Shelly Johnson-Choong, MCS

​​​Shelly assists clients who are facing the difficulties of perfectionism, grief, loss, and other life transitions. She also works with clients who have suffered reproductive trauma, including infertility, miscarriage, and stillborn deaths.

Shelly also works with clients who have suffered emotional or covert incest and/ or parentification. These dysfunctional child/parent relationships do not include sexual abuse, but instead focus on a role reversal, where the child becomes the parent to fulfil a parental need.

Childhood experiences include having a parent:

• rely on you for advice and support regarding adult matters.
• confiding in you and expecting you to keep their secrets
• consistently putting their needs above yours and often expecting you to do the same.
• that required you to be their emotional caretaker.

As adults, children who have experienced these parent/child relationships often struggle with setting appropriate boundaries, people-pleasing, distrust, perfectionism, and anxiety. Shelly specializes in working with this population.

Shelly believes in a strong and compassionate partnership between client and therapist to help create safety for clients as they heal at their own pace. She uses a psychodynamic approach, along with EFT, mindfulness, narrative therapy, and other tools to help her clients reach their own chosen goals. Shelly earned her Bachelor of Arts in Social Work at University of Washington Tacoma and her Master’s in Social Work at Boston University. She has worked in both private practice and palliative care and hospice.

You are ready for change!

Call or text me at (253) 468-7899 or complete the contact form below, and we will schedule your free 20-minute phone consultation.