Hanna Brinnier Perrault, LCSW

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Hanna Brinnier Perrault, LCSW

Therapist | Professor | Practice Owner
Trauma, Grief & Attachment Focus
Psych Nerd. Be Kind To Your Mind. 💜🧠
Just a human with a therapy degree. 🤓

05/30/2026

A gentle reminder: healing is rarely black and white. 🤍🌈

One of the most difficult—and freeing—parts of therapy is learning that two things can be true at the same time.

You can be making progress and still struggle.
You can feel grateful and still grieve.
You can want connection and fear vulnerability.
You can love someone and acknowledge the ways they hurt you.

Many of us were taught to think in extremes:
Either I’m okay or I’m not.
Either they’re a good person or a bad person.
Either I’m healing or I’m failing.

But real life—and real healing—is often much more nuanced than that.

Sometimes growth looks less like finding the “right” answer and more like learning to hold space for complexity.

✨ Which slide resonated with you most?

05/29/2026

You know that moment in therapy when you casually mention something, and your therapist suddenly says:

“That’s interesting…”👀

Meanwhile, your psychodynamic therapist is internally connecting approximately 47 dots. 😂

Psychodynamic therapy is rooted in curiosity.

Rather than focusing only on reducing symptoms, it asks deeper questions:

Why do certain patterns keep showing up?
Why does criticism hit so hard?
Why do some situations trigger such a strong emotional reaction?
Why do parts of you long for connection while other parts push people away?

Often, the struggles we experience today make a lot more sense when we understand where they began.

The goal isn’t to blame your parents.
The goal isn’t to stay stuck in the past.

The goal is to better understand yourself so you can have more freedom, choice, and compassion in the present.

Because when you understand the root, the pattern starts to make sense.

And if you’ve ever watched your therapist pause for a second and say, “Tell me more about that…” or ask “Can we explore that a bit more?”🕵️‍♀️🧠

Just know there’s a decent chance they’re mentally adding it to the evidence board.

Have you ever had a moment in therapy where something suddenly clicked and you thought:

“Oh… THAT’S why I do that.” 🤯😱😳

05/17/2026

Sharing my flyer with my practice information in case anyone is looking for a therapist. 💜

05/17/2026

One thing I don’t talk about enough on here is how deeply connected music has been to my mental health. 🎶

Long before I became a therapist, I became a songwriter.

Music became one of the first places I learned how to process emotion safely. There were feelings I didn’t fully understand yet… but somehow I could write them. Sing them. Feel them.

I think songwriting gave me permission to be emotionally honest before I even had language for what I was carrying.

Sometimes music helped me grieve.
Sometimes it helped me regulate.
Sometimes it simply helped me feel less alone.

And honestly? I think that’s part of why I connect so deeply to therapy now too.

Both therapy and music create space for emotional expression, vulnerability, meaning-making, and connection. Both remind us we were never meant to carry everything silently.

So yes… the guitars behind me during telehealth sessions are intentional. 🤍

They remind me that healing doesn’t always happen through analysis alone. Sometimes healing happens through creativity, expression, movement, art, connection, tears, relationships, faith, and the spaces where we finally let ourselves feel.

I’d love to know:
What’s something that has helped you emotionally reconnect with yourself during hard seasons?

05/16/2026

Your worth does not decrease just because someone else failed to see it. 💜

Read that again. ‼️

Not everyone will understand you.
Not everyone will choose you.
Not everyone will recognize your heart, effort, or softness.

Actually. Most people won’t.

That does not make you less valuable.

Sometimes we hand other people too much power over how we see ourselves. Rejection, criticism, or conditional love can slowly convince us that we are “not enough.”

But your worth was never supposed to be dependent on someone else’s ability to recognize it.

You do not have to overperform, overexplain, shrink yourself, or exhaust yourself trying to earn value that already exists within you.

The right people won’t make you constantly question your worth.

✨ Save this for the days you forget. ✨

05/16/2026

A little different than my usual content… but these are a few things I deeply believe as both a therapist and a Christian. 🤍

I know faith and mental health can feel complicated for a lot of people. My hope is never to shame, preach at, or oversimplify healing. If anything, therapy has only deepened my belief that humans were created for compassion, connection, honesty, and support.

