Robyn Torkelson

About Robyn Torkelson

Robyn sees therapy as a partnership, but the client keeps the steering wheel. She can help read the map, notice the roadblocks, and offer tools, but the destination still belongs to the person sitting across from her.

Robyn earned both her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in Sociology and her Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the University of Lynchburg. Her professional experience includes children, teens, and adults in community, school-based, intensive in-home, supervisory, and outpatient settings.

Robyn especially enjoys working with elementary-age children using play-based techniques, along with emerging adults and young adults figuring out identity, relationships, anxiety, depression, parenthood, priorities, and what adulthood is actually supposed to look like. Her approach changes with the age and needs of the person in front of her.

Robyn is highly client-centered. Depending on the person, she may use motivational interviewing, CBT, play-based interventions, or attachment-informed work. She is especially interested in the things people learned to do to feel safe. A pattern may have made perfect sense at one point in life and still become something that gets in the way later.

Clients have told Robyn that therapy with her felt easier and more comfortable than they expected. That matters to her, especially when someone has had a bad experience with counseling before. She wants people to leave feeling heard and supported, not pushed faster than they were ready to go.

Robyn does not think success means reaching some perfect finish line. It can be understanding yourself better, knowing what tends to get you stuck, responding differently when it happens, and knowing therapy is still there if life changes and you need it again.