Shirley Williams

Shirley Williams is a Colorado-based licensed clinical social worker who helps people facing sleep troubles alongside other life stressors. She draws on three decades of clinical work to guide practical steps toward better rest and daily routines. Her style is grounded and conversational, aimed at making small, manageable changes that add up over time.

Williams spent her early years studying psychology at Wayne State University and earned a Master of Social Work. She then completed a two-year intensive family therapy program in Ann Arbor when family systems approaches were emerging. Those early influences shaped how she attends to relationships and patterns that affect sleep, mood, and daily functioning.

Her career includes work in health care, hospice, schools, foster care and adoption services, and pregnancy support programs. She also served people with disabilities and their caregivers, which informed her attention to chronic illness and sleep disruption linked to caregiving stress and pain.

In 2000 she finished a 1,000-hour massage therapy program at the Boulder College of Massage Therapy and became nationally certified in massage and bodywork therapy and licensed in Colorado. That background supports a somatic perspective in sessions, helping people notice how body sensations connect to sleep and rest challenges.

She integrates trauma-sensitive approaches such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Narrative Therapy, and Trauma-Focused Therapy. Williams also weaves expressive tools into work when helpful, including sound, movement, and clay, and she adapts these for virtual or in-person conversation.

How her approaches work in online therapy