Meet the Founder

Tireeka Watson

LCSW, ASAM-C

At Anchored in Essence, I work with people who seem like they’ve got it all together, but quietly carry stress, disconnection, or emotional overload. I specialize in supporting high-functioning individuals, couples, and caregivers who are ready to stop living in survival mode and start reconnecting with their full selves.

As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker serving Oregon, I’m committed to creating a space that’s trauma-informed, culturally affirming, and emotionally grounded. I believe therapy should feel like a deep exhale—not another place you have to perform.

Who I Work With

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of supporting individuals, families, and communities across a wide range of identities, professions, and life experiences. My clients often include:

  • High-achieving professionals feeling burnt out or emotionally disconnected

  • Women navigating motherhood, identity shifts, or emotional labor

  • Men who are successful on paper but unfulfilled on the inside

  • Individuals rebuilding after breakups, loss, or life transitions

  • Couples struggling with communication, distance, or emotional avoidance

  • Stay-at-home mothers craving space, clarity, and selfhood

  • Justice-involved individuals reintegrating into community and stability

  • Clients trying to loosen their grip on control and live more freely

  • Families working to restore trust and connection

  • First responders, including firefighters, law enforcement, and paramedics

  • Clients in search of culturally responsive, affirming care

I've also collaborated with:

  • Recording artists building social service platforms for underserved families

  • California state legislators on mental health advocacy for the African Diaspora

  • BIPOC-led organizations addressing mental wellness in Black communities

  • Unite Oregon, leading workshops on teen mental health

  • Correctional reentry programs, offering ethical discharge planning for system-involved individuals

  • Community events exploring Black hair, identity, and mental health

These experiences have shaped my ability to hold space for leaders, healers, helpers, and everyday people who are finally ready to be poured into.

My Approach to Therapy

At Anchored in Essence, therapy is not just a session—it’s a relationship. A collaboration. A soft but honest space to explore who you are beneath the pressure, the coping, and the masks.

My approach blends clinical depth with real-life strategy using tools like:

  • CBT to help shift self-defeating narratives

  • Solution-Focused Therapy to gain momentum and clarity

  • Mindfulness and somatic work to regulate your nervous system and reconnect with your body

  • DBT and TF-CBT for emotion regulation and trauma healing

  • Real-talk reflection, because sometimes you just need to be seen and heard—without judgment

  • Optional nature-based therapy for clients who feel most grounded outdoors

Whether we’re sitting in a telehealth session or walking side-by-side through a Portland park, our goal is the same—helping you return to yourself.

What Anchored in Essence Stands For

This practice was born from a deep calling: to help people stop performing strength and start practicing wholeness. My clients often lead, serve, and give endlessly—but here, they are allowed to receive.

Cultural Sensitivity
Your identity, background, and lived experience are central to your care. This space honors all of who you are, including the parts the world often overlooks. Together, we unpack generational patterns and dismantle what’s no longer yours to carry.

Empowerment
You don’t have to be the strong one here. Whether you’re the fixer, the perfectionist, or the one who always holds it down for others, therapy is where you finally get to soften, explore, and rebuild trust in your own voice.

Healing and Growth
You won’t leave sessions feeling heavier. You’ll feel clearer, lighter, and more anchored in who you’re becoming. We don’t rush. We root.

Emotional Repatterning
If you’ve been stuck in cycles of overthinking, shutdown, people-pleasing, or emotional reactivity, we work to gently shift those patterns. Through nervous system regulation and personalized strategy, we build a new emotional rhythm—one that actually supports the life you want.

Groundedness
This is your space to land. To feel your feet on the ground. To live in your body again. Whether through breathwork, reflection, or nature, we reconnect to what’s real.

Clarity
You may be navigating burnout, grief, trauma, or just a nagging sense that something’s off. You don’t have to untangle it all alone. Together, we zoom out, get honest, and clear the path ahead.

Reconnection
With your partner. With your purpose. With your voice. And most importantly, with yourself—the version of you that existed before survival mode became the default.

Let’s Work Together

At Anchored in Essence, you are not just a client. You are a whole human, worthy of personalized support and meaningful change. Whether we work together virtually across Oregon or meet in nature in the Portland area, this is your space to heal, grow, and come home to yourself.

Let’s begin the journey back to you—anchored in strength, clarity, and emotional wellness.

Tireeka Watson, LCSW
Founder of Anchored in Essence
anchoredinessence.com