways of assisting you.
Every Part of You Has a Good Reason
The part of you that rages. The part that shuts down. The part that has been holding shame since you were small.
Each one is a protector, doing its best with the information it has.
My primary method is Internal Family Systems (IFS), which means we help each of those parts feel understood rather than fought.
When a part knows it has been heard, it can finally relax. In my experience, those parts tend to settle down.
Your Therapy Belongs to You
From the first session, I will ask you what you want to look at, and I will ask you to answer in your own words rather than mine.
I hold clear clinical opinions, and you will hear them. What matters more is what you make of them.
When you tell me I have read something wrong, I revise it. Almost two decades in, being willing to be wrong out loud has become one of the most useful things I do in a session.
This is your work. I make the questions sharp enough and the room steady enough that you can do it.
Gentleness Is How We Reach Your Deepest Material
I am certified in EMDR and have used this method almost exclusively for 10 years. I now incorporate pieces of this modality into my current work.
Over the years, I graduated to IFS for clinical reasons. EMDR can flood a nervous system, and flooding produces the dissociation that ends the usefulness of the hour.
IFS reaches the same depth without that cost. We get to the younger, wounded parts more gently and heal them more quickly, without months of preparation first.
So gentleness here is a clinical decision. It’s why the work goes as deep as it does.
What You Will Have When This Work Is Finished
Most clients notice something shifting inside the first month. The full arc runs 6 to 12 months, depending on how much of your life the trauma reached into.
At the end of it, your old wounds are no longer in need of care. The memories keep their facts, and what they lose is their constant shadow in how you live now.
What stays is the ability to notice what is happening inside you, understand why it makes sense, and take care of it yourself.
That is what becoming known does.
About Angela Shuey, LCPC, LPC
Master of Arts, Roosevelt University
EMDR-certified at every level
Licensed in Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana
I have been working as a counselor for nearly 20 years, starting with a Master’s degree from Roosevelt University. The trainings came steadily after that, each one answering a question the work before it had left open: EMDR, IFS, DBT, ACT, CBT, somatic work, polyvagal theory, neuroscience, and Hakomi.
My earlier years were spent in harder rooms: domestic violence work, inpatient units, intensive outpatient programs, and eating disorder treatment, with trauma recovery running through all of it.
Along the way, I devoted my time to LGBTQIA group practices and specialized in religious harm. Later, in my own personal practice, these groups remain a main focus, though trauma recovery is the main component of the individuals on my caseload.
That second group is the work I care most about right now. Watching someone find resolution means everything to me.
Start With a Free Phone Consultation
My practice is deliberately devoted to: adults only, virtual sessions, depth work. The FAQ page covers scheduling, licensure, and how sessions run.
If what you have read here sounds like the work you have been looking for, call me at (269) 921-6953 for a free phone consultation.
The phone consultation helps you determine whether I am the right person to provide counseling.
It's Time to BECOME KNOWN
You already know that if you don’t unburden the harms of your past, you’ll keep running from the emotional pain of it.
The running puts more distance between you and the people you love, more distance between you and yourself, and pushes you further into the coping that breeds more shame.
In our work together, we’ll build insight into who you are. Why you function the way you do. How to change the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that no longer feel helpful.
To yourself, and to the people you love: it’s time to BECOME KNOWN.
Something different. Something permanent. That's what this is.
Unburden the harms of your past and live a life where you truly like who you are.
Call me at (269) 921-6953. We’ll talk by phone first, at no cost, and you can decide from there.
Free 15-minute phone consultation. Online throughout Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana.