Jennifer Almeida

I am an experienced Behavioral Health Therapist, with an LICSW & LADC1, specializing in Somatic & Trauma-Informed Therapy for Adults Navigating Trauma, Anxiety & Recovery.

My name is Jenn, and I am a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) and Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor (LADC1) with over a decade of experience helping adults navigate trauma, anxiety, addiction, and the particular exhaustion that comes from carrying something heavy for too long — often alone, often while still showing up for everyone else.

I am the co-founder of Wild Root Therapy, a Massachusetts-based telehealth practice built on a simple but radical belief: that real healing requires more than talking about your problems. It requires understanding them at the level of the body, the nervous system, and the deeply human need for safety, connection, and meaning.

Who I Work With
There are certain people I find myself most drawn to and most equipped to help.

The person who has tried therapy before and still feels stuck. You've gained insight. You understand why you do the things you do. And yet nothing is really shifting. The same patterns, the same reactions, the same loops. If that's you, I want you to know: you are not broken. You are not treatment-resistant. You may simply be someone whose healing requires going deeper than talk therapy alone can reach — into the body, into the nervous system, into the places where your history lives not as a memory but as a physical reality.

The high-functioning person who is struggling on the inside. You show up. You perform. From the outside your life looks fine — maybe even good. But inside you are exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't fix, disconnected from yourself, going through the motions of a life that doesn't quite feel like yours. This kind of suffering is invisible and isolating. It is also completely real — and completely worthy of support.

The person in recovery who is ready to go deeper than sobriety. Getting sober is an extraordinary act of courage. It is also just the beginning. Because stopping the substance only removes the thing that was managing the pain — it doesn't remove the pain. The questions that surface in recovery — who am I without this? What was I running from? What do I actually need? — are the ones I am most interested in helping you answer.

My Approach
Therapy with me is collaborative, body-informed, and deeply human. I draw from several evidence-based frameworks:
Somatic Experiencing — My training in SE means we pay attention not just to your thoughts and words, but to your body — to sensation, breath, posture, and the nervous system responses that shape your experience beneath the surface of conscious thought. Trauma is not stored in the thinking mind. It lives in the body. Healing requires working there too.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) — Rather than fighting against difficult thoughts and feelings, ACT helps you change your relationship to them — and move toward a life guided by your values, even when your inner experience is uncomfortable.
Attachment-Based Therapy — The patterns we learned in our earliest relationships become the template for every relationship that follows. Understanding those patterns — and experiencing something different within the therapeutic relationship itself — is one of the most powerful things therapy can offer.
Motivational Interviewing — Ambivalence about change is normal. The part of you that is not sure you are ready to change is not a weakness — it is a part of you that needs to be heard, not shamed into silence. MI helps me meet you exactly where you are.

What I Believe
After over a decade in this work, here is what I know to be true.
Healing is not linear. The path from where you are to where you want to be curves, doubles back, and sometimes looks like things are getting worse before they get better — because you are finally feeling things you have spent years keeping at bay. This is not failure. This is the process.
The body is not a footnote. Trauma, chronic stress, and unresolved pain live in the nervous system, in the muscles, in the automatic responses that fire before you can think. Real healing has to involve the body, not just your thoughts about it.
The space I offer is radically free of judgment — not because hard things won't come up, but because when they do, we meet them with curiosity rather than criticism. You already have what you need. My job is not to fix you. It is to help you access the wisdom, resilience, and capacity for healing that already live inside you — and to create the conditions in which they can emerge.

My Credentials
LICSW — The highest level of clinical social work licensure in Massachusetts, requiring a Master's degree in Social Work, supervised clinical experience, and passing a national licensing exam. Authorizes independent diagnosis and treatment of mental health conditions.
LADC1 — A specialized credential in the assessment and treatment of substance use disorders, reflecting dedicated training in addiction counseling, motivational interviewing, relapse prevention, and co-occurring disorders. Combined with my LICSW, this allows me to work at the intersection of mental health and addiction in a way most therapists are not trained to do.
I am also trained in Somatic Experiencing, ACT, Motivational Interviewing, and Attachment-Based Therapy, and I am committed to ongoing education, peer consultation, and my own personal growth — because the best therapists never stop learning.

Wild Root Therapy
Wild Root Therapy is a Massachusetts-based telehealth practice I co-founded with a shared vision: that high-quality, deeply human therapeutic care should be accessible to anyone in the state, regardless of location, schedule, or circumstance.
The name is intentional. Roots are what ground us — what allow us to weather difficulty without being uprooted. When roots are damaged by trauma, loss, or chronic stress, the whole system suffers. Healing is the process of tending to those roots. Creating the conditions for them to strengthen and anchor you more securely in yourself and your life.
All sessions are conducted via secure, HIPAA-compliant video — which means wherever you are in Massachusetts, you can access this work.

A Note on Reaching Out
I know it is not easy. Reaching out for help — especially after difficult experiences with therapy in the past — takes real courage. There is vulnerability in admitting you are struggling. There is risk in trusting someone with the parts of yourself you have worked hard to keep hidden.
And I also want you to know: the fact that you are here, reading this, considering this — that matters. Something in you decided that what you have been doing is not enough. That you deserve more. That a different life might actually be possible. That something is worth listening to.
If anything here has resonated, I would be honored to hear from you.