Jennie Denney, AMFT | Therapist in San Clemente, CA

Trauma, EMDR, Faith Deconstruction, Grief, and Self-Harm Recovery Therapy in San Clemente

I provide in-person therapy in San Clemente for clients throughout Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano, Mission Viejo, and South Orange County. Telehealth therapy is available throughout California.

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Jennie Denney seated in her therapy office, offering in-person and online therapy throughout California.

Jennie Denney, AMFT #153029

Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist
Supervised by Rachel Daggett, M.S., LMFT #107858

Hi, I'm Jennie.

I'm a Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist in San Clemente, California. I work with adults, couples, parents, and families navigating trauma, anxiety, self-harm recovery, faith deconstruction, relationship challenges, and major life transitions.

Many of the people who find their way to my office are carrying experiences that no longer fit neatly into a diagnosis or a single life event. They may be grieving a loss, questioning long-held beliefs, navigating relationship pain, or trying to understand why they feel stuck despite doing everything they can to move forward.

Whether this is your first experience with therapy or you’ve walked this path before, it’s okay to take your time finding a therapist who feels like a good fit. I’m glad you’re here.

My clinical work focuses on trauma, anxiety, self-harm recovery, faith deconstruction, identity transitions, and relationship concerns. My approach has been shaped by both professional training and lived experience as a parent, partner, and person who has moved through seasons of loss, change, and faith reconstruction. My work is also shaped by my experience as a parent who understands how complex family life can become when mental health, identity, and relationships intersect. I bring a grounded, relational approach to therapy because I know how disorienting it can feel when the life, family, or faith framework you once relied on no longer fits the way it used to.

Therapy for Trauma, Faith Deconstruction, Self-Harm Recovery, and Life Transitions

I work with teens, adults, couples, families, and mothers navigating anxiety, trauma, self-harm recovery, relational stress, identity shifts, and major life transitions.

Sometimes the things that hurt the most are the things we don’t yet have the words for.

I work with:

I see these experiences not as problems to fix, but as invitations to understand yourself more deeply and move toward greater steadiness, connection, and self-trust.

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A Relational, Nervous-System-Aware Approach

Therapy isn’t about “fixing you.” It’s about helping you feel steadier in your own skin and more grounded in your relationships. This approach is especially supportive for people carrying carrying emotional weight, parenting stress, trauma, and the strain of trying to hold too much for too long.

I blend evidence-informed approaches in ways that honor your pace and capacity:

• Relational & Attachment-Informed Work
We explore how early and current relationships shape anxiety, relationship patterns, self-worth, and the ways you move through the world.

• Trauma-Informed EMDR
When clinically appropriate, EMDR helps people process stuck or overwhelming memories in a way that supports real nervous-system regulation.

• Parts-Based & Experiential Work
We make space for the parts of you that feel afraid, hurt, overwhelmed, or stuck after difficult experiences.

• Movement & Walking Therapy (Optional)
For some clients, integrating gentle movement outdoors creates calm and access to new insight.

Across all of this, safety and pacing matter most. Whether you're processing trauma, navigating faith deconstruction, grieving a loss, or making sense of a major life transition, we slow down long enough to process—not just talk.

What You Can Expect in Our Work Together

Many of the people I work with, especially mothers, arrive feeling like they need to hold everything together before asking for support. Therapy offers a place where you do not have to carry it all alone.

Therapy with me is warm, grounded, collaborative, and honest. We will move at a pace that honors your nervous system while also making space for real insight, growth, and change.

You will not be rushed toward quick solutions. Instead, we will slow down enough to understand the patterns beneath anxiety, trauma responses, relationship struggles, parenting stress, grief, or major life transitions. Together, we will explore how your nervous system learned to protect you, what may still feel stuck in the present, and how to move toward greater regulation, connection, and self-trust.

Ready to take the next step?

If you’d like to ask questions, share what’s been going on, or get a feel for how I work, you’re welcome to schedule a complimentary 15-minute phone consultation.

