Meet Emily Elkins: Empowering You to Be Fully Yoursel
Emily Elkins, LPC Associate has always been curious about people.
Why can two people grow up in the same family and turn out so completely different? Why can something roll right off one person's shoulders while another person thinks about it for three days? Why are we often so much more compassionate toward everyone else than we are toward ourselves?
Her curiosity started young. Emily remembers her dad pointing out how different she and her siblings were, despite being raised under the same roof. Even as kids, each of them seemed to arrive with their own personalities, quirks, and ways of seeing the world.
She found that fascinating.
That curiosity followed her throughout her life. She fell in love with poetry and philosophy as a teen, and in college she studied the psychology of personality and developmental theory. She became interested in learning about pretty much anything that might help explain why people think, feel, and behave the way they do.
It turns out that curiosity is also a pretty good foundation for being a therapist.
When Emily sits across from a client, that same curiosity is at the center of her work. She’s not looking for the quickest way to fit you into something she already understands. She wants to know your particular story: the relationships that shaped you, the experiences you’ve had, the beliefs you’ve picked up along the way, the ways you’ve learned to protect yourself, and the parts of yourself you’re still figuring out.
And she genuinely wants to know all of it.
When the Whisper About What You Really Want Gets Harder to Ignore
Therapy wasn’t Emily’s first career.
She studied economics at Wake Forest University and spent several years working in the energy industry. It was practical, stable, and successful. It was the path she thought she was supposed to want (sound familiar?).
Meanwhile psychology remained her deepest passion and the thing she couldn't stop thinking about.
"There was always a whisper in my heart that I wanted to pursue work in the mental health field, but I shoved that voice down under the guise that there was no future for me in this profession, and the only way to have a nice living was to work in corporate."
Maybe you know something about that whisper.
Maybe you can relate to looking around at your life and noticing that you’re often doing the sensible thing while another part of you keeps quietly asking for something else. For you, it might not necessarily be a different career. It could be a different feeling in your relationships, a boundary you’ve been afraid to talk about or ask for, a version of success that doesn’t drain you, or simply the sense that the life you've gotten very good at managing doesn't feel quite like yours anymore.
The Impact of Someone in Your Corner
Emily eventually had another experience that changed the direction of her own life. She became the client and experienced firsthand what it was like to sit on the couch with someone who helped her make changes that brought her closer to the life she actually wanted to be living. Meditation was another way she tapped into listening to herself and reconnecting, and eventually that little whisper inside wasn’t so little anymore.
She found herself with one of those impossible-to-argue-with realizations: "You know what, I die at the end of this life. I may as well do what I love."
So Emily made that somewhat terrifying leap to leave corporate life and choose herself, following the values that had been quietly pulling at her all along: authenticity, curiosity, meaningful connection, and doing work that felt genuinely purposeful to her.
Today, Emily will tell you she's the happiest she's ever been.
She brings the firsthand understanding of what it can be like to sit on the other side of the room, slowly untangling what you've learned to believe about your life from what actually feels true to you. She knows there can be fear, uncertainty, old patterns, and plenty of back-and-forth along the way, and that sometimes having someone beside you while you figure it out is part of what makes change possible.
A Therapist for the People Who Are Used to Holding It Together
Emily feels especially connected to the overachievers, rescuers, and fixers of the world. The people who make an effort, care deeply, and somehow always seem to know what everybody else needs.
Emily works with adolescents, teens, and adults navigating anxiety, trauma, self-esteem, relationships, identity, and the complicated process of figuring out who they are and what they actually want.
She has experience supporting clients healing from domestic violence and narcissistic abuse, including people whose empathy and willingness to understand others may have sometimes come at their own expense. If you've spent a long time being understanding of everyone else's perspective, Emily wants to offer you more room for yours.
Some clients come in knowing exactly what they want to work on. Others just know something feels off. Some may have spent years being hard on themselves or stuck in patterns they understand intellectually but can’t seem to change.
Emily doesn’t see any of that as a personal failing. She sees it as something worth getting curious about.
Learning to Be on Your Own Side
At the center of her therapeutic approaches, Emily sees advocating for yourself as a skill you can learn and strengthen over time. This can look like speaking up for yourself, recognizing what you truly need, trusting your experience, and setting boundaries without immediately talking yourself out of them.
You may hear those things and feel like you’re far from being able to put yourself first, but self-advocacy doesn’t have to be something you were simply born knowing how to do. These are skills you can learn, and Emily actually adores that fact.
That interest in self-advocacy naturally follows her into another part of life she could happily talk about for hours: relationships and dating. Emily has a particular soft spot for young women trying to date in the 21st century and admits that dating, attraction, and relational science are something of a secret passion.
"In another life I'd be a dating coach."
