LPCC, 6 years of experience
New to Grow
Hello and welcome! I'm Alexandra Brown and I currently work with adults ages 18 and over in individual, couples, and family therapy. At the heart I'm an emotionally-focused therapist who sees through an attachment-based lens. I also incorporate pieces of cognitive-behavioral therapy, experiential therapy, and relational therapy in my work with clients. I believe that true healing cannot occur in isolation, and that the healing process in therapy begins with building a strong and trusting therapeutic alliance. Through building this relationship, we can work together to identify goals, increase understanding of unhelpful patterns leading to distress, and ultimately enact sustainable change. This process, or "the work" in therapy with me does not just consist of addressing and managing surface-level symptoms of various mental health struggles, such as depression, anxiety, or interpersonal conflict, but it involves digging deeper into the issues underlying them. Only then can you gain awareness around how the symptoms began to take life, how they do not serve you anymore, and how to create long-lasting change based on the newly discovered parts of yourself you will uncover in this work.
The first session with me will look a little different than the remaining sessions together going forward, as it will include a diagnostic assessment. Through this evaluation, I learn about your presenting concerns, mental health symptoms, mental health/substance use treatment history, various aspects of your social and familial history, and intentions and hopes for therapy. Through gathering this essential information, I am better able to meet you where you are, work with you in creating attainable and realistic goals, begin to build the therapeutic alliance, and start the work!
As previously mentioned, my therapeutic approach very much hinges on the strength of the therapeutic alliance. Building this trusting and safe relationship requires emotional vulnerability on both ends, client and therapist, just as building a trusting and safe interpersonal relationship requires emotional vulnerability on both ends. I believe my deep passion for connection, access to empathy, and genuine and authentic approach with clients are principles at the core of my ability to help build this alliance with my clients, and thus help them build it with others. Numerous studies and meta-analyses show that a strong therapeutic alliance is a significant and consistent predictor of positive psychotherapy outcomes, explaining roughly 25-30% of the variance in treatment success.
I have experience working with clients ages 6-80 but have developed a passion for working with clients ages 18 and above who are motivated to enact change in their lives. Whether you are seeking change in your life as an individual, as a couple, or as a family system, I am passionate about helping clients who are ready to get into the driver's seat of their own life, even if they don't yet know how, or what this could even look like. I am here to sit in the passenger seat with you while you navigate your life. I'm here to provide guidance, emotional support, to challenge unhelpful ways of thinking that have prevented you from being in the driver's seat of your life, and to ultimately help you reach the change you want to see, even if you don't know what that change is, but know that some sort of change is essential in order to heal. I am grateful to have had the experience of working with clients of various ethnic and racial identities/backgrounds, gender identities, sexual orientations, and world views. All are welcome here!
I have done this work from an attachment-based lens since seeing my first client in my graduate-level field experience at the University of St. Thomas, and this model continues to be the heart of how I approach this work with clients.
As a leading evidence-based therapeutic modality, CBT is a method I weave in to my approach as a whole with all of my clients. The way we think has a significant impact on our emotional experience, and thus our actions, so we have no choice but to examine those thought processes and challenge them accordingly.
Throughout my experience with a vast array of clients, I have found that I am, by personal definition, an emotionally-focused therapist who sees through an attachment-based lens. These approaches go hand-in-hand, and are fundamental to how I connect with clients and assist with leading them to the outcomes they desire. Numerous studies consistently show that a strong connection, or "therapeutic alliance," is one of the strongest predictors of successful therapy outcomes. How can we build our therapeutic alliance without focusing on one of the central traits that makes us human, emotion?
I have been implementing relational therapeutic techniques in my work with couples and families for six years and am passionate about these demographics. My relational work incorporates an emotionally focused and attachment-based approach to address, challenge, and improve how clients relate to themselves, their partners, their family members, and how they show up in interpersonal relationships as a whole.
I have incorporated various experiential techniques in my therapy sessions with clients to address concerns of anxiety, grief, relational challenges, and emotional regulation, with positive and powerful outcomes. I have experience implementing experiential techniques including the empty chair, pulled from Gestalt therapy, role-playing, and mindfulness-based activities.