About Iris Hogan, LICSW
A grounded, steady space for women who carry a lot.
Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW ) Washington, License #LW 60334819, with over two decades of experience supporting women through anxiety, trauma, motherhood transitions, and major life changes.
Why I Work With Women
Women are often expected to be everything—capable, calm, nurturing, productive, resilient, intuitive, patient, strong.
And when you're struggling, the world often tells you to push through, be grateful, stay positive, keep going, and not make a fuss.
But you deserve a place where you can be honest about how you're actually doing—where you don't have to hold everything together and your needs matter, too.
That's an important part of why I chose to focus my practice on women.
My Approach
My approach is collaborative and engaged, grounded in the belief that you are inherently resilient.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to therapy. I tailor our work to your needs, what you want from therapy, and what feels useful to you. I draw from evidence-based approaches that include mindfulness, self-compassion, trauma-informed care, cognitive strategies, and values-based work.
Together, we may look at patterns that aren't working for you anymore, make sense of experiences that continue to affect you, and find different ways of responding. An important part of my work is also helping you develop a healthier relationship with your emotions—not treating every difficult feeling as a problem that needs to go away.
What This Means in Practice
’m active and engaged in our sessions. I’ll encourage you to notice your thoughts, feelings, and patterns with curiosity and compassion, and help you clarify what is most important to you so you can lean into it.
I’ll support you through difficult emotions and help you find ways to understand and express them, rather than assuming they need to be pushed away or fixed.
We may use experiential exercises or practical tools to try something different and begin changing old patterns. When trauma is part of the work, we use paced, trauma-informed approaches so we can address difficult experiences thoughtfully and with care.
What I Believe About Healing
Healing isn't about trying harder.
I believe we are inherently resilient, but resilience doesn't mean getting through difficult experiences untouched. We adapt and find ways to cope, and sometimes those ways of coping continue long after they're useful.
I don't believe every difficult emotion is a problem to solve. Grief hurts. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. Fear is part of being human. Therapy can help us make room for those experiences while also noticing when old patterns are getting in the way of how we want to live.
Therapy isn't about fixing you. It's about understanding what's happening with more compassion and deciding what, if anything, you want to do differently.
My Background & Experience
I'm a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) with over two decades of experience supporting women through anxiety, trauma, motherhood transitions, and major life changes.
My Training Includes:
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
Trauma-informed therapy
Perinatal mental health
Nervous-system-based approaches
Cognitive and mindfulness-based therapies
Attachment-informed work
Areas of Focus:
Anxiety & high-functioning overwhelm
Trauma & trauma responses
Birth trauma & reproductive experiences
Maternal mental health
EMDR therapy & EMDR intensives
Identity shifts & life transitions
I've worked in psychiatric intensive care, a trauma-focused intensive outpatient program, school-based mental health, and private practice. Those experiences have given me the opportunity to work with people at very different points in their lives—from times of acute crisis to the quieter struggles that can be easy for others to miss.
More than two decades later, I still value the privilege of being invited into people's lives and trusted with the things that are hardest to talk about.
What It’s Like to Work With Me
I’m not a blank slate.
I’m warm, direct, and genuinely engaged in our conversations. I’ll share what I’m noticing and offer my perspective, but I won’t assume that I understand your experience better than you do.
I’ll celebrate your successes with you. And when things don’t go the way you hoped, we can look at what happened with curiosity rather than seeing it as a failure.
I take therapy seriously, but I don’t believe it always has to feel serious. There is room for humor, and there are times when laughing together is every bit as human as crying together.
You can tell me when I get something wrong, when something doesn’t fit, or when you want something different from our work. Therapy works best when it is a real collaboration.
My goal is to help you feel more steady, more connected to yourself, and less weighed down by what you've been carrying.
Outside the Therapy Room
I’m a mother, a partner, and a European immigrant. I came to the United States as a young adult, and building a life here meant learning a new culture while staying connected to the one I came from.
Motherhood changed my life in ways I couldn't have anticipated. Six hours after my son was born, he was transported by emergency helicopter to a children's hospital, where he spent 12 days in the NICU. There were medical challenges afterward, too. That experience gave me a very personal understanding of how quickly the beginning of motherhood can become something you never expected.
Outside of work, I love being outside. I kayak and hike, and more recently I've become slightly obsessed with watercolor painting. I spend time with family and friends, and with my Golden Retriever, who has his own opinions about how our days should be organized.
If Something Here Resonates
You don't have to keep carrying everything alone.
A free 15-minute consultation is a simple way to talk things through and see if working together feels like the right fit.