I help ambitious women heal relational trauma and build thriving lives on solid foundations.
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Psychotherapist | Executive Coach | Speaker | Founder of a trauma-informed therapy center with 15,000+ hours guiding Silicon Valley's leaders.
08/29/2025
You desperately want meaningful relationships, but when someone begins to really see you, know you, or love you, your nervous system goes into chaos mode. You simultaneously want to run toward them and run away from them. You feel like you're going crazy with the contradictory impulses.
One day you're texting them constantly, the next day you're avoiding their calls. You want intimacy but intimacy feels terrifying. You push people away right when they start to matter most.
This push-pull dynamic often develops when early relationships were both the source of comfort and the source of threat. Maybe the same person who was supposed to love you also hurt you, or maybe love came with conditions that felt impossible to meet consistently.
Your brain learned that closeness equals both safety and danger. You're not being difficult or confusing on purpose—you're responding to programming that says intimacy is both what you need most and what threatens you most.
08/27/2025
People admire your composure, your ability to stay level-headed in stressful situations, your "chill" personality that never seems rattled. They see someone who doesn't get overwhelmed easily. But inside, you're not calm—you're disconnected.
You feel like you're watching your life through glass, present but not really there. You can function perfectly, handle responsibilities, and show up for others, but you can't feel much of anything—good or bad.
This emotional numbing often develops as a protective response when feelings felt too overwhelming or dangerous to experience fully. Maybe your early environment involved intense emotions that felt threatening, or maybe your own big feelings weren't safe to express. Your nervous system learned to shut down rather than feel too much.
The numbness that once protected you from overwhelming experiences now keeps you from fully experiencing joy, connection, and aliveness.
08/25/2025
You can volunteer at events, mentor new colleagues, and support acquaintances without hesitation. But when your best friend offers to bring you soup when you're sick or help you through a difficult time, you deflect, minimize, or politely decline.
This pattern develops when early relationships taught you that needing others was dangerous, burdensome, or led to disappointment. Maybe your caregivers were overwhelmed by your needs, or maybe asking for help came with conditions or criticism. You learned that independence equals safety and that relying on others opens you up to potential rejection or control.
The irony is that your ability to help others comes from understanding what it feels like to need support. But somewhere along the way, you decided that your needs were different—too much, too complicated, or simply not worth the vulnerability that comes with accepting care from others.
08/24/2025
Comment “AUGUST Q&A” and I’ll send it your way.
Ever go home after a family visit and end up crying in your car, completely drained?
Or notice that no one even asks about the company you just sold, the promotion you earned, or the work you’re proud of?
Maybe your sibling makes a jab that you’re “too good for them now.” Or your mom unsubscribes from your newsletter the moment you write about boundaries.
That’s not random. It’s your family system struggling to tolerate your growth.
This month’s Q&A unpacks the real mechanics behind this—why family often can’t celebrate your success, what the “vulnerability hangover” actually is, and how to love people without betraying yourself in the process.
We explore:
- How to recover after family visits that leave you crying in the car or drained for days
- Why grief (not just anger) is part of this work when family can’t celebrate your growth
- How to complete the stress cycle so your nervous system can finally settle
- The “hardware store and milk” framework for understanding what family can and can’t give
This content is part of Strong and Stable—a trauma-informed premium newsletter and digital community for 21,000+ ambitious women who are tired of carrying it all alone and ready to begin repairing the foundation beneath the life they've built.
Comment “AUGUST Q&A” and I’ll send it your way.
08/22/2025
Sunday scaries hit different when rest feels like danger.
If you're reorganizing closets instead of relaxing, your nervous system might be running on old software - when being busy meant being safe, when stillness meant being seen (and criticized).
This isn't being Type A. It's being Type T for trauma - when your childhood taught you that productivity was protection.
Your body remembers what your mind might have forgotten: there was a time when moving targets were harder to hit.
