Online Therapy in Vermont
Trauma-Informed Online Therapy for Adults Throughout Vermont
You shouldn't have to settle for the closest therapist when you need the right one.
Finding a therapist who truly understands trauma, Complex PTSD, childhood experiences, emotional abuse, and the survival patterns that can follow you into adulthood isn't always easy—especially when geography limits your choices.
Online therapy allows you to work with a therapist whose experience and approach fit what you need, without being limited to the providers located closest to you.
I provide trauma-informed online therapy to adults throughout Vermont who want to understand the experiences that shaped them, heal unresolved trauma, and change patterns that may have followed them for years.
Whether you live in Burlington, Montpelier, Rutland, Brattleboro, Bennington, St. Johnsbury, or a smaller Vermont community, therapy can take place privately from wherever you call home.
Helping You Understand the Story Behind Your Survival.
Finding the Right Therapist Shouldn't Depend on Your ZIP Code
Living in a smaller community can have many advantages, but access to specialized mental health care isn't always one of them.
You may find therapists nearby, but finding someone whose work specifically focuses on unresolved childhood trauma, Complex PTSD, emotional abuse, attachment wounds, or long-standing survival patterns can be more difficult.
And sometimes the therapist who seems like the best fit is simply too far away.
Online therapy changes that.
Instead of choosing a therapist primarily because their office happens to be nearby, you can choose someone based on their experience, therapeutic approach, and whether you feel understood.
There is another consideration that can matter in smaller communities: privacy.
You may know your neighbors. You may work with people throughout your community. Your children may attend school with your therapist's children. You may simply prefer not to sit in a waiting room wondering who you might see.
Online therapy allows you to attend sessions from a private space of your choosing without traveling to a therapy office.
People Make Sense Once We Understand the Story Behind Their Survival
This belief is at the heart of my work.
When we look only at symptoms, we may see anxiety, avoidance, perfectionism, people-pleasing, emotional overwhelm, difficulty trusting, relationship problems, or a relentless Inner Critic.
But when we become curious about why those patterns developed, the picture often changes.
What looks dysfunctional today may once have been adaptive.
The child who learned to monitor everyone's moods may become the adult who is constantly scanning the room for signs that something is wrong.
The child who learned that mistakes brought criticism may become the adult who believes everything must be perfect.
The child whose emotional needs weren't consistently met may become the adult who struggles to ask for help—or who fears that anyone they love will eventually leave.
These aren't character flaws.
They are patterns worth understanding.
Healing begins when we stop asking only:
“What's wrong with me?”
and begin asking:
“What happened to me, and what did I learn in order to survive?”
What I Help People Heal
Every person's story is different, and experiencing one of these challenges doesn't necessarily mean trauma caused it.
However, I frequently work with adults experiencing:
Unresolved Childhood Trauma
Experiences from childhood that continue to influence emotions, relationships, self-worth, or the ability to feel safe in adulthood.
Complex PTSD (CPTSD)
Long-standing trauma responses that may affect emotional regulation, identity, relationships, trust, and one's sense of safety.
Emotional Abuse
Healing from relationships in which criticism, manipulation, control, humiliation, intimidation, or emotional invalidation became part of everyday life.
Narcissistic Abuse Recovery
Understanding and healing from relationships characterized by manipulation, control, gaslighting, emotional instability, or chronic invalidation.
Trauma Bonding
Understanding powerful emotional attachments that can develop within relationships involving cycles of harm, reconciliation, hope, and emotional dependence.
Attachment Wounds
Exploring how early relationships and later experiences may influence trust, intimacy, abandonment fears, emotional closeness, and relationship patterns.
The Inner Critic
Understanding the harsh internal voice that says you aren't good enough, successful enough, lovable enough, or worthy enough.
People-Pleasing
Learning why keeping everyone else comfortable can feel safer than expressing your own needs.
