You Were Never Meant to Abandon Yourself to Belong.
Deep therapy for sensitive souls, creative minds, and people ready to come home to themselves.
You've spent enough of your life trying to be who everyone else needed you to be.
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The responsible one. The strong one. The peacekeeper. The achiever. The person who can hold space for everyone else's feelings while quietly drowning in your own.
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Maybe you've done years of inner work. You understand your trauma. You can name your attachment patterns. You know why you do what you do.
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But knowing why you abandon yourself isn't the same as knowing how to stop.
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At Bloom Recovery, we go beneath the stories, past the survival patterns, and into the deeper work of healing, so you can stop living a life organized around fear and begin creating one that actually feels like yours.
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Trauma-informed psychotherapy integrating EMDR, IFS, ACT, somatic therapy, depth psychology, and spiritually integrated approaches.
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In-person in Salt Lake City | Telehealth throughout Utah
Somewhere Along the Way, You Learned to Leave Yourself Behind.
Maybe it started when you were young.
You learned to read the room before you could read your own emotions.
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You became excellent at anticipating other people's needs, smoothing over conflict, and knowing exactly which version of yourself would be safest to show.
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Perhaps your feelings were "too much". Your needs were inconvenient. Your creativity was impractical. Your identity was unacceptable. Your spirituality was wrong.
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So you adapted; you learned to shrink, perform, please, perfect, disconnect, or disappear.
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And those adaptations? They may have helped you survive, but now they're costing you.
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Do any of these ring true for you?
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You can sense what everyone else needs, but struggle to identify what you want.
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You're deeply creative, yet perfectionism, self-doubt, or anxiety keep your gifts hidden.
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You crave genuine intimacy, but fear rejection, conflict, or being truly seen.
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You understand your trauma intellectually, but your body still reacts as though the danger is happening now.
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You're exhausted from managing everyone's emotions while neglecting your own.
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You've explored spirituality, healing, or personal growth, but sometimes wonder whether you're using all that inner work to avoid actually living.
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You feel the pull toward a different life, yet every time you approach the threshold, something inside you hits the brakes.
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You've become so skilled at surviving that you've forgotten what it feels like to simply be yourself.
But the parts of you that learned to hide aren't your enemies.
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They're waiting to be understood.
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And there's more to your story than what happened to you.
We Don't Just Pull the Weeds. We Tend the Roots.
Because real healing isn't about becoming someone else.
It's about creating the conditions where your authentic self can flourish. At Bloom Recovery, I'm interested in the deeper questions.
Not just How do we make the anxiety go away?
But What has your anxiety been trying to protect?
Not just How do we stop the people-pleasing?
But When did you learn that being loved required disappearing?
Not just How do we get you motivated again?
But What happens when the life you've built around survival no longer fits the person you're becoming?
Sometimes healing involves learning how to regulate your nervous system.
Sometimes it means processing memories that still carry pain, fear, or shame.
Sometimes we meet the inner critic that's been running your life, listen to what it's afraid of, and help it discover a different way of protecting you.
Sometimes we explore dreams, symbols, identity, grief, spiritual wounds, or the parts of yourself you've been taught to reject.
And sometimes the most profound moment is surprisingly simple:
You recognize what you need. And instead of abandoning yourself, you choose to listen.
That's where something begins to change.
We don't throw every tool at every problem. We follow what emerges, respect your readiness, and work with approaches appropriate to your needs.
Trauma has a way of following us into places it no longer belongs. EMDR helps process distressing memories and experiences so they can become less disruptive to your present life.
Your inner critic, people-pleaser, perfectionist, and avoidant parts didn't appear out of nowhere. We explore their protective roles with curiosity and compassion, making space for greater internal understanding and flexibility.
You don't need to eliminate every difficult thought before you can live meaningfully. ACT helps you relate differently to internal struggles and move toward the people, experiences, and values that matter most.
Sometimes your mind understands that you're safe, but your body hasn't caught up. We bring gentle attention to sensations, nervous-system responses, movement, and embodied experience.
Dreams, archetypes, symbols, unconscious patterns, and personal mythology can offer meaningful ways of exploring your inner world and the forces shaping your life.
For those who want it, we can explore spiritual identity, religious trauma, meaning, ritual, existential questions, and relationships with the sacred—without imposing beliefs or confusing spiritual exploration with clinical treatment.
Science for the Roots. Soul for the Bloom.
Evidence-based psychotherapy. Embodied healing. A healthy respect for mystery.
I believe good therapy should be grounded enough to hold your pain and spacious enough to honor your complexity.
You're not a collection of diagnoses to manage.
You're a living, breathing human being with a history, a nervous system, an inner world, a creative spark, and a longing for a meaningful life.
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That's why my work draws from multiple therapeutic traditions.
Specializations:Â Whatever brought you here, we can begin there.
Trauma, PTSD & Complex Trauma
When old experiences keep showing up in your body, relationships, identity, and everyday life.
Anxiety, Perfectionism & Overthinking
When your mind is always scanning for the next mistake, disappointment, or reason you're not enough.
Depression, Burnout & Disconnection
When the things that once brought you joy feel distant, and you're struggling to reconnect with energy, meaning, or yourself.
People-Pleasing, Boundaries & Self-Abandonment
When you've become so accustomed to prioritizing everyone else's needs that your own voice is difficult to hear.
Religious Trauma & Spiritual Wounds
When faith, community, or spiritual authority taught you to distrust your body, your identity, your intuition, or your worth.
Identity, Creativity & Life Transitions
When the old version of your life no longer fits, but you haven't quite found the courage or clarity to step into something new.
