Welcome! I’m Tierney Hodge, MEd, MA, Marriage & Family Therapist Associate.

I am a mental health therapist passionate about supporting your discovery of inner resilience and deep confidence, helping you find ways to overcome stuck points, and assisting your creation of a life in which you thrive.

I specialize in meeting adolescents, adults, couples, and families where they are and developing a safe and caring relationship where healing and transformation can occur.

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I’m so glad you’re here.

Seeking therapeutic support is an act of courage, and you’ve already taken the most difficult step to get here. If you feel alone in your struggles, you may find relief by inviting someone to walk beside you and help carry some weight along the way.

Whether or not today is the day you choose to reach out, I hope you feel proud of the steps you’ve taken thus far to follow your curiosity and investigate what counseling could look like for you.

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What is Upward Spiral Counseling?

Upward Spiral Counseling supports your journey of continual growth and learning along a path of personal discovery.

I believe each of us is intrinsically motivated to fulfill an innate desire of self-actualization. I trust that everyone has a core desire to do good, learn from their mistakes, and grow through life’s challenges to be a stronger and wiser version of themselves.

As humans moving through a lifelong process of development, I envision each of our lives as a spiral of experiences informed by our increasingly advanced needs, goals, and dreams. As we cycle up our unique life spiral, we learn how to support ourselves through each lesson before transitioning to the next.

Sometimes we have to revisit a lesson several times before we can move on. Sometimes we meet obstacles along the way that slow us down.

Sometimes we get stuck.

Upward Spiral Counseling supports you to access your knowing of the way to get unstuck and continue growing along your path.

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What I Believe.

I believe that connection is a healing force, and that tending to our relationships with ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, and the earth helps us live happier and healthier lives.

I believe our most difficult struggles are our greatest opportunities for wisdom and growth. I don’t believe everything happens for a reason, but I do believe we can find meaning in the things that happen.

I believe each person, family, and relationship already possesses the necessary resources for change.

I believe life shouldn’t be taken too seriously and that humor is a tool for healing.

“I want you to get excited about who you are, what you are, what you have, and what can still be for you. I want to inspire you to see that you can go far beyond where you are right now.”

Virginia Satir

Hello! My name is Tierney and I’m a therapist based in Portland, Oregon. I love to read, spend time in nature, dance, and make music. Here are a few things I believe in:

• Pursuing joy and happiness in everyday life, amidst stress, chaos, uncertainty, and the mundane.

• Healing through connection to ourselves, our relationships, our communities, and nature.

• Integrating Eastern perspectives on mindfulness and spirituality with Western views of the mind and brain.

• Trusting that everyone has the ability and wisdom needed to heal through immense hardship when supported to access their inherent resilience and affirm their self-worth.

The Paths to Enlightenment are as innumerable as those who seek it. This too is The Path. This too is it.

Buddhist Proverb

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My Story

I began my journey as a healer after struggling through my own mental health challenges as a teen and young adult, finally reaching out for help when things couldn’t have gotten much worse. The therapists I worked with affirmed, supported, and guided me through the difficult process of looking at all of my parts and beginning my journey of learning to accept myself and my shadow. In their own wonderful ways, each of these therapists helped me recognize the weight of sociocultural and intergenerational trauma passed down to me, and ushered me through healing a lifetime of perfectionism, self-criticism and self-rejection, codependency and relational insecurity, anxiety and depression, and the assortment of unhelpful coping methods I had collected along the way.

More than a decade later, I achieved my dream of becoming a therapist, partly in homage to the ones that walked beside me during my darkest times, wholly in honor of the lonely little girl, the insecure teenager, and the conflicted young woman within me who needed me to lay down my arms, look, listen, and learn to love. I became the adult I had always needed.

I began exploring ways to develop and share the lessons from my own experiences in therapy with others. I pursued an incredible adventure as a Wilderness Therapy Field Guide in the Nantahala National Forest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There, on the traditional land of the Cherokee Nation, I discovered my deep love for nature, confirmed my calling as a healer, and understood through lived experience that we are inextricably linked to a network of systems that impacts our worldview, beliefs, identity, relations, and experiences.

Two years, one cross-country move, a sunset-worshipping sailboat, and a hard-earned transition into adulthood later, I used my therapeutic gifts to support adolescents and their families through the challenging transition home from in-patient treatment. Simultaneously, I received my Master’s Degree in Marriage, Couple, and Family Therapy at Lewis & Clark College.

I am a Marriage & Family Therapist Associate (R7822) registered with the Oregon Board and am working under experienced supervision toward full licensure. I am trained in EMDR Level 1 & 2 and am qualified to use EMDR techniques to process single event and complex traumas. I am an Eagala Certified Equine Therapist and use an experiential model to support growth and learning about yourself and others by engaging with horses while exploring thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, and patterns. I am trained in Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy Level 1 (PACT) and integrate attachment theory, developmental neuroscience, and arousal regulation to support couples to improve communication and interaction, get unstuck from unhelpful patterns, and find greater relational fulfillment.