Because dating has a way of bringing so much of this to the surface. What do I actually want? Am I asking for too much? Should I give this another chance? Why am I explaining away something that didn't feel good to me? How much of myself am I changing to keep a connection?
Sometimes self-advocacy isn't one enormous declaration. It's getting better at hearing your own answer before immediately making room for everyone else's.
You Can Bring the Messy Parts, Too
There's a version of therapy where you imagine yourself sitting across from someone and carefully deciding how much of the real story you're going to tell. Maybe you’ll leave that one thought out, soften what happened, or explain yourself a little more so your therapist doesn’t think of you in a certain light. Maybe you wait a few sessions before revealing the thing you’ve convinced yourself is going to make them look at you differently, or find yourself holding back on certain topics..
As a therapist, Emily leads with the fact that she’s also an imperfect human who can be messy and doesn’t always have everything figured out. That openness can give clients permission to be more fully themselves in a way they may not feel able to be anywhere else.
Authenticity is a core value for her, and she’s proud that her friends describe her as one of the least judgmental people they know. A lot of people can try to be objective or remain neutral in the therapy room, but with Emily you can feel that she genuinely wants to know every part of you and will never make you regret sharing something that felt raw or vulnerable.
"You could tell me some craaaaazy shit and I would be like, ‘Oh well yeah naturally. I can see how you got there,’ and I actually mean it!"
That doesn't mean never looking honestly at something you want to change or making room for the growth you want. It means understanding that shame and understanding aren't the same thing. Even the harsh inner critic gets some curiosity in Emily's office.
Instead of immediately trying to silence or fight every difficult part of yourself, you can start wondering what that part has been trying to accomplish. Sometimes the strategies we dislike most in ourselves began, in one way or another, as attempts to protect our minds, bodies, or hearts. Understanding that doesn't mean you have to stay exactly where you are, either. Emily’s hope is that it may simply give you a kinder place to begin changing from.
Stepping out of her office can feel like a huge exhale of relief after finally saying what you needed to say, along with a little more security in knowing you don’t have to figure out every next step entirely by yourself.
Some Curiosity Never Really Goes Away
Chasing her passion for people and healing has only deepened Emily’s desire to keep learning about what makes each person unique. She’ll tell you herself that she’s a huge nerd about therapeutic modalities and genuinely loves learning about different ways to be of service to anyone she gets to work with.
"I get to research and read for WORK! How cool is that?"
It’s funny how life can come full circle. The young girl who wanted to understand why people could grow up under the same roof and become completely different humans now has a career where continuing to dive into the human experience and hear new perspectives is quite literally part of the job.
That’s what gives Emily even more room to bring more of herself into the therapy space. Her love for the way the mind and body connect comes out in her work as a registered yoga teacher and excitement about working with adolescents in yoga groups where sharing and authenticity can go even further.
It makes sense that she’s hosting groups dedicated to middle and high school girls here for our community, blending the things that light her up most.
A Look Outside the Therapy Room
A love for watching things grow goes far beyond the therapy space for Emily. She’s been turning a battle with the Houston summer heat into an opportunity to work on some gardening. Bell peppers, jalapeños, basil, and tomatoes—Emily’s been protecting her seedlings and getting a little farm-to-table action
You can find her wandering around Buchanan’s identifying different varieties of native plants and pollinators, and maybe even naming plants in people’s yards while walking her dogs.
"I know this is dorky but it is SO much fun!"
And because Emily is still very much the extrovert who would rather have a real conversation than make small talk, she loves bringing people together too. A good dinner party in her world includes a meal made from scratch, fresh flowers, a signature cocktail, friends who may not have known each other before, and, conveniently, the motivator she sometimes needs to deep clean her house.
There's something nice about getting to know these pieces of the person who might eventually know some incredibly vulnerable pieces of you. Emily brings that same curiosity, humor, love of learning, and her own humanness into her work as a therapist.
Something to Take With You
One simple phrase that sums up Emily’s approach to supporting you through whatever you’re processing or trying to grow through is: ‘Take what you need, leave all the rest.’
In the modern world of constant input and answers to even the most complex issues generated in seconds, maybe that’s something we can all remember. Not every piece of advice has to be for you, and not every expectation deserves a place in your life today. Not every relationship needs to be understood from every possible angle before you're allowed to listen to yourself, and you don't have to turn every part of who you are into something that needs fixing.
You might relate to being the fixer everyone else relies on, struggling to be gentle with yourself, or knowing you want something new but wondering if you “should” be having these thoughts. Something Emily wants you to know is that it’s all welcome here. She describes part of the privilege of sitting across from you as getting to know the whole universe that exists within you—the history, contradictions, heartbreaks, strengths, strange thoughts, inner critics, hopes, and all.
You can jump on a call with Emily to get to know more about her, and see if working together might feel like a good fit here.