Trauma therapy for caregivers, change-makers, and the quietly radical.
Raise your hand if you feel like we were never meant to live like this.
These past few years have been a test for everyone, but especially for those trying to create a more just world while holding families, classrooms, clients, and communities together.
If you’re in a helping, healing, or caregiving role, you’re used to being someone who supports others and who can usually find a solution or some words of wisdom, and you find much of your worth and value in serving and being selfless and resourceful.
But these days, the usual scrappiness isn’t working, and you find yourself swinging between “Hold my beer,” and “Nobody talk to me for the next week.”
One night you’re googling “how to move to Europe,” the next you’re organizing mutual aid and calling your reps, and the next you’re unable to move from your couch.
You’re running mental spreadsheets of every possible future, wondering why other people don’t seem to care as much, and talking yourself out of having any needs.
And that’s why you feel frozen.
Or like you can’t stop moving.
Or pissed off.
Or burnt to a crisp.
That’s why you’re canceling plans with people you love and then feeling guilty for disconnecting.
That’s why you can’t stop looking for what will fix it, even though you’re pretty sure the answers aren’t on Instagram.
That’s why you’re exhausted from caring so much and feeling like it will never be enough.
This isn’t a personal failing. It’s a cultural crisis.
Even in so-called “normal” times, capitalism and supremacy culture keep us unwell. They disconnect us from our bodies, our histories, our communities, and our sense of safety. They take what should be human rights—rest, care, connection—and turn them into privileges you have to earn. And when we inevitably fall short, we’re told to fix ourselves with better routines, more productivity, or a mindfulness app.
Here’s the truth: you are not the problem.
You are a person responding (brilliantly!) to a system that was never built with you in mind.
Burnout, anxiety, rage, grief, numbness, shame, and overwhelm aren’t symptoms of personal failure. They’re signals. And when we slow down enough to listen, they point toward what needs tending- not just inside you, but all around you.
My clients are folks who have been conditioned (in their families, their careers, or their traumas) to be responsible, functional, accommodating fixers as a way of having value and staying in control. They are parents, therapists, teachers, nurses, clergy, birth workers, activists, and creatives.
They are drowning (and telling themselves it’s just a little damp).
And that’s where I come in.
Hi, I’m Allison Staiger, LCSW, PMH-C (she/her/hers).
I’m a licensed clinical social worker in Chicago, with over 15 years of experience supporting people in caregiving, healing, and helping roles.
I work with folks navigating complex trauma that often feels ordinary, burnout, moral injury, identity shifts, parenting, grief, loss, and the impossible task of showing up for others while trying to stay intact yourself.
In our work together, I bring a trauma-informed, politicized, and relational lens. My approach integrates EMDR, parts work, somatics, and attachment theory. It’s not one-size-fits-all- it’s grounded, collaborative, and built to move at the pace of your nervous system.
We get curious together about how you’ve learned to navigate the world. We name what’s really happening. We let humor into the room. We build the kind of therapy relationship that can hold your whole truth, not just the polished or selfless parts.
In my practice, we make space for the messy, tender, contradictory truth of being a human in a culture that demands you numb out to survive.
We build your capacity to feel, to rest, to resist, to question, and to reimagine.
This is not therapy that asks you to cope your way back into unsustainable conditions.
It’s therapy that helps you recognize what’s not yours to carry, and decide what kind of life you want to build instead.
Let’s work together
Ready to have a consultation call or get started? Fill out this form and I will get back to you within one business day.