Sophia Villenas M.Ed, LPC
You have probably spent a long time being the person who holds it together. The one who shows up, who adapts, who finds a way to make it work regardless of what is happening underneath. And for a while that served you. It kept you safe, kept things moving, kept the people around you comfortable. But at some point you started to notice the cost. The exhaustion that has nothing to do with how much sleep you are getting. The way you feel disconnected from yourself even when you are surrounded by people. The quiet sense that you have been performing a version of yourself for so long that you are not entirely sure who you are without the performance.
If any of that resonates, you are not broken. You are having a very normal response to a life that has asked too much of you without giving you the space to process it.
I am Sophia Villenas, a Licensed Professional Counselor and therapist at Bergen Counseling Collective in Chicago. I work with adults, adolescents, and couples who are navigating the kinds of things that do not always have simple language, the lingering effects of difficult relationships, questions about identity and who you are becoming, anxiety that has become the background noise of your life, depression that crept in so gradually you are not sure when it started, and the particular kind of pain that comes from never having felt fully seen or understood by the people who were supposed to know you best.
What I Specialize In
Much of my work focuses on what happens when early relationships, the ones that were supposed to teach you that you matter, that your needs are valid, that you are safe to be yourself, did not do what they were supposed to do. That kind of experience does not just stay in the past. It shows up in how you relate to people now, in the patterns you keep repeating even when you can see them clearly, in the way you abandon your own needs to keep the peace or earn approval. It shows up in your body, in your nervous system, in the way you brace yourself for rejection before it even happens.
I have specialized training in the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM), which is a therapeutic approach designed specifically for attachment and complex trauma. In practical terms, that means I do not just talk about what happened to you. I help you understand how what happened is still living in your body and your relationships, and I help you develop a different relationship with yourself so that the old patterns stop running the show.
I also work with clients who are exploring questions of gender, sexuality, and identity, people in the process of figuring out who they actually are rather than who they were told they should be. That work takes courage, and it deserves a space that is genuinely affirming rather than just tolerant. I am committed to honoring and affirming your religious, spiritual, cultural, and social identities as a core part of therapy, not an afterthought.
How I Work
You have probably had the experience of talking about your problems without actually feeling any different afterward. Maybe you have vented to friends, maybe you have journaled, maybe you have even tried therapy before and it felt like you were just narrating your life to someone who nodded and asked how that made you feel. That is not what this is.
My approach is person centered and trauma informed, which means I pay attention to what is happening in the room between us, not just the content of what you are saying but how you are saying it, what your body is doing, what feels easy to talk about and what makes you shut down. I create a space that feels safe enough for you to be honest, not just about what happened, but about who you are underneath all the ways you have learned to protect yourself.
I am not going to push you somewhere you are not ready to go. But I am also not going to let you stay on the surface if what you actually need is something deeper. Therapy works best when it is a real relationship, not a performance, and I will meet you with the same honesty and openness that I am asking from you.
The people I work with often describe the same experience. They came in expecting to feel judged or analyzed, and instead they felt understood. That is not an accident. It is the foundation that everything else is built on.
Getting Started
If you have been going back and forth about whether to reach out, that hesitation is completely normal. Most people sit with the idea of therapy for weeks or months before they actually make the call. The fact that you are reading this page means something is already shifting.
Sophia is currently accepting new clients for both telehealth and in person sessions at our Ravenswood office. Bergen Counseling Collective accepts BCBS PPO and Aetna PPO insurance, and we provide superbills for clients with out of network benefits. If you have questions about cost or insurance, we will help you figure that out.