Shari Kirschner, LCSW
Shari is a Christian trauma therapist in Tucson who helps adult women navigate complex trauma, anxiety, depression, and grief. In addition, she works with chronic illness, unwanted life changes, and painful struggles with food or body image—especially when the life you are living is not the life you expected.
Compassion, grounded honesty, and hope shape Shari’s work. She makes room for the depth of what hurts without reinforcing hopelessness, helping clients move toward truth, steadiness, and meaningful change at a pace that respects their story. In addition, she works with women seeking a spiritual abuse therapist in Tucson after church hurt, religious trauma, coercion, or the misuse of Scripture has affected their identity, safety, or relationship with God. When Christian faith is important to you, Shari can thoughtfully incorporate biblical truth, Scripture, prayer, and spiritual conversation while following your needs and comfort.
Does this sound like you?
You do not need to relate to everything. For example, one familiar experience may be enough to keep exploring.
You are living through a season you did not choose
Illness, loss, aging, relationship changes, or an unexpected shift in your life has left you grieving what was or what you believed your future would be.
You feel anxious, depressed, or emotionally worn down
You may keep functioning and caring for what needs your attention, but underneath you feel discouraged, overwhelmed, depleted, or unable to find your footing.
The past still shapes how safe you feel
Complex trauma or painful relationships continue to affect your emotions, self-trust, boundaries, or ability to feel secure and connected. At the same time, you want a Christian trauma therapist who will honor both your emotional safety and your faith preferences.
Food and your body take up too much mental space
Food noise, body dissatisfaction, emotional eating, or cycles of restriction and overeating leave you feeling ashamed, preoccupied, or at odds with yourself.
Others may not recognize the grief you are carrying
You could be grieving a person, your health, a relationship, a role, a sense of belonging, or the life you thought you would have by now.
You are carrying church hurt or spiritual abuse
Because of that harm, you want a spiritual abuse therapist who can make room for church hurt, religious trauma, doubt, and difficult questions. Above all, you need therapy that does not defend harmful people or pressure you to forgive before you are ready.
What it feels like to work with Shari
Gentle enough to honor what happened.
Honest enough to help you move forward.
Shari creates a calm, grounded space where your pain is taken seriously. For example, you do not need to minimize what happened, explain everything at once, or move faster than feels emotionally safe.
At the same time, she offers genuine compassion without treating you as fragile or confirming the fear that nothing can change. Shari helps you face what is true, understand what has shaped you, and begin moving toward greater steadiness, freedom, and hope.
Read more about Shari’s style ↓
Shari understands that trauma, grief, illness, spiritual abuse, and unwanted change can leave you feeling powerless, disconnected, or unsure of your own judgment. As a Christian trauma therapist, she begins by building a dependable therapeutic relationship where you can speak honestly without being rushed, corrected, or pressured to appear stronger than you feel.
Her approach balances validation with truth. Shari can sit with the full weight of grief, anger, shame, or disappointment without trying to brighten the moment or explain the pain away. At the same time, she does not confuse compassion with reinforcing the belief that you are permanently damaged, helpless, or without choices.
As trust develops, Shari helps you notice how past experiences may be influencing present emotions, relationships, body responses, and protective patterns. She may gently challenge an old belief, help you consider another perspective, or identify where fear and shame have been mistaken for truth. The work remains thoughtful and paced with care, but it also stays oriented toward meaningful change.
- A calm, steady, compassionate presence
- Space for pain without pressure to rush
- Validation that does not reinforce hopelessness
- Gentle challenge rooted in truth and hope
Specialized areas of focus
Where Shari brings particular depth
Complex trauma + relational wounds Past experiences still shape your safety, relationships, and trust in yourself. Explore this specialty Close specialty
Trauma therapy for safety and self-trust
Complex trauma may leave you feeling constantly alert, emotionally overwhelmed, disconnected from yourself, or uncertain about what safety should feel like. As a result, you may struggle to trust your own judgment, protect your boundaries, or understand why present-day situations create such powerful reactions.
For that reason, Shari approaches trauma carefully and without forcing the process. As a Christian trauma therapist in Tucson, she helps you understand the protective patterns that developed around painful experiences. Then, you can build greater internal safety and reconnect with emotions and body awareness at a manageable pace. Her work may incorporate EMDR, parts work, attachment-based therapy, and other trauma-informed approaches. Faith is included only when you want it to be part of the healing process.