Perfectionism
Understanding why mistakes, criticism, failure, or disappointing others may feel threatening rather than simply uncomfortable.
Anxiety
Exploring not only how to manage anxiety, but what your nervous system may be trying to protect you from.
Depression
Creating space to understand emotional pain, disconnection, hopelessness, exhaustion, and the experiences surrounding them.
Grief and Loss
Processing loss in all its forms—including the grief connected to relationships, identity, life transitions, and the childhood or life you wish you had experienced.
Relationship Challenges
Understanding recurring patterns involving boundaries, communication, trust, emotional intimacy, conflict, abandonment, or choosing relationships that repeatedly leave you hurt.
The goal isn't to force every struggle into a trauma explanation.
The goal is to become curious about your story and understand what is actually driving the patterns affecting your life today.
Therapy With Me
You don't need to come to therapy knowing exactly what's wrong, why you feel the way you do, or where to begin.
That’s something we can figure out together.
We'll start with what's happening in your life today and become curious about the story underneath it—the experiences that shaped you, the relationships that taught you what to expect from others, and the survival patterns you learned along the way.
I won't reduce you to a diagnosis or assume that something is wrong with you because you're struggling.
I want to understand why your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors make sense within the context of what you've lived through.
Therapy with me is collaborative and individualized. No single treatment approach works for everyone.
Some sessions may involve processing painful experiences from your past. Others may focus on boundaries, relationships, people-pleasing, perfectionism, the Inner Critic, or learning to trust yourself again.
And sometimes we simply need to talk about what happened this week.
We'll use the approaches that make sense for you and adjust our work as your needs change.
You spent years learning how to survive. Therapy can become a place where you begin discovering who you are when survival no longer has to run your life.
Evidence-Based Approaches Tailored to You
I don't believe therapy should begin with choosing a technique and trying to make you fit into it.
Instead, we'll understand what you're experiencing and choose therapeutic approaches that support the work we're doing together.
Depending on your needs, I may integrate:
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Helping you develop psychological flexibility, clarify your values, and build a life that reflects what matters to you.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Exploring relationships between thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and behavior.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Building skills related to emotional regulation, distress tolerance, mindfulness, and relationships.
EMDR Therapy
Helping the brain process distressing memories and experiences that may continue to feel emotionally present.
Existential Therapy
Exploring identity, meaning, choice, responsibility, freedom, and what you want your life to become.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Understanding the different protective parts of yourself with curiosity rather than judgment.
Trauma-Informed Therapy
Approaching therapy with an understanding of how trauma and chronic stress can affect the nervous system, emotions, relationships, beliefs, and behavior.
These approaches are tools.
You are the person we're treating—not a therapy modality.
Meet Jennifer L. Hillier, M.A., LPC-S, CCTP
For more than a decade, I've worked with adults navigating trauma, emotional pain, difficult relationships, and survival patterns that once protected them but no longer serve the life they want to build.
My work is grounded in compassion, curiosity, and the belief that understanding ourselves changes the way we heal.
I don't see therapy as a place where I tell you who you should become.
I see it as a place where we begin understanding what happened, why certain patterns developed, and what you want to carry forward.
My role isn't to become your healer.
My role is to help you develop the understanding, tools, and compassion that allow you to increasingly become your own healer.
Learn More About Jennifer
Online Trauma Therapy for Adults in Vermont
People rarely come to therapy for only one thing.
You may initially seek therapy because you're anxious, overwhelmed, struggling in a relationship, unable to set boundaries, constantly criticizing yourself, or wondering why you keep repeating patterns you promised yourself you would change.
But underneath those struggles, there is often a larger story.
Perhaps you grew up believing that keeping everyone else happy was the safest way to avoid conflict.
Maybe perfectionism became a way to protect yourself from criticism.
Maybe you learned not to trust people because the people who were supposed to protect you weren't emotionally safe.
Perhaps you became fiercely independent because depending on someone else once meant disappointment.
