Lessons from Local Leaders:

Carissa Francis

Breaking the Cycle: How Carissa Francis Is Helping Women, Teens, and Families Heal From the Inside Out

She started in criminology, watching people repeat the same painful patterns generation after generation. She realized the missing piece wasn’t punishment — it was healing. That realization became Francis Wellness Services.

Carissa Francis didn’t arrive in the mental health field through a straight line. She started in criminology, working in juvenile detention centers, watching young people cycle through the same patterns their families had cycled through before them. It didn’t take long for her to see what was missing.

“I quickly realized just how impactful their traumas had been on them — and that they weren’t really given the opportunity to heal and move past those,” she says. “They were stuck, repeating a lot of the same dysfunctional cycles that maybe their families had been in prior.”

That observation sent her back to school for her master’s in social work. It led her into trauma-focused therapy. And eventually, it led her to build Francis Wellness Services — a practice rooted in the belief that healing is possible, generational cycles can be broken, and every person deserves a space where they feel genuinely safe enough to begin.

From Criminology to Clinical Social Work

There’s a through-line in Carissa’s journey that makes sense when you hear it all together. The work she was doing in the criminal justice system kept pointing back to the same upstream problem: unaddressed trauma. People weren’t just making bad choices. They were carrying things nobody had ever helped them put down.

Going back for her MSW wasn’t a pivot away from her mission — it was a sharpening of it. She wanted tools. She wanted to understand trauma at a clinical level, not just observe its effects. And as she built her practice, she kept following that thread wherever it led.

When she learned about EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — it opened a door she hadn’t known was there. EMDR is a trauma-focused therapy that helps people reprocess distressing memories in a way that reduces their emotional charge, allowing the brain to file them differently than it has been. For Carissa, it became one of her most powerful tools — and a through-line connecting everything she does now.

“It’s a really cool trauma-focused healing modality,” she says simply. Which, for clients who have tried other approaches and still felt stuck, tends to be an understatement.

A Practice Built Around Safety

Ask Carissa what the heart of Francis Wellness Services is, and she doesn’t hesitate: client-centered care. Real, felt, experienced safety — not just the idea of it.

“A lot of times people have been to other providers in the past, or just other people in their life, who maybe invalidated what they were going through, minimized it, downplayed it,” she says. “It wasn’t a warm, welcoming environment to really dive into their challenges. So that’s what I strive to create — a place where they feel safe opening up.”

The intake process reflects that intention from the very first contact. Before a client ever comes in, Carissa does a consultation call — a low-stakes conversation to see if it feels like a good fit, to hear a little about what’s bringing them in, and to start building trust before they’ve even walked through the door. When they do arrive for that first session, they’re welcomed into a thoughtfully designed office space with snacks, drinks, and an atmosphere that says: this place is here for you.

“It’s always a collaborative process,” she says. “I’m always checking in with them. What do they want to work on? Really giving them that choice and autonomy — so they know they have full control over what we talk about and what we do here.”

For people who have spent years feeling like their experiences were too much, too complicated, or simply not believed, that sense of control can be quietly transformative on its own.

The Therapy Dog Factor

There’s one more element to the intake experience that tends to dissolve resistance faster than almost anything else: the dogs.

Animal-assisted therapy has been part of Carissa’s practice almost since the beginning. She encountered a therapy dog early in her career while working at another practice and thought it was the coolest thing she’d ever seen in a clinical setting. As soon as she had dogs of her own, she got them trained and started bringing them in.

The impact has been especially visible with younger clients. Children who are resistant to the idea of therapy — and plenty of them are — become suddenly willing when they hear there’s a dog involved. But it isn’t only kids.

“Even my young adults, my adults — they just offer such a calming presence,” Carissa says. “It can be very grounding for the client. It helps them relax and ease into the session, knowing it doesn’t have to be this awkward, formal process. There’s a dog here. You can play with the dog. And it just really helps them be present.”

