Brittany Purrington, PLPC
People-Pleasing, Anxious Attachment & Self-Abandonment Therapist · Kansas City, Missouri & Kansas
You've done everything right.
So why does love still feel like the place you disappear?
You're the responsible one. The flexible one. The emotionally mature one. You learned early how to read the room, anticipate needs, smooth over conflict, and stay low maintenance.
For a long time, you told yourself this was simply who you are — caring, thoughtful, selfless. And it worked. You built a good life. You're competent, respected, successful in many areas.
Which is why it's so unsettling that love feels like the place you lose your balance.
The same arguments repeat. The same distance returns. The questions are getting louder: Should I stay or leave? Will it always feel like this? Am I settling — or am I the problem?
You feel guilty for even thinking this. And yet underneath all of it — a quiet tremor you can't ignore. Something feels precarious, even if nothing looks broken from the outside.
Somewhere along the way, you stopped mattering — even to yourself.
Brittany helps you shift from self-abandonment → self-loyalty
so you can be fully yourself in the relationships that matter most.
Brittany Purrington is a licensed psychotherapist (PLPC) at gokc Healing Center providing online therapy for individuals in Missouri, Kansas, and Washington State. She specializes in people-pleasing, self-abandonment, anxious attachment, and the childhood wounds that shape how we love — and lose ourselves — in relationships.
Who Brittany Works With
Brittany works primarily with women who are ready to stop disappearing in their own lives. You might relate if:
- You've spent years being agreeable, flexible, and low-maintenance — and you're exhausted by it
- You struggle with people-pleasing that feels like love but quietly costs you everything
- You experience anxious attachment — replaying interactions, fearing abandonment, shrinking to keep the peace
- You find yourself losing yourself in relationships — romantic or otherwise
- You override your own reactions, instincts, and needs to avoid conflict or keep others comfortable
- You carry childhood wounds that show up in how you love and how you let yourself be loved
- You wonder if your relationship is unhealthy — or if the anxiety you feel is just your own patterns playing out
- You want to trust your own perceptions and stop second-guessing yourself
- You're ready to stop choosing between love and yourself
Brittany provides online therapy for individuals in Missouri, Kansas, and Washington State — making her work accessible throughout the Kansas City metro and beyond via telehealth.
Related services at gokcSpecialty Areas
People-Pleasing Therapy
People-pleasing never felt like a problem. It felt like loyalty. Like love. Until you realized how much of yourself you'd been quietly sacrificing to maintain it. Therapy with Brittany helps you understand where this pattern began, what it's been protecting you from, and how to begin relating to others from a place of genuine choice rather than compulsive accommodation. This isn't about becoming selfish — it's about becoming real.
Self-Abandonment & Self-Loyalty Therapy
Self-abandonment is what happens when you spend so long tending to everyone else that you lose the thread back to yourself. A swallowed reaction here. An overridden instinct there. Until one day you realize you don't quite know what you want, what you feel, or what's true for you anymore. Brittany's depth-oriented approach helps you slow this pattern down — and find your way back to the self you left behind. Not rigidity. Not selfishness. A steady, quiet allegiance to yourself — even in love. Even when it's hard.
Anxious Attachment & Relationship Therapy
Anxious attachment — the hypervigilance, the rumination, the shrinking — didn't begin with your current relationship. It began much earlier, in the moments you first learned that love required you to make yourself smaller. Therapy with Brittany explores those roots and helps you build a new relationship with yourself: one where your own perceptions, reactions, and needs are the ones you trust most. From that rootedness, your relationships have more room — for the other person, and for all of you.
Childhood Wounds & Relational Patterns
The patterns that show up in your adult relationships almost always trace back to earlier experiences — the ways you learned to stay safe, belong, and be loved as a child. Brittany works at the depth where real change begins: not just understanding these patterns intellectually, but actually shifting how they live in you. This is slow, careful, meaningful work — and it changes things at the root.
What Therapy with Brittany Looks Like
Brittany is a depth-oriented therapist — which means she pays close attention not just to what you share, but to what's living just beneath the surface. The place where real change begins.