Or maybe you can't point to one terrible event at all—you simply know that something from your past still seems to be following you.
These patterns didn't appear out of nowhere.
They developed within the context of your life.
Therapy gives us an opportunity to understand that context.
Online Therapy Can Make Specialized Care More Accessible
Vermont's communities stretch far beyond its larger towns and cities.
For some people, getting to therapy may mean a significant drive. Weather, transportation, work schedules, caregiving responsibilities, disability, chronic illness, or simply living far from specialized providers can make regular office visits difficult.
Online therapy removes the commute.
You can attend therapy from a private space at home or another appropriate location within Vermont.
That can mean spending your therapy hour in therapy, rather than adding travel time before and after every appointment.
It can also give you access to a therapist whose specialty is relevant to what you're experiencing rather than restricting your choices to whoever happens to practice nearby.
What Does Online Therapy Look Like?
Online therapy is still therapy.
The primary difference is that instead of meeting in the same physical office, we meet through secure video while you are physically located in Vermont.
You will need a reliable internet connection, a device with a camera and microphone, and a private space where you feel comfortable talking.
Some people initially wonder whether they will feel connected to a therapist through a screen.
For many clients, that concern disappears surprisingly quickly.
You're still sitting across from another human being.
We're still talking, exploring, processing, laughing when something is funny, sitting with difficult emotions when they arise, and doing the work of therapy together.
And when the session ends, you're already home.
Online Therapy Throughout Vermont
I provide online therapy to adults located throughout Vermont, including people living in and around:
Burlington • South Burlington • Montpelier • Barre • Rutland • Brattleboro • Bennington • Middlebury • St. Albans • St. Johnsbury • Newport
and Vermont's many smaller towns and rural communities.
Your town doesn't need to appear on this list.
If you are physically located in Vermont at the time of your appointment and my Vermont telehealth authorization applies to your care, we can determine whether online therapy with me is appropriate.
Using Insurance for Online Therapy in Vermont
Jennifer L. Hillier, M.A. LPCS, accepts several insurance plans for therapy, including:
Blue Cross Blue Shield (Member Services: 1-800-247-2583)
Cigna / Evernorth (Behavioral Health Benefits: 1-800-433-5768)
Optum / UnitedHealthcare (Call the Member Services or Behavioral Health number on the back of your insurance card).
We may accept additional insurance plans, depending on your specific policy and network, such as:
Ambetter
BHS
Curative
Molina.
Insurance participation can vary by state and by individual plan. Being a participating provider with an insurance company does not necessarily mean that every plan offered by that company will cover your therapy sessions in Vermont.
Before beginning therapy, please verify that Jennifer L. Hillier is in-network with your specific Vermont plan and that your benefits cover outpatient psychotherapy delivered through telehealth.
What to Ask Your Insurance Company
When you call, tell them:
“I would like to verify my benefits for outpatient mental health therapy by telehealth with Jennifer L. Hillier.”
Then ask:
Is Jennifer L. Hillier in-network with my plan?
What is my copay or coinsurance for an online therapy session?
Do I have a deductible? If so, how much remains?
Does my plan cover outpatient mental health therapy by telehealth?
Do I need prior authorization?
Is there a limit on the number of covered therapy sessions?
Please remember: A quote of benefits is not a guarantee of payment. Your insurance company makes the final determination of coverage when it processes a claim.
If your insurance plan is not listed above, contact me before assuming I don't accept it. Network participation can vary by insurance plan and location.
Ready to Begin Online Therapy in Vermont?
You don't have to wait until everything falls apart before asking for help.
You also don't need to have the perfect explanation for why you're struggling.
Sometimes the first step is simply recognizing:
“I don't want to keep living this way.”
If you're ready to understand the story behind your survival, heal the experiences that continue to affect your present, and begin building a life shaped by more than the ways you learned to protect yourself, I'd be honored to walk alongside you.
