My background includes formal education, professional trainings, clinical experience, personal experience, teaching, and mindfulness practice — all of which help me to offer a holistic approach to working with my clients.
Areas of Specialization
Social, emotional, and mental health issues in adults related to pregnancy and parenting
Social, emotional, and developmental issues in children, especially those under age seven
Issues related to adoption, trauma, and attachment
Big feelings and behaviors in children, including tantrums, meltdowns, yelling, avoidance, refusal, and not listening
Anxiety in adults and children
Highly Sensitive adults and children
Relational trauma (struggles related to family-of-origin)
Generational trauma (unhealthy ways of interacting with family members and how this impacts subsequent generations)
Experience
Since 2006, I’ve worked as a therapist with children and families. I began in community mental health and have worked in pediatric, foster care, agency, and public school settings.
In 2014, I opened my private practice. Several years later, after working with children and families for over a decade, I began working exclusively with grown-ups (you can read why here).
Since 2021, after having my daughter, after a challenging pregnancy, I expanded my focus to include working with women (and their partners, if they have one) who are pregnant, trying to conceive, or who have experienced trauma during pregnancy or birth.
Approach
I began working directly with parents because, after 10+ years of working with children and parents, I realized that relief for both parents and kids seemed to come much more quickly after parent-only sessions. I found that helping parents learn how to help their children - in the moment, when problems were happening - seemed to expedite reaching desired goals significantly.
I use strengths-based, collaborative, integrative approaches informed largely by the studies of mindfulness, interpersonal neurobiology, and developmental psychology.
In my work, my highest goal is to help parents learn how to support their children in ways that are the most helpful, healthful, and life-affirming to their children - and also to help parents to eliminate toxic levels of stress, struggle, and discord as immediately as possible. My goal is also to help parents learn how they can best support their individual kid in the immediate and moving forward - according to both parent and child individual differences in temperament, personality, preferences, natural strengths, etc.
Professional Trainings
I’ve trained extensively in the areas of Infant and Toddler Mental Health, Parent-Child Relationships and their Impact on Child Development, Trauma, Anxiety, and in how to best support parents and caregivers.
Since completing university programs, I’ve studied trauma and approaches to healing trauma extensively. I’ve also trained with leaders in the fields of mindfulness, somatic practices, neurological development, wellness, and holistic health. Here are a few that have felt especially influential for me:
Education
Bachelor’s degree in Communication from Northern Arizona University, graduated 2000
Master’s degree in Counseling from Arizona State University, graduated 2006
Doctorate degree in Educational Psychology from Arizona State University, graduated 2013
License Information
Arizona LPC-13343