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. The focus of my practice is supporting adult individuals with anxiety and OCD, grief and loss, questions of meaning and purpose, and related concerns.

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 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.

Before becoming a therapist I completed a Master’s degree in English Studies from Western Washington University. I still usually have a nightstand more full of fiction than of professional journals or training manuals. I feel so lucky to have become someone whose job is to listen closely and deeply to the stories of others, to be witness to their lives, and I am deeply grateful if through this witnessing I am of some help.