Take Authorship of Your Life.
A unique blend of modalities to help you untangle self-sabotaging stories, uncover hidden strengths, and unlock a new narrative for healing and growth.
Take Authorship of Your Life.
A unique blend of modalities that help you untangle self-sabotaging stories, uncover hidden character strengths, and unlock a new narrative for healing and growth.
What Is Navigational Narratives?
Navigational Narratives is a space for people ready to re-examine the stories they’ve been living by, and begin rewriting the ones that no longer serve them. Founded by psychotherapist Dana Schmalenberg, it combines narrative therapy, creative insight, and grounded tools to help you move from confusion to clarity, and create a life that finally feels like your own.
Feeling overwhelmed, reactive, or stuck in your head?
Start by calming your nervous system. My free guided meditation, Mindfulness for Managing Intense Emotions, helps you pause, breathe, and reconnect to yourself when emotions feel unmanageable.
Enter your email below to download it instantly, and you’ll also receive occasional essays and tools to help you navigate midlife with more clarity, humor, and heart.
No spam. Ever. Just thoughtful insights for recalibrating your inner compass.
Meet Dana
I’m a psychotherapist and former Hollywood screenwriter who helps people rewrite the stories that keep them stuck.
My approach blends Narrative Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Neuroscience, and Non-Dual Philosophy, a mix for people who think deeply, feel intensely, and are ready for meaningful change.
If you’re navigating burnout, reinvention, or a midlife recalibration, our work together can help you find clarity, calm, and a renewed sense of direction.
Work With Me
Florida Clients
Licensed psychotherapy for Florida-based clients, via telehealth or in-person through Anchor Life Clinic.
Oregon Residents
Licensed psychotherapy for Oregon-based clients via telehealth through Mindful Therapy Group.
All Other Locations
Private-pay, non-clinical consultation for individuals outside Florida or Oregon.
I offer private-pay consultations that help you regulate emotions, untangle mental clutter, and take decisive, meaningful action. These sessions are non-clinical but grounded in evidence-based insight and real-world experience.
Privacy Notice:
No personal health information is collected on this site.
For privacy and HIPAA compliance, all insurance scheduling and billing occur through the partner clinics above.
Explore
Psychology Today
Find me on America’s top resource for mental health practitioners.
Recalculating Midlife
Read essays on midlife reinvention, finding meaning, humor, and direction in the second and third acts.
Middle-Aged White Lady Therapist
Therapy meets comedy. Because sometimes laughter is emotional regulation.
HI, I’M DANA
After 20 years of professional screenwriting, I decided to become a psychotherapist. I returned to graduate school and received a Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health. I possess a unique combination of skills that can help you identify the "life scripts" you've created that may not be working for you and teach you how to "rewrite and rewire" them to take authorship of your life.
Sign up and receive your free guided meditation “Dealing with Intense
Emotions” to help soothe emotional overwhelm.
New courses, updates, free offerings, only what’s supportive. I’ll never spam you!