Lindley Cherry (she/her), LCMHC, QS, NCC

People who’ve seen some shit. Not in the abstract, not in a textbook, but in your actual life. And you’re still carrying it.

People who’ve been told their whole life that they’re too much or not enough, and nobody ever looked deeper than that.

Couples who love each other and are still having the same fight for the third year in a row, including couples of different neuro types (known or unknown), those in poly, ENM, or kink-involved relationships where the structure isn’t the problem.

Professionals in high-stress careers who are performing at a high level and quietly running on fumes. First responders, healthcare workers, therapists, teachers, anyone whose job is to take care of everyone else and have to stay quiet about it so they don’t freak everyone out around them.

Adults who suspect they might have ADHD or Autism, or who just got diagnosed and are now reexamining their entire life through a new lens.

People who’ve been in therapy before and it didn’t work. Maybe the therapist just nodded and said “that must be hard” for 45 minutes. Maybe it felt like you were doing all the work. Maybe you left every session wondering what the point was.

Queer and trans people who are trying to understand themselves or tired of educating their provider. You don’t have to explain yourself here, I’m educated. Love is love, including for yourself. My flag is rainbow too.

People carrying trauma that shows up as anxiety, depression, burnout, or a vague sense that something is wrong but they can’t name it. You can just be tired. Showing up is enough, I got the rest.

Adult ADHD and Autism Assessments
If you have been told your whole life that you are too sensitive, too scattered, too much, or not enough, and nobody ever looked deeper than that, this is where that changes.

The Cherry AADI is a structured diagnostic interview built from scratch for adults. Not borrowed from a child measure. Not a screener. Built specifically for the people the system has been missing for decades, late-identified adults, women, people of color, anyone who learned early that blending in was the safer option.

Other clinicians are trained in this method nationally. That matters to you because it means this framework has been tested and refined in ways most clinical tools never are. When you come here for an assessment, you are working with the person who developed it.

Couples, Poly/Kink Relationships, and Mixed-Neurotype Partnerships

Relationships are hard. Relationships where partners have different neurotypes are a specific kind of hard that most couples therapists are not equipped to handle.

If one or both of you are autistic, have ADHD, or are AuDHD, and especially if you are figuring that out mid-relationship, a lot of the communication patterns that feel like personal failures actually have a clinical explanation nobody gave you. “You never listen” and “you always overreact” look a lot different once you understand what is actually happening neurologically. That work is worth doing together, with someone who actually gets it.

Poly and kink relationships are also welcome here. The structure of your relationship is not the problem we are solving.

EMDR and Trauma
Trauma does not care how long ago something happened. It lives in the body, shows up in relationships, and rewires how you move through the world, sometimes in ways you have spent years explaining away as personality quirks or character flaws.

EMDR works. Not because it is magic, but because it targets the way traumatic memories are stored and processed differently than ordinary ones. I use it alongside other trauma-informed approaches because no single method fits every person or every story.

If you have been in talk therapy and feel like you are circling the same material without getting anywhere, this might be why.

Therapy for Professionals in High-Stress Careers
A lot of people come here looking successful from the outside and running on fumes underneath. They built careers by compensating, masking, over-preparing, and over-delivering. It worked, until it didn’t. If that sounds familiar, and you are starting to wonder whether there is a reason it has always felt harder than it looks for everyone else, this is a reasonable place to land.

Depression, Anxiety, Grief, and Burnout
Most people don’t call a therapist because they’ve identified a specific clinical condition. They call because something isn’t working anymore. They’re tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix. They’re anxious about everything or nothing. They lost someone or something and the world kept moving like it didn’t happen. They’re going through the motions and can’t remember the last time anything actually felt good.

If that’s where you are, this is a fine place to start. These are often the front door to deeper work, whether that’s uncovering a neurotype nobody caught, processing trauma that’s been running in the background for years, or just finally having a place to be honest about how you’re actually doing.

You don’t need a diagnosis to come here. You just need to be done pretending everything is fine.

LGBTQIA+ Affirmative Counseling
I’m queer. That’s not a footnote on my bio or a flag I hang to signal allyship. It’s my life. When I say you don’t have to explain yourself here, I mean it, because I’ve been the person sitting in a room wondering whether someone actually gets it or is just being polite.