Food noise, emotional eating + body image Thoughts about food and your body occupy more of your life than you want them to. Explore this specialty Close specialty
Understanding food and body-image patterns
You may feel caught between trying to control food and feeling unable to stop thinking about it. Emotional or compulsive eating, cycles of restriction and overeating, changing health needs, or years of body criticism can leave you feeling ashamed and at odds with yourself.
Shari helps you look beneath the behavior with curiosity rather than punishment. Together, you can identify the emotions, beliefs, needs, and experiences connected to food and body image while loosening patterns driven by shame or all-or-nothing thinking. The goal is not another rigid standard, but a more honest, compassionate, and sustainable relationship with yourself.
Grief, chronic illness + unwanted life changes Grief, illness, or unwanted change has altered the life you expected. Explore this specialty Close specialty
Making room for grief and unwanted change
Grief may follow the death of someone you love. However, it can also come with chronic illness, changes in health or ability, or the loss of a relationship or role. Sometimes grief follows the realization that an important part of life did not unfold as you hoped. These losses can leave you feeling disoriented, angry, discouraged, or alone.
Rather than imposing a timeline, Shari helps you name what has changed and honor what mattered. In addition, she makes room for complicated emotions without allowing grief to define the rest of your story. As a result, therapy can support movement toward renewed meaning, greater agency, and hope that does not require denying what was lost.
A deeper look at the work
Explore more of Shari’s specialties
The reason you come to therapy may involve more than one part of your life. Explore the areas below for a fuller sense of the concerns Shari works with and the ways therapy may help.
Anxiety + depression Worry, discouragement, or emotional exhaustion makes everyday life feel heavier.
Finding steadiness through anxiety and depression
Anxiety may leave you anticipating what could go wrong, replaying conversations, questioning your decisions, or feeling unable to settle. Depression may look like sadness, but it can also feel like numbness, exhaustion, irritability, withdrawal, or the belief that change will not matter.
Together, you and Shari can understand the experiences, beliefs, emotions, and body responses contributing to these patterns. However, she does not treat your distress as evidence that you are incapable or permanently stuck.
Therapy can help you develop greater emotional steadiness, respond to your thoughts with more clarity, and begin making choices that support connection, meaning, and hope.
Attachment wounds + abandonment Early relationships taught you that closeness, safety, or care could not be trusted.
Healing attachment wounds and fear of abandonment
Inconsistent care, rejection, neglect, betrayal, or abandonment can shape how you experience relationships long after the original circumstances have ended. As a result, you may fear being left, struggle to depend on others, become overly responsible for keeping relationships secure, or withdraw before someone can hurt you.
Shari helps you understand these reactions as protective responses rather than personal failures. The therapeutic relationship offers a steady place to notice relational patterns, express needs more honestly, and rebuild trust in your perceptions and boundaries.
Over time, therapy can support a stronger sense of internal safety and help you develop relationships shaped by greater mutuality, clarity, and freedom.
College-age women + early adulthood Independence, relationships, education, faith, and identity all seem to be changing at once.
Support through college and early adulthood
College and early adulthood can bring pressure to make decisions about education, career, relationships, faith, family, and the person you want to become. However, you may appear capable while privately feeling anxious, lonely, uncertain, or afraid of making the wrong choice.
Shari provides a steady place to sort through competing expectations and understand what is influencing your decisions. She helps young women strengthen emotional awareness, recognize unhealthy relationship patterns, and develop greater confidence in their own judgment.
Therapy can support a more grounded sense of identity and help you move into adulthood without expecting you to have everything resolved before you begin.
Midlife, aging + changing identity Changes in your body, health, relationships, or roles leave you wondering who you are now.
Navigating midlife, aging, and identity changes
Midlife and aging can bring changes that are both expected and deeply unsettling. Shifts in health, physical ability, family roles, relationships, caregiving responsibilities, or work may change how you understand yourself and the future.
In addition, Shari offers room to acknowledge the losses and frustrations of this season without dismissing them as simply part of getting older. She helps women reflect on what has shaped them, recognize what may need to be released, and reconnect with values or parts of themselves that have been set aside.
