MEET Gloria, Lcsw

It’s time to come home to yourself.

Virtual therapy for religious trauma, complex trauma, and EMDR intensives in Raleigh, NC, and across NC, SC, VA, and CT.

Schedule a Consultation
A woman with long gray hair, glasses, and freckles smiling while sitting on a couch in a bright room, wearing a teal short-sleeve shirt.
A person sitting at a wooden table with a silver laptop, a notebook, and a large green Monstera plant in the background.

You're not just getting a trained therapist.

A woman with long, wavy gray hair wearing glasses and a floral blouse, smiling while working on a silver laptop at a wooden table in a dark room.

There are other therapists who work with religious trauma. What I bring that most of them can't is simple — I grew up in it. I was born into one cult and entered a second before I was five years old. I'm not working from a textbook understanding of what that experience does to a person. I know it from the inside.

I've also spent years in my own therapy doing this exact work, and I remain committed to my own healing. That matters because it means I'm not asking you to do anything I haven't been willing to do myself. And it means I've learned how to take the clinical framework and translate it into something that actually makes sense to someone earlier in the process.

In the therapy room, I bring curiosity and, when it fits, humor. This work is heavy. Sometimes humor makes it a little more digestible.

What I will never bring is an agenda for who you should be or what you should do. You've had enough of that. Your autonomy is yours, always. The only exception is safety, and even then we will have a conversation about why.

*For more information about the limits of confidentiality, see our FAQ.

My Specialties

Religious Trauma

01

Complex & Developmental Trauma

02

EMDR Intensives

03

How I work

A dirt path runs alongside a field of yellow flowers with mountains in the background.

01

We start by slowing down.

Before we go anywhere near processing, we spend time getting to know each other. Your history, your patterns, how you respond to stress, what you already understand about trauma and what you don't. Most clients are surprised by how much ground we cover before we ever start the deeper work and how necessary that turns out to be.

Close-up of a dandelion seed head and pussy willow branches in a glass container against a neutral background.

02

We build awareness before we build anything else.

A lot of trauma work fails because it moves too fast. We take time to explore what's actually happening in your body, your thoughts, and your nervous system, learning to tell the difference between a sensation, a thought, and an external trigger.

This isn't busywork.

It's the foundation everything else is built on.

Close-up of dried grass stalks with a blurred background of sunlight and foliage, creating a bokeh effect.

03

You are the expert on yourself.

I am not here to tell you what to think, what to believe, or who to be. In every session I will check in with your thoughts, your desires, and your choices, because learning to trust your own voice is part of the work. You've spent enough time in systems that had all the answers. This isn't one of them.

A note on faith. I do not provide faith-based therapy. If you are actively practicing a faith tradition and looking for a therapist who will integrate that into our work, I am likely not the right fit. If you have left religion or are navigating life after faith, you are exactly who I work with.

A lot of people find their way to therapy without knowing exactly what they need or whether it will even help. For people who have been taught that their needs are secondary, that struggle is a spiritual failing, or that the right amount of faith should be enough, getting here at all is its own kind of work.

I want you to know that this is a space where your pace is respected, your story is taken seriously, and you will never be told who to be or what to believe.

You get to figure that out for yourself, and I'll be right there with you while you do.

You don't have to have it figured out to be here.

Woman seen from behind walking barefoot down a sandy path in a red maxi skirt and white top, surrounded by tall grass with dunes in the distance.

HEre’s what I believe about therapy:

Therapy is hard work.

But hard doesn't mean dangerous, and difficult doesn't mean something is wrong.

In fact, part of what we do together is help your nervous system learn the difference between something that is challenging and something that is actually a threat. That distinction changes everything.

There is room for curiosity and humor here.

Fear and curiosity have a hard time existing at the same time. Sometimes a moment of lightness is exactly what makes the harder moments bearable. This work is heavy, but it doesn't have to be solemn.

This isn’t about becoming someone different.

It's about becoming a more authentic version of who you already are underneath everything that was layered on top of you. If you grew up in a faith tradition, you know what it means to be devoted to something. What would it mean to be as dedicated to your own healing as you were to your faith?

My Background

    • Certified Constructed Awareness Clinician

    • SAFE EMDR trained

  • Master of Social Work, University of North Carolina Charlotte

    Licensed Clinical Social Worker — NC (C010091)

    Licensed Clinical Social Worker — VA (0904018124)

    Licensed Clinical Social Worker — CT (14916)

    Licensed Clinical Social Worker Telehealth Registrant — SC (1516)

  • EMDRIA

Logo for Certified Constructed Awareness Clinician (CCAC) with stylized letters C, A in a circle and a triangle.

Ready to get started?

YOU’RE ALLOWED TO PUT YOURSELF FIRST.

Schedule a Consultation