08/22/2025
You have the successful career, the comfortable lifestyle, the financial security that many people dream of. So why does it feel selfish, ungrateful, or even dangerous to want more—whether that's more joy, deeper connection, different experiences, or bigger professional goals?
This guilt isn't about being spoiled or entitled. It's about nervous system programming that learned wanting more was problematic, burdensome, or caused problems for others.
Maybe your family struggled financially, so expressing desires felt greedy or insensitive. Maybe your needs were consistently seen as "too much," unrealistic, or inconvenient. Maybe wanting anything beyond the basics was criticized as being ungrateful for what you already had.
Your system learned a simple equation: contentment equals safety, and desire equals danger. Your brain developed the belief that being satisfied with what you have is virtuous, while wanting more is selfish or risky.
But here's what that programming missed: Desire is information. It's your authentic self communicating about what your soul needs to feel alive, engaged, and genuinely fulfilled. Your wants aren't selfish demands—they're valuable data about who you are and what would create meaning and joy in your life.
The goal isn't to become endlessly grasping or unsatisfied. It's to distinguish between desire that comes from genuine authenticity versus desire that comes from comparison or insecurity. And to recognize that wanting more from life—more connection, more impact, more joy—can actually make you more generous and present with what you already have.
08/21/2025
You're a successful adult with your own life, responsibilities, and relationships. Yet when your mom calls upset about something, or your dad seems disappointed, you immediately feel responsible for fixing their emotional state—even when their feelings have nothing to do with you.
This isn't about being loving or caring. This is about carrying a job that was never supposed to be yours in the first place.
When a parent struggled with depression, anxiety, or emotional volatility, you often learned that their emotional state determined the family's safety and stability. Your nervous system got programmed with the equation: their mood equals your security. Managing their feelings became a survival strategy.
Maybe you were the family emotional regulator, the one who could sense the emotional weather and adjust accordingly. Maybe your empathy, your achievements, or your behavior was used to help them feel better about themselves or their circumstances.
That role served an important purpose then—it might have helped stabilize difficult family dynamics or created moments of connection. But now, as an adult, you're still carrying emotional responsibility for people who are supposed to be taking care of their own emotional wellbeing.
You can love your parents deeply AND recognize that their happiness isn't your job. You can maintain connection AND stop being their emotional regulator. Caring about their wellbeing and being responsible for their wellbeing are completely different things.
08/20/2025
You can handle intense work deadlines, difficult clients, and complex projects without batting an eye. But two hours at a family gathering leaves you feeling like you need three days to recover.
Work might be demanding, but it's predictable. You know the rules, the expectations, the boundaries. Family interactions require you to navigate complex emotional terrain, manage old triggers, and often perform roles you've outgrown but get pulled back into anyway.
Maybe family time involves walking on eggshells around certain topics or people. Maybe you find yourself managing other people's emotions, mediating conflicts, or defending choices and boundaries that shouldn't need defending. Maybe you're simultaneously trying to be your authentic adult self while managing the family dynamics that want to keep you in old patterns.
Your nervous system has to work overtime during family gatherings—monitoring emotional temperature, preventing conflicts, maintaining your boundaries while not causing drama, and staying regulated in an environment that activates some of your deepest triggers.
This isn't about not loving your family or being antisocial. It's about recognizing that some relationships require significantly more emotional energy to navigate, especially when they involve people who knew you before you did your healing work and who may still relate to you through old dynamics.
You're not weak for finding family exhausting. You're actually doing incredibly sophisticated emotional labor to maintain connection while protecting your peace.
08/19/2025
You're finally on that long-awaited vacation. Beautiful location, no work obligations, permission to rest. Yet you can't seem to actually relax. Your mind keeps running through everything that could go wrong, everyone who might need something, all the work waiting for you when you return.
This isn't about being Type A or unable to enjoy yourself. It's about a nervous system that doesn't have a clear understanding of what genuine safety looks like.