Whether you’re coming out, already out and dealing with the fallout, questioning something you thought was settled, grieving in ways the straight world doesn’t have language for, or just exhausted from existing in a society that keeps debating whether you deserve rights, you don’t need to give me a primer. 

This also extends to gender identity, and to the specific mess of being queer AND neurodivergent, queer AND in a high-stress career, queer AND carrying trauma that’s tangled up in your identity in ways that are hard to separate. Those intersections matter and I don’t treat them as separate line items.

I will challenge you when it’s appropriate. Not to be difficult, but because you’re paying me to actually help, and nodding along while you stay stuck isn’t help.

I’m transparent about what’s going on in my head during a session. I never talk just to fill space. If I’m saying something, it’s because I mean it and I think it matters. I’ll talk through my own processing out loud because I believe you have the right to see how I’m connecting the dots. You’re not a case file. You’re sitting right there. You should know what’s happening in the room.

I swear. A lot. Not at you, just in conversation, especially if I’m fired up about something or genuinely excited about a breakthrough you just had. If that’s not your speed, I do my best to rein it in. But I want you to know who you’re sitting down with.

I don’t hand out worksheets or workbooks. I don’t have a stack of self-help books to recommend, and honestly if you ask me for one, I’m going to tell you I don’t read them. Nothing against them, it’s just what I do all day, so I want something different in my free time (enter NSFW romantasy – yep, I’m one of those). If that’s what you need from a therapist, I’ll tell you that directly and help you find someone who does it well. I’d rather be honest than pretend to be something I’m not.

I have ADHD. Sometimes I’m running behind. Sometimes I’m overstimulated. Sometimes I’m in burnout. When that happens, I’ll tell you. Not an excuse, just the truth. And we can work things out from there. I think you deserve honesty from the person who’s asking you to be honest.

I have boundaries and I’m upfront about them. I’m not on call. I [really] try to not work on my days off, so if you text or email outside of session hours, it might take me a minute to get back to you. Those boundaries aren’t because I don’t care. They exist because I do, and I know I can’t do this well if I run myself into the ground. Because I’m also [really] trying to take my own advice.

My clients joke that they want a “What Would Lindley Do” bracelet (which your girl also needs to wear, because life). I take that as the highest compliment.

I’m not going to sit across from you with a blank face while you tell me something real. There’s this thing therapists are taught, that we should stay completely neutral. No reactions. No emotion. Keep the mask on at all times. I think that’s absurd. You are telling me about your actual life. I am a human sitting in that room with you. If something hits me, you’re going to see it on my face. That’s not unprofessional. That’s being a person, and I think you deserve a person.

There’s another thing our field loves to say: “Never work harder than the client.” I cannot stand that phrase. You are paying me to help you. That is the job. If I’m coasting while you do all the heavy lifting, that’s not a clinical philosophy, it’s a problem.

I’m not perfect. I’m not fake. I’m not unreasonable. Life happens and sometimes uncontrollable things come up last minute. I’m not going to punish you for that.

I don’t pretend to know everything. If something is outside my scope or expertise, I’ll tell you directly and help you find better options. I have zero interest in wasting your time and money pretending I’m the right fit when I’m not.

I believe every good therapist has a therapist. If the person you’re trusting with your mental health won’t do their own work, that’s concerning to me. I also don’t believe everyone needs weekly therapy forever. Some people need it for a season. Some people do better biweekly. Some people need a few months of intensive work and then they’re good. I’m not going to keep you in my chair longer than you need to be here. That’s not care, that’s a business strategy, and it’s not mine.

I don’t take insurance. I know that’s a dealbreaker for some people, and I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t suck.

Here’s why I made that choice: Insurance companies get to decide how many sessions you’re allowed, what diagnoses qualify for coverage, and how long your therapist has to wrap things up. They require clinicians to assign a diagnosis, sometimes before we’ve even had a real conversation. They reimburse at rates that push therapists to see more clients in less time just to make it work. That’s not a system I’m willing to let dictate your care.

Going out-of-network means WE set the pace of your treatment based on what you actually need, not what an insurance company approves. It means I’m not rushing through sessions to hit a quota. It means your diagnosis, if there is one, reflects what’s actually going on, not what gets the claim paid.

