About Helen Bass, LCSW, Founder

The honest version

The honest version.

Hey you :), I’m Helen. I spent a long time being extremely good at looking fine. That was basically my first career.

I grew up the eldest daughter in a Filipino immigrant family, learning early how to hold everything together so no one else had to worry. Somewhere in learning to heal my own story, I became a therapist for people carrying childhood trauma.

The rest of the story

I work best with the eldest daughters, the perpetually “fine” ones, the high-achievers who forgot to ask themselves how they’re doing, and the people just now realizing that surviving your childhood isn’t the same as healing from it. I consider myself lucky to be the person you let in once you're ready to stop performing.

The official version: a master’s degree, a license, years of trauma-informed, somatic, and client-centered clinical training. The actual version: I know what it’s like to be the reliable one, the one nobody worries about, the one who is “fine” right up until she isn’t. That second resume is the one that actually explains why I do this work.

What shaped me

The real résumé.

Ms. Perfect

My parents worked multiple jobs and never complained. My job: make sure they never worried about me. Good grades included.

First honest room. Age 18.

I told a therapist how long I’d been hurting. Nobody had asked before. Turns out that’s most of it.

Current title: therapist, wife, work in progress.

My spouse and I come from different cultures. We grew up with different food and even different ways of saying sorry. Some nights we still get it wrong and try again, and that shapes how I sit with couples. My faith matters to me, and I’m still working it out too.

How I work

My approach: Safety × Practice.

TTransformationSSafetyP²Practice

I found this after years of sitting with new parents, adults, couples, and older adults. Growth tended to come when people felt safe enough to tell the truth, and kept practicing between sessions.