When relaxation wasn't modeled in your early environment, or when letting your guard down led to chaos, criticism, or emotional overwhelm, your brain learned that constant vigilance equals survival. Your system got wired to scan for potential problems, manage other people's emotions, and stay ready for whatever might go wrong.
Even in paradise, your nervous system is running the program that says, "Stay alert. Monitor the environment. Be ready." This hypervigilance once kept you safe in genuinely unpredictable or emotionally unsafe situations.
The challenge is that this protective response doesn't automatically turn off when you're actually safe. Your brain doesn't distinguish between "vacation in beautiful location" and "early environment where vigilance was necessary."
Learning to relax isn't about forcing your mind to be quiet. It's about gently teaching your nervous system what actual safety feels like, and that sometimes—in specific contexts with clear boundaries—you can let your guard down without negative consequences.
08/18/2025
Your financial advisor says you're doing great. Your emergency fund could sustain you for years. Your investments are solid. Yet you still check your bank account obsessively, struggle to spend money on anything "non-essential," and have persistent anxiety about financial security.
This isn't about being financially responsible or prudent. It's about a nervous system that learned resources can disappear without warning, and that financial vulnerability equals danger on a fundamental level.
Maybe money was scarce or unpredictable in your childhood. Maybe financial stress created chaos in your family system. Maybe money was used as leverage or control—given and taken away based on behavior or moods.
Your brain formed a core equation: accumulating and protecting resources equals survival. Spending feels risky, even when the risk is objectively minimal. Your system learned that "enough" is never actually enough because security can evaporate overnight.
The hoarding isn't about greed or materialism—it's about trying to create safety in a world that once felt financially dangerous and unpredictable.
This response served you well. It motivated you to create genuine financial stability and security. But now it might be preventing you from enjoying the fruits of your labor or using money as a tool for creating the life experiences you actually want.
The path forward isn't about spending recklessly. It's about gently updating your system's understanding of what constitutes "enough" in your current reality.
08/17/2025
Comment 'SHOWING OFF' and I'll send it your way.
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You just landed that promotion you've been working toward for months. Or closed a deal that took forever to negotiate. Or finally launched that project that consumed your nights and weekends.
You're genuinely excited to share the news with your family.
But instead of celebration, you get... silence.
A quick "that's nice" followed by an immediate pivot to someone's weekend plans.
Or worse—that subtle look that somehow makes your success feel like an inconvenience.
Suddenly you're standing there wondering if you should have said anything at all.
If this scenario makes your stomach drop a little, this personal letter is for you.
In it, I explore:
- Why your wins sometimes make the people who raised you deeply uncomfortable
- How and why so many of us professionally “outgrow” our family of origins and what this means
- How family systems unconsciously resist change—even positive change (and why that makes perfect sense)
- The specific mindset shifts I use to stay grounded when your success feels "too much" for others
This isn't about changing your family (spoiler: you can't). It's about protecting your emotions and esteem while honoring your achievements—without shrinking yourself to make others more comfortable.
This letter is part of my Strong and Stable Substack community, where over 20,000 driven and ambitious folks from relational trauma backgrounds gather to navigate relational patterns while fully owning their success.
Comment 'SHOWING OFF' and I'll send it your way.
08/16/2025
Your resume is impressive. Your bank account is healthy. Your colleagues respect you. Yet there's this persistent voice whispering, "They're going to figure out that you don't really know what you're doing."
This isn't actually about your competence—it's about the voice in your head that still sounds like early criticism. When your achievements were minimized, when praise came with conditions, or when success felt temporary and revocable, your nervous system learned to question your own capabilities even in the face of objective evidence.
Imposter syndrome isn't a character flaw or a confidence problem. It's often the result of internalized messages about your worth that formed long before you had the skills and achievements to contradict them.
Your brain is still running the program that says, "Success is temporary. Someone will realize you're not enough." This voice isn't telling you the truth about your abilities—it's replaying old data that once tried to keep you safe from disappointment or criticism.
