Counselor in St. Petersburg, Fl
Olivia Pelts
Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Counseling Intensives for Codependency, Attachment, Trauma, and Identity Work in St. Petersburg, FL
Olivia is the founder of Sunshine City Counseling and works with clients exclusively through Counseling Intensives — compressed, immersive therapy that takes clients further in days or weeks than months of weekly sessions typically can. She specializes in codependency, attachment, perfectionism, identity-level transitions, and faith-integrated therapy, with deep training in Tholáge® Neuropsychotherapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and attachment-informed somatic work. Her approach is warm and direct — gentle enough to feel safe, honest enough to actually move things. She works with high-achieving adults who have done some therapy before but feel like they keep circling the same patterns.
Who I Work Best With
I work best with clients who are:
High-achieving adults — therapists, executives, mothers, clergy, creatives — who look like they're handling it on the outside and are quietly unraveling on the inside
People who recognize themselves in codependency, perfectionism, or anxious-attachment patterns — and who are ready to actually do something about them
Clients navigating identity-level transitions — career shifts, divorce, matrescence, faith reconstruction, midlife reckonings
Those who have done some therapy before but feel like they keep circling the same patterns without breakthrough
People ready for compressed, focused work — not slow weekly accumulation
Clients who appreciate a therapist who's warm AND honest — someone who will gently name what you're avoiding instead of just nodding along
Those who want to integrate faith and spirituality into the work — or those who don’t. Both are welcome.
If you're newly considering therapy, in acute crisis, or looking for weekly accumulation work, I may not be the right fit — but our clinical team has excellent options for you.
Olivia is not accepting new clients at this time. If you would like to work with Olivia, learn more about doing a counseling intensive in St. Petersburg, FL with her.
Weekly sessions: $165 (currently at capacity for new weekly clients).
“Olivia will impact anyone she is around in a positive way through her infectious smile and encouraging words. She sympathizes with those who are struggling, and points them in a new direction towards hope and lasting change.”
Here’s the situation.
I am #4 out of 5 kids from a conservative home that has deep, deep roots into Texas history (like, I’m really into it). I function like a first born (shocking, I’m sassy and my mom had to use a leash when I was little just to keep up with me because #wildchild. You should also know that I was #homeschooled until 6th grade and then balled my eyes out when they told me I was going to go to private school -- the horror of hanging out with those girls. Growing up, I struggled to make close friends with girls, it just felt easier and simpler to be besties with the guys. When I left home and everything I knew to attend college in northwest Georgia, I was filled with both excitement and fear. A goal had always been to play basketball in college and to help people and that was exactly what I was going to do. Holla.
I was not prepared for the verbal abuse from the basketball coach nor was I ready for college Biology (side note: highschool biology is NOT the same..oops). At the beginning of my second semester as a freshmen, I found myself in the counseling office. A place that I never knew existed muchless what a counselor even did. “I should go to who...and they do what?” It didn’t take my counselor, Steve, long to figure out my codependency patterns, very strong empathetic feelings that had been repressed (hello, childhood trauma), and a work ethic that reduced my worth to my level of productivity. By the end of my freshmen year, I was reeling from a codependent friendship that had wrecked me, no longer playing basketball, and had zero clue what I was going to major in -- cue existential crisis.
Everything Seemed To Fall Apart.
To be honest, life did get a bit better over the summer and going into my sophomore year. I felt less depressed, less anxious with a touch of deep shame but overall, yeah, better. The power of community surrounded me as I dove head first into all the reading and trying to better understand where I had come from and how I got to where I was. The women I lived with that year showed me a kind of fierce love and tenderness that I am eternally grateful for.
In the midst of incredible growth, with the tremendous help of Steve, I got a phone call that changed my life forever.
My brother had suddenly died and everything I thought I knew became undone.
The details are not as important as the themes that would present themselves over the next several years. To be honest, you don’t ever get over the death of a loved one. You simply discover a new type of normal. I would go on to dig more and more into my story with the help of Steve, hop into various leadership roles until therapy as a career eventually found me out much to my own chagrin. Therapy seemed too hard and too tied to my spirituality and something that I could never possibly get “good” at. For this enneagram 3, it felt like an impossible task but nevertheless...I couldn’t escape it.