It also means I don’t have to pack my schedule to keep the lights on. Therapists who rely on insurance reimbursement often have to carry caseloads that are way too high just to make the math work. That’s how you end up with a clinician who’s technically in the room with you but burned out, distracted, and running on autopilot. I’ve been in that system. I hated it. I left on purpose.

I know my limits. I know how many clients I can carry and still bring my full attention and skill to every session. Staying out-of-network lets me protect that. You’re not getting the version of me that’s seen eight people today and is counting down the minutes. You’re getting the version that actually has the capacity to do this well.

There’s another piece to this that matters to me: because I’m not dependent on volume to survive, I have room to offer sliding scale spots and pro bono sessions to people who need them. That wouldn’t be possible if I were running a caseload built around insurance reimbursement rates. Being out-of-network doesn’t just protect the quality of your care, it lets me make care accessible to people who otherwise couldn’t get it at all.

I know that still doesn’t make it affordable for everyone, and I’m not going to sugarcoat that. What I can do is make sure you have options.

Superbills for out-of-network reimbursement. I provide a superbill after each session that you can submit to your insurance company for partial reimbursement. Many clients get a significant portion of their session cost back this way. If you’re not sure whether your plan covers out-of-network mental health, call the number on the back of your insurance card and ask about your out-of-network behavioral health benefits.

Sliding scale. I keep a limited number of sliding scale spots available. If cost is a barrier, bring it up during your consultation. I’d rather have that conversation than lose someone who needs to be here.

Payment plans. If it’s the full amount landing at once that makes this feel out of reach, we can break it into installments instead. Same rate, spread out over time so it doesn’t hit all in one place. Mention it when we talk and we’ll set up a schedule that actually works for your budget.

Full fee details are on the Fees and Payments page.

When I was three, my father had a stroke. Not a minor one. He had to relearn ABCs, colors, how to talk. Everything.

As I got older, I became his person. Not on purpose, I was a kid, I didn’t know what I was doing. But he told me later that I was the only one who would actually sit and listen to him. I wouldn’t interrupt. I wouldn’t try to finish his sentences. I wouldn’t get frustrated and move on because it was taking too long for him to get his thoughts out. We’d sit and talk for hours, long enough that my mom would come in and remind me it was a school night. I didn’t care. My dad needed to talk, and I wanted to hear him.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of all of this. Patience. Listening. Letting somebody be a whole person in front of you without rushing them through it.

That pattern just kept showing up. In school, I was never part of one group. I had friends everywhere, not a lot of them, but real ones. I was always the one people came to when something was going on. I didn’t audition for that role. It just kept finding me.

I thought nursing was the path. Flunked out of that program impressively fast. Had no backup plan. Tried a bunch of things that didn’t stick. Then I stumbled into a course on substance use and addiction and something lit up. That pulled me into rehabilitation studies, which I fell in love with, which led to a master’s in clinical counseling. I haven’t looked back.

The whole time I was in school, I was working. Sometimes as a babysitter, most of the time as a waitress and bartender. Bartending was like counseling. People sitting across from you telling you real things about their lives. I was good at that part. The connection part. The human part. That part always felt good, even when the conversations were heavy.

After my master’s, I went into community mental health and addiction work. I hated it. Not the people, the system. It’s built to put barriers between the people who need help and the help itself, and burn out the people trying to do the helping in the process. That was the only time in my career I thought maybe I was wrong about all of this. Maybe this wasn’t for me.

I went back for a PhD, thinking maybe I’d teach. Turns out academia has its own flavor of bureaucratic bullshit (duh, Lindley), and I was a little too willing to say so out loud. That didn’t always land well.

Eventually I got to the point where I stopped screaming about what needed fixing and just started building that shit myself. The assessment tools out there weren’t appropriate for the adults I work with, so I built my own. I became a trainer and supervisor for other therapists. I built my own place of employment. I got better at recognizing the fucking around (“that’s just how it is”) and implementing the finding out (“Yeahhh, I’m gonna do something different though”).

I also learned to say something that took me a long time to be comfortable with: I am really good at my job. And I’m not going to downplay that anymore. I love this work. I’m lucky as hell that this is how it all turned out.