Presence, it turns out, is everything in therapy. And sometimes a dog gets you there faster than any clinical technique.

Following Her Own Journey Into Perinatal Mental Health

One of the most telling things about how Carissa has built her practice is that it has consistently followed her own life. Her client base evolved as she did — from children and teens, to young adults, to adults in their twenties through forties — and her areas of specialization deepened in response to what she was experiencing and learning along the way.

When she got pregnant with her son and experienced her own birth trauma, something shifted. She understood, suddenly and personally, just how important maternal mental health is — and how little support most women receive around it.

“I realized how important maternal mental health is,” she says. “And so that led me to seek additional training in the perinatal mental health field.”

Perinatal mental health covers the full spectrum of pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period — a season of enormous physical and emotional change that can bring up anxiety, depression, grief, birth trauma, and identity shifts that many women are told to simply push through. Francis Wellness Services now serves women navigating exactly that territory, alongside the broader work of trauma, anxiety, OCD, and major life transitions.

The common thread across all of it is Carissa’s conviction that what’s happened to you doesn’t have to define what’s ahead of you.

What’s Coming: EMDR Intensives

One of the biggest developments on the horizon for Francis Wellness is the launch of EMDR intensives — an offering Carissa has been building toward for some time and is genuinely excited about.

Standard therapy, for all its value, moves at a certain pace. A 50-minute session once a week, interrupted by missed appointments, illness, and the general unpredictability of life, means healing can take months or years even when everything is going well. For people who are suffering, that timeline can feel impossibly long.

EMDR intensives compress that process. Rather than once-weekly sessions, a client comes in for an extended, focused period — typically one to three days — and works deeply on one or two specific issues. The result, for many people, is a level of progress that would have taken months to reach in a traditional model.

“Intensives offer the opportunity to come in together and do a real deep dive, to help them move through it at a much quicker pace,” Carissa says. “That can be really life-changing. People are hurting, they’re suffering. If we can provide them relief quicker, it’s so powerful — not just for them, but for their families too.”

The ripple effect she’s describing is real. When a parent heals, children feel it. When a partner gets better, a relationship shifts. When someone breaks a pattern they’ve been carrying for decades, the generations that come after them start from a different place.

That’s the work. That’s why Carissa does it.

How She Stays Grounded

Anyone who has spent time wondering how therapists do what they do — sitting with pain, trauma, and grief session after session — will find Carissa’s answer both honest and refreshingly practical.

“Time in nature. That’s incredibly important for me,” she says. “Just a little bit of time outside each day — whether that’s five minutes of standing outside looking up at the stars, or going on a walk. Just to pause and reconnect.”

She adds journaling, meditation, and time with family to the list, but she’s quick to note that she’s never rigid about any of it. The goal isn’t a perfect wellness routine. It’s finding one or two things that fit into the day and genuinely calm the nervous system.

“It’s about trying to find what helps me just kind of calm my own nervous system,” she says. “So I can keep showing up for others.”

It’s the same advice she’d give any client. You can’t pour from an empty cup. Take the five minutes. Step outside. Look up.

A Simple, Important Reminder

As Francis Wellness looks ahead — toward EMDR intensives, toward continued growth, toward whatever the next chapter brings — Carissa holds one message at the center of everything she does.

Get connected to care. It doesn’t have to be her. It just needs to be someone.

“Our mental health is so important,” she says. “Just wanting to make sure that people get connected to care.”

For anyone who has been on the fence about reaching out, who has minimized what they’re going through, who has told themselves it’s not bad enough to warrant help — Carissa’s practice exists to say: yes it is. You are worth it. And it is possible to feel different than you do right now.

Carissa Francis is a licensed clinical social worker and the founder of Francis Wellness Services, specializing in trauma, perinatal mental health, anxiety, OCD, and life transitions for women, teens, and adults. Find her on Instagram at @FrancisWellness, on Facebook, or at franciswellness.com for free blogs and newsletter sign-up.

Reach Carissa Francis Below