While I work with people from all backgrounds and beliefs, I also offer faith-integrated counseling for clients who want their faith to be part of the therapeutic process. And honestly, this is some of my favorite type of work.

I believe prayer is powerful.
I also believe God can work through people, relationships, wisdom, and therapy too.

And I don’t believe struggling emotionally makes someone weak or “bad” at faith.

Healing is nuanced.
So are people.

These are simply a few “therapy hills” I hold close as someone who loves both psychology and Jesus. ✨

Which slide resonated with you most? 🤔

05/15/2026

“Therapy is just venting.”

I hear this one a lot.

And honestly?
If therapy only involved venting, people probably wouldn’t leave sessions feeling emotionally exhausted, deeply challenged, or fundamentally changed.

Because therapy is often about much more than talking.

It’s:

* recognizing patterns you didn’t know you were repeating
* understanding why vulnerability feels unsafe
* grieving what you never got
* learning how your nervous system adapted to survive
* noticing the ways you disconnect, shut down, people-please, overthink, or avoid

Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs in therapy are incredibly quiet.

A pause.
A tear someone tried to hold back.
The moment a person realizes:
“I don’t think I’ve ever actually felt emotionally safe before.”

That’s not “just venting.”

That’s healing.

What’s something you wish more people understood about therapy? ⬇️

05/13/2026

Therapy hills I will absolutely die on as a therapist 👀🫶

A few opinions shaped by years in the therapy room, lots of human conversations, and witnessing what actually helps people heal.

Some of these may resonate deeply.
Some may challenge you a little.
Some may feel controversial depending on who you ask.

But one thing I know for sure?

Humans are far more complex than symptom checklists, coping skills, or perfectly packaged healing journeys.

Therapy is messy.
Healing is layered.
People are nuanced.
And the relationship matters more than most people realize.

Swipe through for some of my therapy hills 👀

And tell me:
What’s a mental health or therapy hill YOU will die on?

05/12/2026

A lot of the things we criticize ourselves for are actually defense mechanisms.

Shutting down.
Avoiding.
Overexplaining.
Deflecting with humor.
Getting defensive.
Pretending you don’t care.

From a psychodynamic perspective, defense mechanisms are unconscious ways the mind protects us from emotional pain, shame, vulnerability, grief, conflict, or overwhelm.

In other words:
your psyche adapted to help you survive emotionally.

Denial can protect against overwhelm.
Projection can externalize painful feelings we struggle to tolerate internally.
Intellectualization can create distance from vulnerable emotions by keeping us in analysis instead of affect.
Avoidance can help us escape emotional activation the nervous system associates with danger.

And honestly?
Many defenses were probably incredibly effective at one point in your life.

The problem is not that defenses exist.

The problem is when the very strategies that once protected you begin interfering with intimacy, authenticity, emotional processing, and connection.

Healing is often less about “getting rid” of defenses and more about understanding them compassionately enough that you no longer need them in the same way.

Because underneath many defenses is usually something softer:
fear,
grief,
shame,
longing,
powerlessness,
or the ache of not feeling emotionally safe enough.

Awareness is not judgment.
Awareness is the beginning of healing.

Which defense mechanism do you relate to most? 👇

05/11/2026

A lot of people are not afraid of their emotions.

They’re afraid of what will happen if they express them.

Afraid of being dismissed
Ignored.
Judged.
Misunderstood.
Rejected.
Seen as “too much.”

So instead of saying
“I’m hurt,”
they say
“It’s okay.”

Instead of saying
“I need reassurance,”
they tell themselves they’re needy for wanting it.

This is often what attachment wounds feel like.

Not just the fear of abandonment…
but the fear that your emotions might make people pull away from you.

Healing begins when someone finally experiences this:

“I can be fully honest about what I feel…and still be accepted in it.” ❤️

Address

New Paltz, NY
12561

Website

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/hanna-brinnier-goshen-ny/1035686, https://www.bekindtoyourmindlcsw.com/, h

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