Getting my masters in mental and clinical health counseling forever changed me. Sometimes, it felt -- back then -- for the worst like “omg, why did I think this was a good idea?” Honestly, getting my M.A. in therapy was a severe mercy. You know the feeling -- when you feel small and everything around you feels overwhelming and all-consuming. You wonder if you’ll ever wake up and feel “normal” again once your eyes have been opened to more and more of your own bulls$i!.
Why Does Any of This Matter?
It matters because it is the very fabric that makes up the very essence of who I am in the context of where I came from and how I got to be here, in this space with you right now. Discovering deep seated patterns of striving to be enough, the darkness of shame, being faced with codependency that wrecked not only myself but also significant relationships. As a licensed mental health therapist, I am no expert sitting off in the distance pontificating about what life must be like for you. No, in fact, I am very much what Henri Nouwen coined as a wounded healer. I am no better than you, if anything my own bull$hi! has simply become more sophisticated and tricky thus requiring an incredible therapist, a willing and honest heart and a strong desire to continually grow into the person I have been created to become.
There is no “arrival point” and while we are always evolving, growing and learning (hopefully), I absolutely find so much joy in doing this alongside others just like Steve did for me all those years ago. As a therapist, I specialize in helping people who feel insignificant, broken and beaten up from life discover significance and meaning not only in relationships but ultimately in themselves. In short, therapy is an invitation to better understand how you got here and what you want to do about it.
Think of it this way -- each therapy session you are given a canvas. In the beginning, we approach the canvas with curiosity and compassion wondering what each of the strokes mean, how and why they were painted in that fashion.
Eventually, we will get to a place of making new brush strokes, creating a different story altogether. This is the work that was gently given to me all those years ago that I hope to turn around and give to others.
When we experience healing in our stories, it is not meant simply for us to hoard it and keep it all for ourselves. Rather, our healing is meant to be given away. With this in mind, our healing has a much bigger affect into our friends, family, and local communities. As human beings, we were created to belong to one another, intimately and intricately connected through authenticity and connection as Brene Brown calls it.
As I see it, therapy is highly relational and we have to understand who you are in the context of where you came from so we can know why you are in this space and where you ultimately long to be. The “typical” person who most enjoys working with me has often been in and out of therapy throughout their life but has struggled to really connect with their counselor. If you’re looking to make some significant changes in your life and ready to stop messing around, let's have a chat. I’m grateful that as I have learned to hold space for the dark seasons, spaces and emotions I have experienced, I will gladly enter into those spaces alongside of you. Your darkness does not scare me.
Schedule a free first session down below 👇🏽 and let's see if we might be a good fit for one another.
Qualifications & Credentials | Trauma & Nervous System Specialist in St. Petersburg, FL
Qualifications and Credentials
Olivia blends formal training, decade-plus clinical experience, and body-based therapeutic depth to help high-achieving adults navigate codependency, attachment, and trauma.
Master of Arts in Clinical and Mental Health Counseling — Denver Seminary
Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) — State of Florida (#MH17999)
Certified Tholáge® Neuropsychotherapy Practitioner — currently in Trainer Development to teach Tholáge® to other clinicians, and one of the few Certified Tholáge® Providers in the St. Petersburg area
Advanced Training in Internal Family Systems (IFS) — with Stacy Ruse
Certified Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) Practitioner — one of the few certified TBRI therapists in Tampa Bay
Trained in Polyvagal Theory and somatic, nervous-system-based therapy
Founder and CEO of Sunshine City Counseling since 2016 — one of the leading holistic, private-pay mental health practices in Tampa Bay
Designs and facilitates 6-, 10-, and 15-hour therapeutic intensives for high-acuity clients seeking accelerated healing
Featured speaker at Tampa General Hospital (Midwifery Resilience Retreat, 2024 & 2025), Tampa Bay Birth Network, and clinical/wellness gatherings across Tampa Bay
Provides clinical supervision and consultation to pre-licensed clinicians at her private practice
Founder & host of A Safe Place to Land Podcast, dedicated to mental health education, healing, and personal growth
Areas of Expertise
Codependency & People-Pleasing – Reclaim your voice and stop disappearing in your relationships.
