Shawna Pankonin

Shawna Pankonin is a licensed professional counselor practicing in Mississippi with 14 years of experience in the mental health field. She holds graduate-level counseling credentials and is licensed as a professional counselor in Mississippi (MS LPC 1841).

Her background includes work in homes, providing residential level-of-care therapy services, in schools, with youth court systems throughout the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, in outpatient services, and at a Child Advocacy Center. This variety of settings has given her experience with a broad range of clinical issues and populations.

Shawna believes the best way to understand what someone is facing is to learn where they come from, allow them to be the expert on themselves, and offer the supports needed for success. She has the most experience helping people with stress reduction, anxiety, depression, anger management, family conflict, parenting skills, relationship conflict, and complex trauma and abuse, and she has worked with a wide variety of other mental health disorders as well.

Her dedication to mental health work grew from years supporting children, adolescents, and their families in state custody and from seeing friends and family members cope with mental illness. She understands how overwhelming seeking help can feel and how isolating mental health concerns may become, and she also knows how much can change for the better when someone finds the right support and commits to self-care.

Shawna uses a person-centered, holistic, and eclectic approach that begins where each person is and tailors treatment to individual needs while considering how thoughts, beliefs, and lifestyle influence experience. She primarily draws on evidence-based methods such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness, motivational interviewing, and solution-focused counseling, and she integrates more classical counseling approaches when appropriate. Her style is warm and supportive, yet direct and ready to address struggles head-on. She is creative in session structure and prefers to let sessions go where they need to so clients can feel empowered and gain control.

Shawna is clear that no one is a magician and no one can simply “fix” a situation overnight. Meaningful change takes time and effort from the client, and she is committed to walking alongside people who are ready to do that work. Together she helps establish goals and steps to understand problems and build confidence to move forward. Across her years of practice she has repeatedly seen a core need: to be heard, to be validated, and to know you are not alone.