Therapy can help you approach this stage of life with greater self-understanding, purpose, and openness to what may still be possible.
Workplace bullying + emotionally unsafe relationships Criticism, exclusion, manipulation, or repeated mistreatment has eroded your confidence.
Recovering from workplace bullying and relational harm
Workplace bullying and emotionally unsafe relationships can cause you to question your perceptions, replay interactions, anticipate criticism, or wonder whether you are overreacting. As a result, the stress may follow you home and affect sleep, confidence, concentration, and other relationships.
As a result, therapy helps you name what has occurred without minimizing its emotional impact. Together, you can explore how the experience affected your sense of safety and self-trust while identifying patterns of fear, shame, or self-blame that may have developed.
Therapy can help you strengthen boundaries, regain confidence in your judgment, and consider your choices from a place of greater steadiness rather than ongoing fear.
Spiritual abuse, church hurt + religious trauma Harmful spiritual experiences have affected your identity, safety, relationships, or understanding of God.
Working with a spiritual abuse therapist in Tucson
Harmful leadership, coercion, rejection, misuse of Scripture, spiritual manipulation, or exclusion from a faith community can create wounds that reach far beyond the original experience. Consequently, you may feel ashamed, angry, spiritually confused, or uncertain whether it is safe to trust a church, another person, or God.
If you are looking for a spiritual abuse therapist in Tucson, Shari provides room to name the harm clearly without defending the people or systems responsible for it. She does not expect you to forgive quickly, return to a church, or present a faith that feels stronger or more certain than it is.
When you want faith included, therapy can help distinguish painful human actions from the character of God. In addition, you can examine beliefs shaped by fear or shame and move toward a spiritual life that feels more honest and freely chosen.
Christian counseling with Shari
A Christian trauma therapist in Tucson who makes room for faith, questions, and the full truth of what happened
As a Christian trauma therapist in Tucson, Shari offers thoughtful trauma treatment for women who would like faith included in therapy. Her faith as a Christian is a quiet, grounding presence that shapes the compassion, hope, and respect she brings to her work. It does not determine what your sessions must include. Instead, you decide whether faith is central, gently woven into the work, or not discussed at all.
How Shari can incorporate faith when requested ↓
If you would like faith included
Shari begins by learning what faith means to you, what role it currently has in your life, and how you would like it included. Some clients want Christian faith to be openly central to therapy. Others prefer occasional spiritual reflection or want to decide from session to session whether faith feels relevant.
Depending on what feels supportive, counseling may include prayer, Scripture reflection, biblical principles, or identity in Christ. In addition, it can include conversations about God’s character, meaning, purpose, forgiveness, spiritual discernment, or honest wrestling with God. These practices are offered as possibilities rather than expectations.
When pain has affected your faith
Trauma, grief, illness, relational harm, and unwanted life changes can affect what you believe about yourself, how you understand suffering, and whether God feels trustworthy or near. You may feel angry with God, distant from faith, ashamed of your questions, or uncertain about beliefs that once felt secure.
If you choose to bring these concerns into therapy, Shari offers room to explore them without treating questions, anger, or doubt as evidence of spiritual failure. She does not expect you to resolve difficult questions quickly or present a faith that feels stronger or more certain than it does.
Support from a spiritual abuse therapist in Tucson
Harmful leadership, coercion, misuse of Scripture, fear-based teaching, exclusion, betrayal, or pressure to remain silent can affect identity, belonging, self-trust, relationships, and your understanding of God.
As a spiritual abuse therapist in Tucson, Shari provides space to describe what happened and consider its emotional and spiritual impact without minimizing the harm. She does not expect you to forgive before you are ready, reconcile with someone who feels unsafe, return to a church, or defend the people or systems involved.
If it feels meaningful to you, therapy may help distinguish other people’s actions from your understanding of God. In addition, you can examine beliefs shaped by fear or shame and explore what faith and spiritual safety might look like for you now.
Your preferences remain central
Shari will check in rather than assume when faith should become part of a conversation. Your preferences may also change over time. You can ask for more direct Christian integration, request a gentler approach, or decide that you do not want faith discussed in a particular session or at all.