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How I Approach Therapy

My approach to therapy is grounded in safety, connection, and nervous system awareness. I work relationally and at a pace that honors your system, slowing things down enough to support real processing rather than pushing for quick fixes.

I draw from trauma-informed and attachment-based therapy, including EMDR, parts work, and experiential approaches. Together, we focus on understanding patterns shaped by past experiences, supporting emotional regulation, and helping your nervous system process what it has been holding.

I work with adults, teens, couples, and parents, especially when trauma, attachment wounds, anxiety, faith deconstruction, self-harm recovery, or major life transitions are impacting emotional connection, trust, and communication.

Father carrying a child on his shoulders while walking on a wooded trail, representing connection and attachment.

Attachment-Based Therapy

Explore how relationships shape emotional patterns, trust, and connection.

  • Attachment-based therapy looks at how our earliest relationships shape the way we relate to ourselves and others today. It helps us make sense of emotional patterns that sometimes run underneath the surface of our lives.

  • I believe that connection is at the heart of healing. Exploring your attachment style can help make sense of patterns that keep showing up in relationships, parenting, self-worth, and emotional regulation. Rather than judging those patterns, we get curious about them so you can move toward healthier relationships, with others and with yourself.

    • Understand why certain relationship patterns feel so hard to change

    • Build trust, connection, and emotional safety in new ways

    • Heal old wounds that may still impact your current relationships

    • Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller — a clear, relatable guide to understanding attachment styles in adult relationships.

    • Parenting from the Inside Out by Dr. Dan Siegel and Mary Hartzell — a powerful resource for parents wanting to raise emotionally secure children by first understanding their own attachment stories.

Person sitting on driftwood by the ocean at sunset, reflecting on identity, faith transitions, and major life changes.

Narrative and Experiential Approaches

Make sense of identity shifts, faith transitions, and major life changes.

  • Experiential therapy invites you to feel and engage with your healing—not just talk about it. Narrative therapy focuses on understanding and reshaping the stories you tell yourself about who you are.

  • Healing isn’t just about understanding what happened; it’s also about how you make meaning of your story now. Narrative and experiential therapy can help you explore identity shifts, faith transitions, grief, and major life changes in a way that feels grounded, embodied, and more connected to your own voice.

    • Reclaim your voice and agency in your life story

    • Process emotions that feel stuck or overwhelming

    • Find new meaning after loss, trauma, or identity shifts

    • The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk — a powerful exploration of how the body holds emotional memory and how experiential healing works.

    • Rising Strong by Brené Brown—How we make meaning out of our struggles, and how rewriting our internal stories leads to resilience.

    • Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl—Finding personal meaning in suffering and choice; building identity through narrative and resilience.

Person seated in a therapy chair holding EMDR tappers, representing trauma therapy and nervous system processing.

EMDR Therapy

Process trauma, anxiety, grief, and painful experiences so they no longer hold the same power over your present.

  • EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an evidence-based therapy that helps people heal from trauma, anxiety, grief, distressing memories, and other overwhelming life experiences. It uses bilateral stimulation (such as guided eye movements) to help the brain reprocess experiences that feel stuck so they can be integrated in a healthier way. EMDR is commonly used for PTSD, childhood trauma, panic, relationship wounds, and other experiences that continue to affect the present.

  • Sometimes talking alone isn’t enough to fully heal old wounds—especially trauma. EMDR offers a way to work through painful memories without needing to relive them in detail. I’m pursuing EMDR training because I believe it offers a powerful, research-backed pathway to healing that honors both the mind and the body’s natural ability to recover.

    • Process trauma and painful memories safely and efficiently

    • Reduce emotional triggers and reactivity

    • Build a stronger, calmer internal sense of self

    • Heal experiences that feel “stuck” even after traditional talk therapy

    • Getting Past Your Past by Dr. Francine Shapiro — an accessible guide to how EMDR helps people move beyond painful memories and reclaim their lives.

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