What if your success isn't an accident or a fluke? What if it's actually evidence of your genuine capabilities, intelligence, and effort? The voice that questions this isn't your inner wisdom—it's an old echo that you can learn to recognize and respond to differently.
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My name is Annie Wright. I’m a licensed psychotherapist and consultant supporting individuals, couples, and families from the Bay Area and beyond.
I received multiple undergraduate degrees from Brown University, my graduate degree in psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and my coaches training from the Coaches Training Institute.
In between degrees and training, I’ve also served in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan, spent several years as a Washington DC-based healthcare consultant, lived and studied for nearly four years at the world-famous Esalen Institute, served as a non-profit leader in the women and girl’s empowerment space, launched a mental health center here in Berkeley, California, and had my clinical thoughts, opinions, and writing published in outlets such as Forbes, NBC, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and more.
Because of my diverse professional background, I bring a robust variety of skills and a strong commitment to social justice in my work as a psychotherapist, coach, and consultant.
So that’s what you should know about me professionally.
What you should know about me personally is that I chose to become a psychotherapist because therapy has been (and continues to be) profoundly invaluable in my own journey from adversity to healing. I do this work because I care deeply about helping others who feel hopeless, stuck, and lonely – like I did at many points in my life coming from very challenging and adverse beginnings. I do this work because I strongly believe that everyone deserves a skilled, fierce ally and lots of resources to support them when life gets tough (as it inevitably does).
And I do this work because, at the end of the day, I can’t not do this work.
Not only is this work my passion, it’s also the story of my own life path. Honestly, from the time I was a little girl reading every book I could about the Holocaust, Salem witch trials, ancient mythology and fables in the local library of the Maine island village I grew up in, I’ve been fascinated and drawn to stories of human suffering, of people triumphing over adversity, and by what it takes to move forward to build a beautiful, healed life despite early disadvantages, abuse by those in power, and trauma of the mind, body, and soul. I’ve identified with the pain I saw in others and also resonated with the yearning for something better. I’ve been deeply inspired by models and examples of people who didn’t just survive but thrived despite circumstances, and cultivated a hunger for learning, for resources, for practices that would support me in doing the same.
Along the way, my personal passion to heal my own life grew to professional and formal academic pursuits.
Some of these pursuits included running an Ivy League student advising program (not to mention becoming the first in my family to go to college), interning at an international conflict resolution organization, leading girl- and women-serving non-profits, being an educator and public servant in Central Asia, doing a 180 with my life and career at age 25 by saying goodbye to a lucrative but unfulfilling corporate consulting job and moving from Capitol Hill to Big Sur, California to wash dishes and bake bread in the Esalen kitchens, study psychology and spirituality, and live in a yurt under a eucalyptus grove by the sea. Years later, I’m now a licensed psychotherapist, mental health clinic founder, and published writer.
I wholeheartedly believe that crafting a life of connection, meaning, and fulfillment is possible no matter where you start out in life and that everyone deserves to be skillfully supported in pursuit of this.
As a psychotherapist, coach, and consultant, I work with individuals, couples, and families from the Bay Area and beyond to help them transform their challenges and move forward in creating a life that feels empowered, connected, hopeful, and possible. It’s a privilege and an honor to support my clients – all brave and determined people who want to make sense of their past and to move forward in creating more fulfilling, meaningful lives for themselves.
I truly love the work that I do.
I’m so glad you’re here and that you’re exploring the possibility of working with me. I encourage you to read about the ways we can work together which includes therapy (which I offer through my group counseling practice), coaching, consulting, workshops or online products. As you consider working with me, I also invite you to explore the most frequently asked questions people have when considering my services, check out my many years of blog posts to learn more about how I think and work, and if you’re still not sure I’m the right fit for you as a helper, you can also contact me to set up a complimentary 20-minute initial consult call so that I can answer any additional questions you might have about working with me in any capacity.
