The Pine Center was founded in 2022 by Kaci Pennington in Charlotte, NC, as a space for deeply relational care that is consistent, steady, and deeply human.

​

Our work centers people who have learned to disconnect from themselves in order to stay connected to others who are now finding their way back into relationship with their internal experience.

​

This disconnection can take many forms: feeling fragmented inside, unsure what you feel or need, moving through life on autopilot, or experiencing loneliness even in close relationships. Often, it shows up as internal conflict, with different parts of the self pulling in different directions, or as a quiet sense of being distant from oneself while still functioning well on the outside.

​

At The Pine Center, we understand these experiences are not a personal failure, character flaws, or moral failings. Instead, we view them as intelligent survival strategies brilliantly shaped by relationship, environment, and necessity.

What We Believe About Healing

We do not believe healing is about becoming more efficient, more self-optimized, or more “fixed.”

We understand healing as:

• coming back into relationship with yourself

• increasing capacity to notice internal experience without abandoning it

• making room for parts of you that had to go quiet or unseen in order to survive

• and learning, slowly, what it means to stay with yourself while staying in connection with others

 

Healing is often subtle and it certainly isn't linear. We believe the strongest and most lasting healing unfolds through safety, consistency, and relationship. 

How We Work

At The Pine Center, therapy is collaborative, consent-based, and paced with your nervous system rather than against it.

You are not expected to perform insight, progress, or readiness in order to receive care.

You decide:

• what you share

• when you share it

• how often you attend sessions

• and how quickly or slowly we move

We may offer reflections, invitations, or observations along the way but these are never directives. You remain the expert of your own experience throughout our work. 

Our role is to stay alongside you as you build capacity to be in contact with yourself in ways that may not have felt safe before.

Who We Support

We work with people navigating:

• disconnection from self or internal experience

• dissociation, multiplicity, and internal fragmentation

• chronic self-abandonment patterns in relationships

• identity confusion or loss of self in connection with others

• loneliness despite relational closeness

• chronic pain and nervous system dysregulation

• relational trauma and survival-based adaptation

• childhood trauma in various forms

We are especially attuned to the ways people learn to disappear from themselves in order to be safe, loved, or accepted.

About Our Name

The Pine Center is inspired by the pineal gland, a small but significant part of the brain, associated with sleep, rhythm, and regulation. In many traditions, it has also been called the “third eye,” symbolizing perception and inner knowing.

For us, this symbolism is less about mysticism and more about orientation:
the capacity we all have to come back into contact with ourselves.

Our Commitment

We do not position ourselves as experts over your experience.

We do not believe our learning has ever ended.

We do not believe care should require performance.

We do not believe you have to earn the right to be met with steadiness and respect.

We trust that the ways you have survived make sense.

And we hold space for what becomes possible when you no longer have to do it alone.