Jodie Hnatkovich, MS, LPC, PMH-C, ASDCS

Why do you feel especially drawn to the communities, identities or experiences you support?

My life has 100% paved the path for the work that I do. I have been a trauma and loss therapist for 18 years. For the first four years, I worked with young people. After losing our first daughter, I shifted to working with parents navigating loss and trauma.

The goal was to help others feel less alone. It is devastating when you know your story is too much for the “helpers” to hold. I know the feeling of intense loss and trauma in your bones, and I can hold that space for another person and say, “This is bullshit, and we will figure this out together.”

What might someone be carrying when they first come to you, even if they do not yet have the words for it?

People often come to me feeling really lost, alone or helpless. Explaining their inner experience is exhausting, and they are tired of having to explain and qualify why they feel the way they do.

Over the last six years, I have taken a deep dive into neurodivergence, especially ADHD and autism in women and girls. I get what it feels like to explain yourself over and over when you do not fully understand it yourself.

My hope is that I can first help people feel seen and understood. We can sit with the pain of being misunderstood or dismissed, or of having your words thrown back at you as weapons when that was never your intention.

I want people to be able to live their most authentic lives without the constant fear of f*ing something up. Because, guess what? We all f* up sometimes.

If a client described you after their first few sessions, what would you hope they would say?

Clients often describe me as direct and say they can read my face. I am definitely not a blank-slate therapist, mostly because I do not know how to tell my face to stop showing everything. It is not uncommon for a client to ask, “What does that face mean?” during a session.

I fidget a lot and have at least two emotional support beverages with me at all times. I want you to feel comfortable moving, sitting, lying down or squirming as your body needs to feel safe in the space.

After the first session, I hope clients feel they know what to expect, or at least that they can trust where I am going and tell me when they do not want to try something. I try to bring play into sessions when possible.

When doing heavy grief or trauma work, it is common to be sobbing one second and laughing hysterically the next.

How do you help someone move away from asking, “What is wrong with me?” and toward understanding what they have adapted to or survived?

I work from a liberation lens, which means acknowledging the systems we live within, including capitalism, ableism and racism.

I hope we can pull apart ideas that keep us stuck or small by asking, “Who put this rule here, and is it serving me?” Some rules we cannot simply ignore. We still need money to live in this society. But expectations about how you should show up on a Zoom call, how you do the dishes or how often you need to leave the house might not be serving you anymore.

Sometimes it is about giving yourself permission to be silly and quirky without fear of judgment. I have recently been using the phrase “weirding people in” rather than “weirding people out.”