In sessions, she slows the pattern down with you. She pauses and backs up to the exact moment where you overrode your own reaction to avoid conflict — and stays there. She helps you notice the sensations that arise before the override happens, and teaches you how to remain with yourself in that moment: with your feelings, with your boundaries, with what's true.
This is self-loyalty. Not rigidity. Not selfishness. A steady, quiet allegiance to yourself — even in love, even when it's hard.
Over time, this work tends to bring a quieter mind, boundaries that feel natural rather than forced, and a different relationship with yourself entirely. One where your own voice becomes the one you trust most.
"We each carry an inner north. A self worth orienting toward. And no matter how far you've drifted, your north hasn't moved."
— Brittany
Not sure if Brittany is the right fit? Try the gokc Therapist Match Maker — it takes two minutes and connects you with the right person on our team.
Background & Philosophy
Brittany Purrington is a licensed psychotherapist (PLPC) practicing under clinical supervision at gokc Healing Center. Her path to this work wasn't a straight line — it wound through loss, creativity, and the kind of inner work that asks you to keep returning to yourself, even when that feels unfamiliar.
Along the way, she came to understand something that now shapes everything about how she practices: that we each carry an inner north — a self worth orienting toward. And no matter how far you've drifted, your north hasn't moved. That conviction is the foundation of her work.
Brittany also practices through her own platform, Northbound Therapy Studio, and sees clients via telehealth in Missouri, Kansas, and Washington State. She specializes in self-abandonment, people-pleasing, anxious attachment, and the childhood wounds that shape how we love and lose ourselves in relationships.
Brittany is part of the gokc team — a Kansas City-based practice rooted in the belief that therapy should be accessible, real, and genuinely helpful.
Payment Options
Please reach out directly to discuss Brittany's current rates and availability. She offers a free 20-minute consultation — a real conversation about what you're carrying and whether working together feels like the right fit.
Free Consultation
Brittany offers a free 20-minute consultation to explore whether working together is the right fit.
Using Insurance?
Other gokc therapists accept select insurance plans including BCBS.
Try the Therapist Match Maker to find the right fit for your coverage.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is self-abandonment and how does therapy help?
Self-abandonment is the pattern of consistently overriding your own needs, reactions, instincts, and feelings in order to manage others' emotions, avoid conflict, or maintain connection. It develops early — often as a survival strategy — and becomes so automatic it stops feeling like a choice. Therapy with Brittany helps you slow this pattern down, understand its origins, and gradually build a steadier relationship with yourself: one where your own inner experience becomes something you stay with rather than skip past.
What is anxious attachment and can it change?
Anxious attachment is a relational pattern characterized by hypervigilance, fear of abandonment, and a tendency to shrink or over-accommodate to maintain closeness. It develops in early relationships and tends to replay in adult ones. Yes — it can change. Not through willpower or intellectual understanding alone, but through the kind of depth-oriented therapeutic work that actually shifts how these patterns live in you. That's exactly what Brittany does.
Is this therapy only for women?
Brittany's specialty and language is primarily oriented toward women, as that's the population she connects most deeply with. If something in what she's written resonates with you regardless of gender, a free consultation is the best way to explore whether it's a good fit.
Do you offer online therapy in Missouri and Kansas?
Yes. Brittany provides online therapy exclusively — for clients in Missouri, Kansas, and Washington State. All sessions are conducted via telehealth, making her work accessible throughout the Kansas City metro and beyond.
What is a PLPC?
A Provisionally Licensed Professional Counselor (PLPC) is a fully trained counselor working toward full licensure under clinical supervision. Brittany holds all required credentials and provides the same quality, depth-oriented care as any licensed therapist — with the added benefit of ongoing clinical oversight.
How do I know if Brittany is the right therapist for me?
If something in what you've read today felt familiar — that recognition is worth paying attention to. The best next step is a free 20-minute consultation — a real conversation about what you're carrying and whether working together feels right. You can also try the gokc Therapist Match Maker to explore the full team. There's no commitment required.
Ready to Come Back to Yourself?
You've spent long enough making yourself smaller. You don't have to have it figured out to reach out — that's what the consultation is for.
Schedule a Free 20-Minute Consultation →Meet the full gokc therapy team — or use our Therapist Match Maker to find the right fit.
