About charlotte haefner, MA, LPC, LMHC
You don’t have to sort through this all on your own.
I’m a Portland-based therapist who specializes in helping individual adults heal and learn from old relationship patterns and wounds that no longer serve them. I’m a certified Narcissistic Abuse Treatment Clinician (NATC) and have expertise and experience helping people heal from the fallout of unhealthy patterns in relationships involving things like coercion and control. Alongside my work with relational trauma, I also support people who are burned out from over-performing, perfectionism, and the tendency to prioritize others’ needs at the expense of their own well-being.
what I hope you’ll hear:
Change rarely happens through insight alone.
Beneath the overwhelm, self-doubt, coping patterns, and exhaustion that bring many people to therapy, there is often a deeper self waiting to be heard, understood, and reclaimed. Therapy is not about becoming a different person. It is about understanding yourself more deeply, loosening the grip of old patterns, and building a life that feels more sustainable, connected, and true to who you are.
How I work:
At the core of my approach to therapy is a belief that it can be both supportive and challenging. It is a space where insight, honesty, and emotional safety can lead to meaningful and lasting change.
In sessions with me, we will work to understand the emotional impact of any patterns of coersion, control, or manipulation that may have occurred in a previous relationship. We will work toward rebuilding trust in your own perceptions and instincts, and gently untangle any patterns of shame, self-doubt, hypervigilance, or people-pleasing that often develop in unhealthy relationships. Together, we will focus not only on coping, but on helping you reconnect with a stronger sense of self, more clarity, stronger boundaries, and increased emotional safety.
Got ADHD? Whether diagnosed or undiagnosed, ADHD therapy with me will focus primarily on where you’re needing it most. I find it’s often a mix of understanding your ADHD and how to work with it. We may focus on breaking cycles of over-performing and self-criticism, improving emotional regulation (frustration intolerance, anyone?), and building healthier ways of navigating work life, home life, self care, goal setting and tracking achievements and building from them versus everything feeling chaotic, and time spent on how you are experiencing your relationships and ways that ADHD can impact them (and what to do about it).
Therapy with me is…
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Therapy with me is shaped around who you are, not just the problems you’re facing. Together, we create an approach that fits your emotional needs, communication style, and pace for change.
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Therapy with me is a space where you don’t have to perform, minimize, or pretend. I offer thoughtful feedback and genuine curiosity so we can work toward clarity, insight, and meaningful change together.
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I take your privacy, trust, and emotional safety seriously. I aim to create a space where you can speak openly and honestly without fear of judgment. Being deeply trauma-informed, I prioritize going at the pace of your nervous system.
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Therapy with me is not just focused on symptom relief, but on understanding the underlying patterns, experiences, and emotions shaping your life and patterns in your relationships and even your mood. My aim is to make space for insight into all the layers of who you are, and help guide you to meaningful lasting change. I do use humor often in my work. Humor is well known to be an extremely effective way to connect with someone, diffuse stress, and to get a little dose of serotonin. Sometimes therapy can be fun. A little genuine laughter goes a really long way.
specializing in:
Therapy for Anxiety and Burnout
Recovering from Unhealthy Relationships
Therapy for ADHD
My Training & Education
Licensed Professional Counselor (OR)
Licensed Mental Health Clinician (WA)
Masters in Clinical and Counseling Psychology
Certified Narcissistic Abuse Treatment Clinician
EMDR trained
IFS informed and trauma informed
National Board Certified Exceptional Needs Specialist ages 3+
19 years as a learning specialist working with students with learning disabilities including ADHD (plus over 8 years working with neuro-spicy clients as a therapist)