Most people don’t remember the exact moment things became too heavy.
But they remember the moment they finally said, “I need help.”
For therapist Amy Robbins, that moment, the shift from I should go to therapy to I’m here, is the most meaningful doorway a person will walk through all year. “What took them from I should to I am, tells us everything,” she says.
It’s not an intake question. It’s a threshold. And Amy treats it with the kind of tenderness that only comes from decades of sitting with people in their hardest seasons.
- Amy has been a therapist since 1999, yet she approaches each client with the steadiness of someone who still deeply believes in the work. Her Atlanta practice, Amy Robbins Counseling, now spans Kirkwood and Grant Park, home to a team of six therapists who see individuals, couples, teenagers, families, and young adults. “Anyone is welcome here,” she says. “We work really hard to keep our space a safe space.”
And it’s not just a talking point. When Amy describes safety, she speaks about it with urgency and conviction — almost like a promise. Physical safety, emotional safety, psychological safety. Confidentiality is honored. Autonomy that is respected, and not negotiated. “If there’s something you don’t want to talk about, you have the right to say ‘pass,’” she explains. “We believe you. We honor what you say.”
Safety builds the space, but fit builds the relationship.
“After your first session, when you’re a mile away, I want you to be able to think, ‘Amy’s got me,’” she says. “That sense of comfort, of capability — that’s what allows us to go deeper.”
And deeper is where she’s willing to go.
In a world that often encourages people to stay on the surface in their vulnerability, Amy practices something she calls carefrontation — the art of naming what’s true with equal parts compassion and honesty. “I’m going to care about you as I put something on the table that needs to be on the table,” she says. “I’m going to love you through it.”
She knows what it’s like to sit on the other side of the room. In her early twenties, she lost her father to cancer — a grief she carried quietly when none of her peers had experienced anything similar. “I felt very alone,” she says. “I had an incredible therapist then, and it made me want to help other people going through the same thing.”
She’s seen firsthand that people rarely struggle with seven different problems at once. More often, it’s one belief that shapes everything else. For many of her clients, it’s the belief that they are not inherently valuable.
“People aren’t taught that they have worth,” she says. “So their decisions come from that belief. Their patterns come from that belief. And until we connect that piece, the behavior is just going to keep going.”
Therapy, in her view, is not about making someone feel instantly better. It’s about helping them finally feel seen. Sometimes the shift feels good; often it doesn’t. “My mom once asked why my clients don’t always leave happy,” she recalls. “But the goal isn’t happiness. Sometimes you leave a session a hot mess — because something is shifting.”
Shifts require presence. They require someone willing to sit in the discomfort without flinching. Amy does that work with intention. She utilizes grounding rituals at the beginning and end of each session. She practices her own mindfulness. She prioritizes therapy for herself and her team. “Therapists have to do their own work,” she says. “That’s how we show up as our best selves.”
She also believes in therapy that moves — therapy that dares to address the things people have been circling for years. Too many clients come to her after working with someone who never named the obvious. Amy refuses to tiptoe around the core wound. “Let’s address the tumor,” she says. “Not everything around it.”
Even with that directness, Amy’s presence is undeniably warm. She describes sessions with metaphors of movement and water. A canoe where she and the client sit together, sometimes paddling in sync, sometimes trading roles. “If you don’t have an agenda for the day, that’s okay,” she tells people. “I’ve got it if you don’t.”
And when clients hesitate, when they feel too nervous or too tender, she never tries to talk them out of it.
“It’s normal to be nervous,” she says. “You’re human. Nervousness isn’t bad — it means you’re alive.”
In January, when so many people are thinking about reinvention, improvement, and fresh starts, Amy’s perspective is a reminder we all need: therapy is not about becoming someone else. It’s about remembering who you already are.
As she puts it, “You are of value. You are important. You are worthy because you are human.”
And if you’re ready — or even just willing to try — Amy Robbins Counseling is ready for you, too.
“You are of value. You are worthy because you are human.”