Welcome.

My name is Chanel Brown, but I prefer to go by Nell. I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Approved Supervisor in Washington State, practicing via telehealth from Vancouver, Washington. I work with adult individuals in therapy, provide clinical supervision for associates developing their practices, and am available for professional consultation, trainings, and group presentations on OCD, eating disorders, and related topics.

My approach to therapy has shifted over time, and remains an ever-evolving process. I find value in thinking carefully about how early relational experiences shape present patterns, and in attending to what happens between us in the room. But the center of my practice has moved toward frameworks that feel more consonant with how I actually work: person-centered, humanistic, and trauma-informed. I am interested less in interpreting what clients bring than in creating the conditions in which they can do that work themselves.

What drew me to this work, and what has kept me in it, is a longstanding interest in language, narrative, and meaning-making. Before training as a counselor I completed a Master's degree in English, and that background shapes how I listen, how I attend to the stories people tell about themselves and their lives, and what I notice when the story seems to be missing something or when someone is grappling with language that does not quite fit their experience. I find meaning in being present to that process, in learning from the people I work with, and in supporting them toward greater self-understanding, self-acceptance, and a life that feels more like their own.

I earned my Master's in Counseling from Antioch University in Seattle and trained in both community mental health and private practice settings. Over the past several years I have developed a practice focused on depth and process, oriented less toward symptom management as an end in itself and more toward understanding the context in which symptoms make sense.

Much of that work has been with clients experiencing neurodivergence, including Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I have especially enjoyed helping individuals who experience ego-dystonic, intrusive and unwanted thoughts and anxious rumination find more clarity, self-trust, and a different relationship with their own internal experience. I am trained and experienced in offering evidence-based approaches including Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and Inference-based CBT (I-CBT), and I have found, over time, that I work best with clients who are interested in understanding how OCD and neurodivergence have shaped their sense of self and their relationships, in developing a different relationship with uncertainty and ambiguity, and in doing that work within a therapeutic relationship rather than primarily through technique. I also work with a wide range of concerns beyond OCD, including anxiety, depression, grief and loss (including pet loss), life transitions, questions of identity and meaning, and the often painful experience of being childless or childfree (whether by choice or circumstance) in a culture that often centers or prioritizes parenthood.

I am committed to affirming, identity-conscious care. I welcome LGBTQ+, queer, and gender-queer clients, neurodivergent individuals, those who have experienced complex or chronic trauma, and whose lives and family structure may be considered “non-traditional” or “non-normative.” I am aware that standard therapeutic frameworks do not always account for the complexity of marginalized identities, and I try to work in ways that are attuned to the full context of who you are, not just the concern that brought you to therapy. I also bring some lived experience to this work. I have lived experience with OCD and have lately come to identifying as neurodivergent. I also have experience navigating the healthcare system as someone with a chronic medical condition, and those experiences have deepened my understanding of what it means to sit with uncertainty, to have a body and mind that do not always cooperate, and to seek care in oppressive systems.

I also supervise Licensed Mental Health Counselor Associates, because I believe that mentoring early career clinicians matters both for their development and for the broader goal of expanding access to quality care. Supervision, like therapy, is a relational process, and I find it meaningful to support associates in finding their own authentic way of working.

I work exclusively via telehealth and see adult individuals only. If you would like to learn more, please feel free to reach out.