Meet Anna Koullas, LMFT
What you have been carrying does not have to stay this heavy any longer.
Therapy can give you space to understand what has been weighing on you without immediately judging it, fixing it, or asking more of yourself.
My goal is to help you make sense of your experiences and move forward with confidence, even if nothing feels the way it used to.
Trust is part of the work, not a prerequisite for it.
Maybe you have tried therapy before and left feeling misunderstood, judged, or like you were being given advice you already knew.
Maybe opening up has not always felt safe. You may have learned that vulnerability can be misunderstood, minimized, or even used against you later. Or maybe you simply do not like the idea of sitting across from a stranger and being expected to share the most personal parts of your life.
I understand that trust is something we build, not something I get to assume because you scheduled an appointment.
I will want to know what has and has not worked for you before, what makes it easier or harder for you to be honest, and what you need from me for this process to feel useful.
You can ask questions, disagree with me, tell me something isn’t helping, or take your time getting comfortable. Everything is information to help us work together well.
Anna Koullas, LMFT
Founder & systemic therapist
I’m much more interested in understanding you than defining you.
The contradictions. The patterns. The things we do even when we know better. The parts of ourselves we are proud of and the parts we would rather no one see.
That complexity is part of what drew me to this work in the first place. I have always been curious about people, and after more than a decade as a therapist, that curiosity has only grown.
I have learned that there is almost always more to the story than what is immediately visible. Someone can be incredibly successful and deeply unhappy. They can love their family and need something different from them. They can make the right decision and still grieve it. They can desperately want to change and have very good reasons for resisting it.
People are complicated. I do my best work within complexity.
I am comfortable asking hard questions, sitting with answers that are not yet fully formed, and changing my understanding when new information gives us a different picture.
I also believe there should be room in therapy for you to be a whole person. We can talk about the thing that is keeping you awake at night and the completely random thing you could nerd out about for an hour. Both tell me something about you.
What I want most is for you to leave this work knowing yourself better, not because I or anyone else told you who you should be, but because together, we paid enough attention for you to figure that out for yourself.
I help you make sense of your experiences so you can make meaningful change.
I don’t believe people exist in isolation, so I don’t treat them in isolation.
Your emotional experience exists alongside your physical health, relationships, family history, culture, environment, developmental stage, losses, strengths, responsibilities, and the expectations you have absorbed along the way.
That is why my work is rooted in systems theory and why I practice integratively rather than adhering rigidly to one therapeutic modality.
Depending on what we are trying to understand, I may draw from systemic and relational theories, developmental frameworks, cognitive and behavioral strategies, and sociocultural and body-based perspectives. This integrative approach allows us to consider both your intrapersonal experience and the interpersonal context in which it developed.
You are not the result of just one experience. Your care deserves to be just as multifaceted as you are.
This is a place where you can let your guard down without fear of repercussions.
When your life places high demand on your performance and capacity, vulnerability often becomes risky. Competence is watched closely, strength is an assumed characteristic of a leadership role, and your identity can become tied up in being dependable and able to handle more pressure than most.
In those kinds of systems, showing uncertainty can change how people see you. Needing support may feel like losing credibility. Admitting that something is hard can feel especially uncomfortable when others depend on your ability to keep going.
In our work together, vulnerability is not something you have to earn or prove you can handle well. There is room to be uncertain, conflicted, overwhelmed, or still figuring things out without it changing the respect I have for you.
And if you are worried about how I will react, we can talk about that too. Judgment closes down curiosity. I would rather understand what is true than hear the version of it you think you are supposed to tell me.
Therapy should not be another place where you have to calculate the social cost of being honest.
What I Believe About Therapy
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Mental health is about more than reducing symptoms. Feeling engaged, connected, curious, and able to enjoy your life matters, too.
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Our emotional wellbeing is connected to our physical health, relationships, environment, and daily lives. Therapy can be powerful, but meaningful care sometimes requires looking beyond the therapy room.
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People are complex, and I believe their care should reflect that. I integrate different theories and tools based on the person in front of me rather than asking them to fit neatly into one model.
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A meaningful life is built through choices that reflect what matters to you. Therapy can help you understand the influences shaping those choices so you have more freedom to make them intentionally.
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And if you don’t feel like one yet, you’re in the right place. My role is to bring clinical expertise while helping you develop a deeper understanding of your own needs, values, patterns, and experience.
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Ambition and wellbeing are not opposites. We can look at how you pursue what matters without relying on exhaustion, pressure, or self-criticism to keep you moving.
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Growth does not require rejecting your past. You can carry forward what still feels true while making room for what you are learning and becoming.
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Independence, resilience, intelligence, and persistence are not problems to fix. The work is developing enough awareness to know when those strengths are serving you and when another response might serve you better.
Clinical training grounded in the whole person.
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, State of Georgia License No. MFT002005
My LMFT training gave me a systemic foundation for understanding people in the context of their relationships, families, environments, and life experiences.
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Mercer University School of Medicine
Earning my MFT degree within a medical school placed my training in the broader context of health and healthcare rather than treating mental health as separate from the body. That foundation continues to shape how I understand the emotional and relational effects of illness, injury, and changes in functioning, as well as the importance of collaboration with medical and rehabilitation providers.
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The University of Alabama
Minor in Human DevelopmentI intentionally paired my psychology major with a minor in human development, bringing together two programs that were housed separately within the university. That combination reflected a belief I held from the beginning: an individual’s psychology cannot be fully understood without considering development across the lifespan. It remains a distinctive part of how I practice, allowing me to understand what someone is experiencing now in relation to the developmental tasks, disruptions, and transitions across their life.
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Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA)
I pursued additional training in brain injury to deepen my understanding of concussion and persistent post-concussion experiences so I can better support the emotional and relational side of recovery.