When faith is included, it remains integrated with thoughtful, evidence-based, trauma-informed care. Spiritual practices are not used to replace emotional processing, minimize psychological pain, or avoid the complexity of your experience.
You do not need to share Shari’s beliefs to work with her. She welcomes clients from all backgrounds and respects each person’s values, convictions, questions, and right to determine whether spirituality belongs in their therapy.
Professional details
A closer look at Shari’s practice
Review Shari’s education, therapeutic approaches, client fit, and practical session information.
Credentials + education Independently licensed clinical social worker in Arizona
Licensure and professional background
LCSW-12847
2003
1999
Shari is an independently licensed clinical social worker whose practice focuses on individual therapy for adult women. She is also approved by the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners to provide clinical supervision.
Therapeutic approaches Trauma-informed, attachment-focused, parts-based, and somatically aware
A flexible, trauma-informed approach
Shari draws from trauma-processing, parts-based, attachment, cognitive, and body-aware approaches. Her work as a Christian trauma therapist remains evidence-based and responsive to each client’s needs, goals, readiness, faith preferences, and pace rather than expecting every person to follow the same process.
Who Shari works with Adult women 18+ • College-age, midlife, and older women
Common areas of work
- Complex trauma, PTSD, and relational trauma
- Anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion
- Grief, chronic illness, and unwanted life changes
- Food noise, emotional eating, and compulsive eating
- Negative body image and binge–restrict patterns
- Attachment wounds, abandonment, and self-trust
- Workplace bullying and emotionally unsafe relationships
- Church hurt, spiritual abuse, and religious trauma
Therapy may fit particularly well if
- You are an adult woman looking for individual therapy.
- A calm therapist who will not rush your process feels important.
- Your pain needs validation without reinforcing hopelessness.
- Compassion paired with honesty and truth feels supportive.
- Understanding how the past affects the present matters to you.
- An unwanted season has disrupted the life you expected.
- Rebuilding self-trust and internal safety is one of your goals.
- Christian faith may—or may not—belong in your therapy.
Shari provides individual counseling for adults. She does not provide child, teen, couples, custody, or high-conflict counseling. Clients needing immediate stabilization for active suicidality or aggression may require a higher level of support.
Office + session details La Cholla office • Tuesday, Thursday + Friday • $145 per session
Practical details for beginning therapy
Tucson, AZ 85741
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Thursdays • 1:30–6:00 PM
Fridays • 12:30–5:00 PM
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Shari, in a few words
A little more about Shari ↓
Depth, honesty, and a faith that can hold difficult questions matter deeply to Shari. Easy answers or polished appearances do not interest her. Instead, she respects the courage it takes to name what is true—even when the truth is painful or complicated.
Her presence is quiet and steady rather than hurried or performative. Careful listening helps her notice what may be happening beneath the words and leave space for reflection. At the same time, practical honesty allows her to address difficult conversations with compassion.
Hope matters to Shari, but not as pressure to feel better quickly or deny what has happened. She understands hope as the possibility that pain can be honored without being allowed to write the rest of the story. That grounded, honest hope shapes both her Christian faith and the way she accompanies clients.
How therapy may unfold
A steady process for creating safety, understanding what shaped you, and moving toward change
Establish safety
Begin with a calm, dependable relationship where your story is taken seriously and you are not pressured to disclose or process more than feels manageable.
Understand what shaped you
Notice how past experiences influence present emotions, beliefs, relationships, body responses, and protective patterns without judging yourself for how you learned to survive.
Rebuild trust and choice
Process what feels ready, challenge beliefs rooted in fear or shame, and develop greater self-trust, steadiness, and freedom in how you move forward.
Shari honors your pace without losing sight of the possibility of meaningful change.
Begin where you are
You do not have to pretend everything is okay to believe change is still possible.
You do not need a polished explanation, a clear plan, or certainty about how therapy should unfold. If you are looking for a Christian trauma therapist in Tucson—or a spiritual abuse therapist who will not minimize what happened—Shari may be a good fit. Then, you can begin with what feels most present and move forward at a pace that respects your story. Faith can be part of the work when and how you want it to be. If you are still deciding, take the time you need to compare counselors.