I work with the ones who kept going.

psychologist speaker coach guide

I'm Dr. Shenell Evans.

I work with people whose lives have been disrupted, overloaded, or quietly shattered—sometimes without obvious trauma, and often while remaining highly competent.

You might be holding it together so well that no one has noticed what it's cost you. You know what you value. You understand what should help. And you still can't follow through. That's not a failure of willpower. That's an overloaded nervous system.

I don't approach healing as merely self-improvement, optimization, or symptom elimination. I understand distress as a loss of access to yourself, not a personal failure. And my work is about restoring that access. Slowly. Honestly. Without performance.

How I Got Here

I started my training at Jackson State University and deepened it at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where I studied gender, sexuality, health, and the complexities that make us human.

I researched posttraumatic growth in people living with chronic and terminal illness..and then I lived it myself! All that high-achieving, non-stop grinding led me to the only place it could: a place in need of healing.

I did the deep work. I found where my soul lights up. I rested like my life depended on it—because as a Black woman, rest is a revolutionary act. I baptized myself in the ocean in my own name. I stopped the madness of trying to do everything alone and lined up a whole squad to help me grow. And I cried tears of joy for myself for the first time.

That journey gave me more than credentials. It gave me a framework…one that didn't come from theory alone, but from a woman who kept going, lost access, restored it, and refused to let the process be prettified into something it wasn't.

That framework is called Shattered to Sovereign™. It's what I teach, practice, and live.