Meet Lisa
More
calm, clarity, awareness, and connection.
Who I Work With
Individuals
- Parents raising children with disabilities or complex needs
- Caregiver stress & burnout
- Trauma & Complex Trauma
- Anxiety
- Depression & low mood
- Chronic stress & Emotional exhaustion
- People-pleasing & difficulty setting boundaries
- Losing touch with your needs, wants, or sense of self
Couples
- Conflict, disconnection & communication struggles
- Trust, intimacy & emotional safety
- Feeling unheard or misunderstood
- Rebuilding connection after hurt
- Couples raising children with disabilities or complex needs
- Caregiving stress affecting your relationship
Families
- Parenting children with disabilities or complex needs
- Caregiver stress, burnout & overwhelm
- Adjusting to changes within the family
- Balancing caregiving and family relationships
- Staying connected through stress and uncertainty
My Background & Training
Education & Licensure
Lisa-Marie Mac Lean, Texas Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist Associate #205848, Supervised by Kim Fry
NPI#: 1205627767
Master of Arts in Counseling , St. Edward’s University, Austin, Texas
- Bachelor of Arts, Psychology and Communication Studies, York University, Toronto Canada
Trainings & certifications
- Trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Gottman Method Couples Therapy, Level 1 & Level 2
- Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) Externship
- Prepare/Enrich Facilitator
How I work
Therapy with me is a collaborative, compassionate process where you’ll be met with curiosity, respect, and genuine care. I believe many of the ways we cope, relate, and respond today developed for a reason. Often, they began as ways of protecting ourselves or helping us navigate experiences earlier in life. Rather than judging these patterns or simply trying to change them, we’ll make room to understand them.
As we build awareness of what’s happening beneath the surface—your emotions, reactions, needs, and patterns, you can begin to create more choice in how you respond. Over time, this can help you feel more connected to yourself, more confident in your choices, and better able to create relationships and a life that feel authentic to you.
Together, we’ll work toward:
- Understanding what shaped you — exploring experiences, relationships, and ways you learned to cope or protect yourself.
- Noticing what happens beneath the surface — becoming more aware of your emotions, body responses, needs, and patterns as they show up in the present.
- Meeting yourself with more curiosity and less judgment — understanding your responses as meaningful rather than seeing them as something wrong with you.
- Making space for what you feel and need — learning to stay connected to yourself instead of automatically pushing feelings aside, disconnecting, or putting your needs last.
Discovering what matters to you — slowing down enough to notice your feelings, needs, values, and desires so you can begin to understand what you truly want, even when you’re not sure where to start.
- Creating new choices — recognizing familiar patterns as they happen and finding new ways to respond that feel more intentional and aligned with who you are.
- Building a stronger sense of self — becoming more confident in what you need, what matters to you, and how you want to show up in your life and relationships.
- Creating more secure and connected relationships — learning to express what is underneath conflict or disconnection so you can feel more understood, emotionally safe, and connected to others.
My approach is informed by Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT), Internal Family Systems (IFS), the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Attachment-based therapy, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), and Gottman Couples Therapy. I am also trained in EMDR. I draw from these approaches based on what is most helpful for you rather than following one approach with everyone.
My
core values
I hold a non-judgmental space where you can feel supported and understood. From that place of safety, I gently bring attention to patterns or places where you feel stuck or disconnected, offering reflection that can help you see yourself more clearly. This balance of care and honest awareness allows space for real, sustainable change to unfold.
Compassion
I hold every part of your experience with care and openness. Even the parts that feel frustrating or painful are met with curiosity rather than criticism. Compassion creates the safety needed to explore your inner world more honestly, so you can begin to understand the ways you’ve learned to respond more clearly and create new ways of relating to yourself and others.
Connection
Connection is at the heart of this work, with yourself, with others, and within the therapeutic relationship. Many challenges come from disconnection or protective ways of relating. As connection deepens, you begin to feel more grounded, more connected to yourself and more able to move through life and relationships with clarity and choice.
Awareness
I support you in gently building awareness of your internal experience, your emotions, sensations, patterns, and protective responses. Rather than trying to “fix” you, we focus on understanding how your system has learned to adapt, so you can begin to notice your reponses more clearly and respond to yourself and others in more intentional ways.
Curiosity
Curiosity is a guiding value in this work. Rather than judging or trying to change what you’re experiencing, we approach your thoughts, emotions, and responses with gentle openness and curiosity. This creates space for deeper understanding, which supports meaningful change in how you relate to yourself and others.
What Shapes My Approach
I’m originally from Trinidad and Tobago, and the sense of warmth, connection, and community I grew up around, continues to influence how I relate to others and approach this work. I’m also a mom to a child with mulitple disabilities, an experience that has profoundly deepened my understanding of caregiving, love, uncertainty, and the many ways people adapt to life’s challenges.
Alongside my clinical training and trauma-informed approach, I bring a grounded, compassionate, and human presence into the room. I believe meaningful change begins with understanding ourselves more deeply, making space for curiosity about experiences, and ways we have learned to navigate life that have shaped who we are today. From that place of awareness, we can begin to make choices that feel more aligned with who we are and how we want to live.
I care deeply about creating a space where people from all backgrounds, identities, and lived experiences feel welcome. A space where you don’t have to be anything other than yourself, and where every part of your experience can be met with openness, respect, and care.