My Approach:
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At Bloom Recovery, I use the words "Medicine" and "Magic" to describe something deeply human.
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What is your Medicine?Â
Your Medicine is the unique collection of gifts, values, strengths, creativity, wisdom, qualities, and experiences that make you, YOU.
It's the way you see the world. The things that make you come alive.
The ways you love, create, connect, and contribute.
The parts of yourself that existed before the world taught you which ones were acceptable.
Trauma, anxiety, depression, shame, and years of self-abandonment can make it difficult to access your Medicine.
And your identity is bigger than your struggles.
Your Medicine is not gone; it may just be buried beneath everything you learned to survive.
What is your Magic?Â
Magic is what can emerge when you begin living in right relationship with yourself, your Medicine, others, and the world around you.
It's the artist who forgets the inner critic and enters the flow state.
The people-pleaser who drops the need to "fit in" only to discovery they already belong.
The person who spent years trapped in shame and begins to experience freedom, play, and self compassion.
The spiritual seeker who stops searching for permission to exist and starts living according to their own values.
Not supernatural promises.
Not bypassing pain with positive thinking.
Real change. Real connection. A life that feels more authentically yours.
That's the Medicine and Magic of Bloom Recovery.
Meet Alex.
Therapist. Depth Explorer. Professional Question-Asker.
Hi, I'm Alex Runolfson, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and the founder of Bloom Recovery.
I love deep conversations.
The kind that wander beneath the surface, discover something unexpected, and leave you seeing yourself a little differently.
I'm fascinated by the places where psychology, the body, creativity, mythology, spirituality, and the human experience intersect.
I believe people make sense when we understand the context of their lives even the behaviors they find frustrating, confusing, or difficult to change.
I believe therapy can be both profound and surprisingly playful. There's room here for tears, anger, grief, humor, curiosity, and those wonderful moments when something finally clicks. Those moments are truely Magical to me.
What you won't find here is a therapist who just nods politely for 90 minutes while you give me a report about your week.
I listen deeply. I ask questions. I offer perspectives. I challenge gently when it's useful. And together, we explore what's actually happening beneath the surface.
I'm also a firm believer that good therapy doesn't require you to leave your spirituality, creativity, queerness, skepticism, or wonderfully unconventional worldview at the door.
My practice is LGBTQ+ affirming and welcoming to people of diverse identities, cultures, relationships, and spiritual traditions.
Bring your complexity.
Bring your contradictions.
Bring the parts of yourself you haven't quite figured out.
All of you is welcome in the conversation.
"I met Alex about 2 years ago.
I walked into his office weighed down, literally with trauma, PTSD, and grief. He helped me find my voice. I set much needed boundaries for myself. Learned how to even look at all the unique versions of myself with grace and compassion.
I look forward to watching the seeds he helped me plant to continue blooming!"
Gaylene
"I've learned that there aren't different versions of me for different settings, just that different settings expose different aspects of my personality. I've been able to figure out that 'work mode' was really just a state of mind, and that I can apply aspects of 'off-work mode' when I am working which allows me to connect with people more at work instead of feeling 'fake'."
Kevin
"It didn't take long before I realized that I could trust Alex and his office was a safe space. He is the only therapist that demonstrated the ability to remove his own ego from treatment and he helped me understand myself what decisions I needed to make to begin to heal. The tools he gave me have been transformational and I freely and widely recommend working with this kind, compassionate and gifted therapist."
J.D.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do we beging?Â
Schedule a free consultation. Simply contact our Salt Lake City office via one of the consultation buttons on this page and book a convenient time for your initial consultation. We strive to accommodate your schedule and provide prompt assistance. We'll explore what's bringing you to therapy, what you're hoping to change, and whether working together feels like a good fit.
Do you take my insurance?Â
Yes! Bloom Recovery is currently in-network with Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS), PEHP, and Lyra Health for eligible services.
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However, most of my clients choose to work with me on a private-pay basis, particularly those seeking deeper, more experiential work.
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My 90-minute therapy sessions are exclusively self-pay at $300 per session. These extended sessions give us the space to move beyond surface-level conversations and engage more fully in approaches like EMDR, IFS, and somatic processing.
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If you're interested in using insurance or have questions about payment options, we can explore what's available during your free consultation.
Why do you offer 90-minute therapy sessions?
Because meaningful change deserves more than a quick conversation and a glance at the clock.
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I specialize in deep, experiential therapy that goes beyond simply talking about your problems. Approaches like EMDR, IFS, and somatic work often benefit from having time to settle in, explore what's beneath the surface, process difficult experiences, and integrate what emerges.
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In a traditional 50-minute session, it can sometimes feel like we're just getting to the heart of something when it's time to wrap up.
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With 90 minutes, we have room to go deeper without feeling rushed.
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That doesn't mean pushing harder or digging into trauma before you're ready. It means having the time and flexibility to work at your pace, honor what comes up, and bring each session to a thoughtful close.
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My goal isn't simply to help you understand why you're stuck. It's to help you create meaningful change in how you experience yourself and live your life.
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Less watching the clock. More room to bloom.
Your Life Is Waiting for More Than Survival.
You don't have to keep shrinking to belong.
You don't have to become someone else to be worthy of love.
And you don't have to spend the rest of your life letting old survival patterns make your choices for you.
There's room for a different relationship with yourself.
One built on curiosity instead of criticism.
Choice instead of fear.
Connection instead of self-abandonment.
And perhaps even a little wonder.
Let's see what can grow from here.
90-minute psychotherapy sessions | Salt Lake City, Utah | Telehealth throughout Utah
Bloom Recovery
Remember Your Medicine. Create Magic.