THERAPIST · LAKE LOVER · INTERIOR DESIGN ENTHUSIAST
Hannah Hattaway, M.Ed., LPC, LPC-MHSP
You Are Ready to Stop Letting Food, Your Body, and Your Overthinking Run Your Life.
Hannah Hattaway is a licensed therapist at Empower Counseling who helps women and couples break free from the cycles of shame, control, and anxiety that have been running their lives — and reconnect with who they are and what they actually want.
Whether you’re carrying something heavy on your own — OCD, an eating disorder, anxiety, depression — or approaching one of the most significant decisions of your life as a couple, Hannah brings clinical depth and a steady, grounding presence to every session. At the core of her approach is a belief she returns to with every client: that the therapeutic relationship, built on trust and respect, is the foundation for meaningful healing.
Her work is grounded in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and she is certified in Prepare and Enrich — a research-backed premarital and relationship assessment — giving her a rare range that covers both the most personal individual struggles and the most important relational ones.
Hannah Hattaway M.Ed., LPC, LPC-MHSP
Licensed in Alabama and Tennessee
If You Have Found Your Way Here,
Some of This May Sound Familiar.
Maybe it’s the loop that won’t stop — the checking, the counting, the “what ifs” with no exit. You know the fear isn’t rational, and that knowledge has never stopped it. You are not losing your mind. But you are exhausted by what your mind keeps doing to you. Hannah doesn’t ask you to simply stop. She helps you understand what’s driving it and builds a path through that doesn’t require you to white-knuckle your way to the other side.
Maybe it’s not really about the food — even if it looks that way from the outside. The restricting, the rituals, the preoccupation are only the surface. Below them is anxiety, perfectionism, trauma, a search for control or safety. The eating disorder is not the problem. It is the solution your mind found to a much deeper one. Hannah has worked with women at every stage of this. She knows the way through.
Maybe it’s the anxiety that never fully quiets, or the depression that doesn’t look like staying in bed — but like going through every motion perfectly while feeling like you’re watching from somewhere far away. “I keep waiting for it to pass on its own. It hasn’t.” You are not being dramatic. You are carrying something real.
Maybe you’re about to make one of the most important decisions of your life and you want to get it right — not because something is broken, but because you care enough to understand each other more deeply before the pressure of life makes those conversations harder to have.
Whatever brought you here — you do not have to have it figured out. You just have to show up.
What It Feels Like to Sit Across From Hannah
Sessions with Hannah are steady and grounding. She is the kind of therapist who can hold the most frightening thoughts you have ever had and meet them — and you — without flinching. Whether you’re describing an OCD thought that has never left your head, a pattern with food you’ve never said out loud, the anxiety running underneath everything, or a fear about your relationship you can’t bring yourself to voice, she won’t startle and she won’t redirect. She considers it a true privilege to walk alongside her clients, and it shows in how she holds space for every part of what you bring in.
Women who see Hannah — and couples who work with her — often describe feeling genuinely safe. Not just comfortable, but safe enough to say the things they’ve never been able to say elsewhere. That safety is built intentionally, session by session, through a relationship grounded in trust and respect.
What Hannah Helps With:
Individual therapy:
- OCD — including intrusive thoughts, Pure OCD, checking, and compulsive rituals
- Eating disorders — including anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder
- Body image concerns and disordered eating
- Anxiety — generalized, social, and performance anxiety
- Depression and mood disorders
- Difficult life transitions
- Low self-esteem and self-criticism
Couples and pre-marital:
- Pre-engagement counseling — for the couple who wants to explore what they are building before they commit
- Pre-marital counseling — using the Prepare and Enrich assessment to build a strong foundation before marriage
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU REACH OUT
Your first session is not an evaluation. It is an introduction. Hannah will want to understand what brought you here, what’s been hardest, and what you’re hoping your life will look and feel like on the other side. For couples, it’s a chance to begin understanding each other more clearly than you ever have — in a space that belongs to both of you equally.
You don’t need a diagnosis. You don’t need to know exactly what’s wrong. You only need to show up.
WHAT HANNAH BELIEVES ABOUT YOU
She believes you deserve to live fully — without food ruling your life, without your mind working against you, without the weight of feeling like you’re never quite enough. She believes the shame and self-doubt you’ve been carrying are not character flaws. They are burdens. And burdens can be set down.
She also believes healing is not about becoming someone unrecognizable. It is about reconnecting with yourself, treating yourself with compassion, and stepping into greater confidence and emotional freedom — as the person you already are, with all the courage you’ve shown just by being here.
You Deserve Support. Hanna Is Here.
You have managed this on your own long enough. The loop, the rituals, the rules, the anxiety running underneath everything, the conversations you’ve been avoiding — there is a life on the other side of all of it, and Hannah knows the way there. You reached out. That matters.
In person in Birmingham · Online throughout Alabama and Tennessee
You are not alone. Let's begin.
How Hannah Helps
The approach: ACT + Prepare and Enrich
Hannah's individual therapy work is grounded in Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) — an evidence-based method particularly well-suited for the intrusive thoughts, compulsive patterns, anxiety, and body image struggles that bring many women and teens to therapy.
Rather than trying to eliminate or argue against difficult thoughts, ACT helps you change your relationship with them. For OCD, this means learning to experience intrusive thoughts without treating them as commands — breaking the cycle of fear and compulsion. For eating disorders and body image, it means getting below the surface behavior to understand what it is really doing — how it is managing anxiety, providing a sense of control, or helping avoid something that feels unbearable — and finding a different, more sustainable way to meet those needs. For anxiety, it means building the psychological flexibility to stop being controlled by the fear and start moving toward what actually matters to you.
For pre-engagement and pre-marital work, Hannah uses the Prepare and Enrich assessment — a research-backed tool that helps couples explore communication patterns, expectations, finances, family of origin dynamics, and conflict resolution styles before the pressures of married life make those conversations harder.
Her goal with every client — individual or couple — is the same: to help you move from confusion and overwhelm toward deeper self-understanding, clarity, and a renewed sense of direction.
Background & Training
Hannah Hattaway earned her Master's degree in Human Development Counseling at Vanderbilt University. She completed her internship at Nashville Collaborative Counseling Center, then gained clinical experience at the PHP and IOP levels of care with Athena Care in Nashville, focusing on trauma, depression, and anxiety. She is fully licensed as a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in both Alabama and Tennessee, and holds the LPC-MHSP designation in Tennessee.
She is certified in Prepare and Enrich — a research-backed premarital and relationship enrichment program — and trained in Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Her PHP and IOP background means Hannah has worked with women at the most intensive levels of eating disorder and mental health treatment — not just outpatient care. She brings that clinical depth to every client she sees.
She offers in-person sessions at Empower Counseling's Birmingham office and online therapy for individuals and couples throughout Alabama and Tennessee.
A Little More About Hannah
Outside of the therapy room, Hannah loves spending time at the lake with friends and family, taking long walks with her dog Murphy, and keeping up with interior design trends — she has a genuine eye for a well-put-together space. You will find her reading a thriller or diving deep into a fantasy novel, watching movies, or re-watching One Tree Hill for what she will openly admit is the thousandth time.
She loves cooking and is always on the hunt for a new recipe — with anything Asian at the top of the list. She started this work because she believes every woman deserves a space where her mind is not something to be afraid of, and where her relationship with her body can be something other than a battle. That belief shows up in every session.