I have a private therapy practice based in NE Portland, Oregon and offer office and telehealth visits to help adolescents and adults heal low self-esteem, self-criticism, trauma, grief, depression, and anxiety, and guide couples and families to get unstuck from unhelpful patterns of communication, develop healthy boundaries, and find greater relational fulfillment. I provide a trauma-informed, evidence-based, social justice oriented, and collaborative approach to therapy.

I offer Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) in Newberg, Oregon, using the Eagala Model framework to create a unique space for an emotionally safe, hands-on experience. With real-time feedback, clients are able to reach issues where traditional talk-based therapies fall short. EAP incorporates horses to effectively address client goals, helping with issues such as addiction, domestic abuse, behavioral disorders, eating disorders, depression, anxiety and trauma.

“It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.”

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

As a trusted advisor to your growth and healing, I will:

• Listen to you, human to human

• Trust and help cultivate your own knowing of what’s best for you

• Offer trauma-informed, collaborative, and evidence-based treatment that gets to the root of the problem

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My Approach

I believe that healing happens in relationship. Whether your goal is to feel better emotionally, develop as a person, or address family and relationship challenges, we will take into account your bigger picture – how your experiences are impacted by the many systems you are connected to.

I honor your unique life experiences and identity and respect the expertise you bring to your story. I work toward aligning you with your authentic self by helping you connect to your existing strengths and inherent wisdom, develop insight about obstacles along your path, and identify solutions toward change. I focus on what’s working in your life and seek ways to help you expand possibilities.

I use an integrative style combining emotion-focused, attachment-based, and somatic (body-based) mindfulness approaches, parts work, and EMDR to help you get unstuck from unhelpful beliefs, patterns, and ways of being.

These evidence-based and collaborative methods facilitate healing and transformation in and out of sessions. My role is to support you in accessing the critical resources you already possess to discover your wisdom, knowing, and answers.

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Service Offerings

I don’t just provide sessions, I provide solutions – all within the context of a caring and collaborative partnership.

My services are available in office, at a farm, on trail, or via telehealth.

Psychotherapy

I am honored to walk beside you to provide authentic support, presence, and new awareness as we address root causes of emotional issues. I begin our work together by listening to you and hearing your story, and then giving you concrete tools to help you better understand your needs and wants, and free yourself from unhelpful patterns.

In individual counseling for adolescents and adults, I offer help to facilitate productive, positive movement along your journey around topics including low self-esteem, self-criticism, trauma, grief, depression, anxiety, and life transitions. Using somatic mindfulness approaches, we will bring awareness to patterns and beliefs that are preventing you from reaching your goals and feeling meaningfully connected to yourself and others.

In couple and family counseling, I use developmental and attachment-based models to support creating deeper connection and improving relationship satisfaction. By observing attachment styles in session, we explore the ways each person supports and co-regulates within the relationship, and use that information to practice making small shifts to create a stronger, closer connection.

Equine Assisted Psychotherapy

I am an Eagala Certified Equine Therapist trained to implement a distinctive experiential framework designed to provide you with the latitude to discover, learn, and grow from the horse-human relationship. Through this framework, you will learn about yourself and others by participating in physical activities involving horses while discussing thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, and patterns. Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) is ground-based work and does not involve mounting or riding horses. 

Why Horses?

To evade predators, horses have evolved to be extremely sensitive to their environment. They instinctively analyze and react to our body language and other nonverbal cues, providing us with valuable feedback and insights for other areas of our lives. It’s hard to ignore a horse with their size and presence. We can’t just control a powerful horse. Approaching horses helps us reflect on how we approach our human relationships and how we can face other big or overwhelming parts of our lives. Horses are social animals with defined roles within a herd. They have distinct personalities, attitudes, and moods. They can be stubborn or they can be playful. In other words, horses are a lot like us.

Horses are the perfect partner.

Because horses are highly sensitive, clients can work through their life struggles by interacting with the horses without feeling judgment or interpretation by another person.

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Fees & Billing

Please be aware of the following billing practices:

I do not accept insurance at this time, but I can provide an itemized receipt or superbill that may allow you to receive some reimbursement from your insurance company if you have out-of-network benefits. I cannot guarantee that your insurance will reimburse any of the money you pay, and I advise you to check with your insurance company first (I can provide a list of questions) if you aim to submit for reimbursement.

Individual Counseling

50 minutes / $145

Couple & Family Counseling

50 minutes / $165

Equine Assisted Psychotherapy

50 minutes / $175

To book a free 20 minute consultation, please indicate preferred time and date in the message field. Please allow 48-72 hours for a response. I do not respond to voicemails for new client inquiries.