Attachment Wounds & Relational Patterns – Heal the early patterns shaping your adult relationships.
Complex Trauma – Gently rewire how your body holds what happened to you.
Nervous System Regulation – Learn to feel safe inside your own skin again.
Perfectionism & The High-Achiever Trap – Move from earning love to receiving it.
Identity-Level Transitions – Career, motherhood, midlife, divorce — find yourself in the rebuild.
Faith Reconstruction & Spiritual Integration – Honor both your faith and your healing journey.
Therapeutic Intensives – Compressed, immersive work for clients ready for accelerated healing.
Olivia's Therapy Approach | Counseling Intensives in St. Petersburg, FL
Olivia offers a warm, direct approach to therapy for high-achieving adults navigating codependency, attachment patterns, identity-level transitions, and complex trauma. She integrates the following modalities based on what your nervous system needs:
Tholáge® Neuropsychotherapy:
A body-based trauma modality that uses gentle eye-positioning to access and rewire how the nervous system holds traumatic memories — particularly effective for trauma, anxiety, and depression rooted in early emotional experience.
Internal Family Systems (IFS):
Working with the different "parts" of you — the inner critic, the people-pleaser, the protector, the wounded child — to bring them into greater harmony and self-leadership.
Polyvagal Theory & Nervous System Work:
Understanding why your body responds the way it does in stress, and learning to regulate from a place of safety rather than survival.
Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI):
A relational, attachment-based framework that helps you see how early relational ruptures shape your adult patterns — and how to gently heal them.
Attachment-Informed Therapy:
Tracing the patterns shaping your adult relationships back to their roots, so you can stop running the same script and start choosing differently.
Faith-Integrated Therapy:
When it's the right fit, honoring the spiritual dimension of your healing. Never required — always respected when it's part of who you are.
Frequently Asked Questions About Working With Olivia Pelts
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Olivia works best with high-achieving adults who have done some therapy before but feel like they keep circling the same patterns. Her ideal clients are navigating codependency, perfectionism, attachment patterns, or identity-level transitions — career shifts, divorce, matrescence, faith reconstruction, midlife reckonings. If you're newly considering therapy, in acute crisis, or looking for weekly therapy, Olivia may not be the right fit — but our clinical team has excellent options for you.
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After more than a decade of weekly therapy work, Olivia found that her best clinical results happened in compressed, immersive sessions where clients could go deep without the start-stop rhythm of weekly meetings. Intensives let her work at the depth her training (Tholáge®, IFS, TBRI, somatic) actually allows. For the clients who fit her, intensives produce in days or weeks what would normally take 6–12 months of weekly therapy.
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Weekly therapy is built around 50-minute sessions, once a week. Intensives are 2-hour sessions scheduled consecutively (over a few days) or spaced (over a few weeks), with pre-work, integration assignments, and follow-up sessions built in. The format lets your nervous system stay in the work without resetting each week — which dramatically accelerates the change process. Learn more about how intensives work →
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We have you covered. Kelly Dzioba, RMHCI specializes in anxiety, perinatal mental health, and life transitions. Cara Cancio, LCSW specializes in ADHD, OCD, anxiety, perfectionism, and identity work. The free 15-minute consultation is a chance to figure out who's the right match — Olivia included if an intensive is right for you, or one of our weekly clinicians if that's a better fit.
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The free consultation is a no-pressure conversation. You'll share what's bringing you in, what you're hoping to shift, and ask any questions you have. If an intensive feels right for you AND for Olivia, she'll walk you through next steps. If a different clinician on our team is a better fit, she'll point you in that direction — no awkwardness, no pressure.
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Sunshine City Counseling is a private-pay practice and does not accept insurance directly. However, we provide a superbill that you can submit to your insurance for possible out-of-network reimbursement. Many of our clients use their HSA or FSA cards as well. See full pricing details →
Visit Our Mental Health Clinic in St. Pete
Physical Address: 1615 Pasadena Ave Suite #330 South Pasadena, FL 33707
Hours
Monday 9am–8pm
Tuesday 9am - 8pm
Wednesday 9am - 8pm
Thursday - 9am - 8pm
Friday - Closed
Saturday - Closed
Sunday - Closed
Phone
(727)-940-9538
Read More About Codependency, Trauma and More
