Her approach is somatic and contemplative, integrating somatic psychology, mindfulness, attachment repair and parts-oriented work, informed by decades of Samatha-Vipassana meditation practice and teaching and by her own experience of a high-control environment.
Anne currently sees clients online across Washington, and like every therapist in our collective, offers a free consultation to new clients.
Mental Health Counselor Associate (LMHCA), Washington State, credential MHCA.MC.70094664. Verifiable through the Washington State Department of Health provider credential search.
As an associate, Anne practices under the clinical supervision of a Washington State approved supervisor while she completes the requirements for full licensure.
Master of Arts (MA)
Energy healing, three levels of certification
Meditation Teacher and Trainer, Conscious Transformation
Energy healing, three levels of certification
Meditation Teacher and Trainer, Conscious Transformation
Technology of Participation (ToP) Facilitator, Institute of Cultural Affairs
Complexity theory, Harvest Moon Consultants
Anne Tillery is a trauma therapist, somatic practitioner, mindfulness teacher, and longtime social-impact leader whose work brings together trauma psychology, contemplative practice, consciousness-based approaches, and more than three decades of humanitarian and social-justice involvement. Her therapeutic work is grounded in an understanding that trauma is not simply a collection of painful memories or distorted thoughts. Traumatic experience can become organized through the nervous system, bodily responses, attachment patterns, dissociation, identity, relationships, and the ways a person experiences their own consciousness.
Before concentrating more deeply on trauma counseling, Anne spent decades working at the intersection of social justice, humanitarian service, philanthropy, public health, Indigenous advocacy, environmental work, and organizational change. In that work she has partnered with foundations, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, Indigenous communities, healthcare initiatives, and social-change organizations. Her work has included organizations addressing poverty, human services, health inequities, environmental protection, education, philanthropy, and community empowerment. She has also helped develop resilience and self-compassion work for professionals and organizations engaged in global poverty alleviation.
Anne also brings a background in curriculum and program development and in designing classes and convenings, and she especially enjoys group work and group training.
This larger social-justice background strongly influences the way Anne approaches psychotherapy. Trauma does not develop in isolation. It occurs within relationships, families, religious institutions, communities, cultural systems, and structures of power. Survivors of sexual exploitation, trafficking, religious abuse, and coercive environments frequently carry not only psychological injuries but also histories in which their voices, boundaries, bodies, or perceptions were repeatedly disregarded. Anne's approach therefore emphasizes dignity, autonomy, relational safety, and restoring the individual's ability to recognize and trust their own internal experience.
Anne specializes in working with religious trauma, sexual abuse, complex trauma, attachment trauma, dissociation, coercive control, and survivors of sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. She has extensive experience supporting people whose histories of sexual trauma have contributed to dissociative responses, fragmentation of experience, difficulties with bodily awareness, shame, disrupted attachment, and problems developing a stable sense of safety and self.
Sexual trauma can profoundly alter a person's relationship with their body, sexuality, emotions, boundaries, trust, and personal agency. Anne's work emphasizes helping clients gradually develop the capacity to remain present with internal experience without becoming overwhelmed, disconnected, or forced back into the survival strategies that were once necessary for protection.
Anne brings a particularly personal understanding to her work with religious trauma, spiritual abuse, and high-control groups. She has herself been involved for a period of her life in a high-control Western psychological community that exhibited cult-like dynamics. That experience gave her direct insight into coercive influence, the idealization of authority figures, psychological manipulation, spiritualization of suffering, group dependency, and the difficulty of distinguishing one's authentic internal experience from beliefs and interpretations imposed by an external authority.
Her experience also taught her that cultic power is not limited to religion. Systems of coercive control can develop around spiritual teachers, psychological theories, therapeutic communities, charismatic clinicians, self-development movements, or virtually any structure in which authority becomes insulated from questioning and individuals are encouraged to distrust their own perceptions. Anne understands from personal experience how even Western psychology, when organized around unquestionable authority and dependency, can reproduce dynamics commonly associated with religious cults. This understanding has become especially valuable in her work with people recovering from environments where psychological or spiritual language was used to override boundaries, reinterpret distress as personal failure, or undermine confidence in one's own experience.
Anne specializes in religious trauma and spiritual abuse, sexual trauma including the aftermath of sexual exploitation and trafficking, complex and attachment trauma, dissociation, and coercive control. Her approach is somatic and contemplative, integrating body-based psychology, mindfulness, attachment repair and parts-oriented work, with particular attention to helping people stay present with their own experience without becoming overwhelmed or disconnected.
Yes. Anne has extensive experience with survivors of sexual exploitation and sex trafficking, and with the dissociation, shame, disrupted attachment and difficulty feeling safe in the body that often follow. Her work emphasizes dignity, autonomy and restoring a person's ability to recognize and trust their own internal experience, at a pace the survivor sets.
Yes. Anne was involved for a period of her life in a high-control psychological community with cult-like dynamics, which gave her direct insight into coercive influence, the idealization of authority, and the difficulty of separating your own experience from beliefs imposed from outside. She also understands from that experience that coercive control is not limited to religion, and can develop around spiritual teachers, therapeutic communities and self-development movements as well.
Anne is a longtime practitioner and teacher of Samatha-Vipassana meditation, and mindfulness and somatic embodiment inform her work. Nothing is required: her background also gives her a clear view of how contemplative or psychological systems can be misused to make people distrust themselves, and she is careful that any practice serves your autonomy rather than replacing it.
Yes. Anne works with individuals and with couples, including couples where religious, complex or relational trauma is affecting the relationship.
Anne currently sees clients online across Washington. She offers weekly sessions and therapy intensives, and a free consultation is the place to talk through which would suit you.
Start with a free consultation through Seattle Trauma Counseling. Reach out through our contact page and Anne will call you to arrange a time. Availability varies through the year, so reaching out is the fastest way to learn her current openings. If her schedule is full, we will tell you honestly and help you find the right fit within our team, whether that is Anne when space opens or another therapist matched to your needs.