LPC, 4 years of experience
My name is Laurie, and I am a licensed professional counselor. I received my Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Texas A&M University - Central Texas, and a graduate certificate in Applied Behavioral Analysis at Arizona State University. I am a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor in the great state of Texas, and have been practicing for the past 4 years. I'm interested in helping clients who have experienced domestic violence and sexual assault become empowered and regain their autonomy. My goal is to ensure that my clients learn coping skills, themselves, and the world around them so that they are able to live life in a way that is meaningful to them.
In the first session, I will ask you about your strengths, your weaknesses, and your goals. By doing this, I hope to better understand you, and build a therapeutic alliance that caters to your needs. From that point on, over the next six months, we will interweave a mixture of distress tolerance techniques, mindfulness practices, interpersonal effectiveness, and emotion regulation skills so that we can maintain your strengths while focusing on your weaknesses. We will craft safety plans that cater to your goals, and discover hopes that you may have forgotten or dashed away.
Having worked with vulnerable individuals and individuals of all ages over the past years, I've developed a knack for listening and understanding in a way that will help you identify the values you want to live by, the supports you want surrounding you, and goals that are sure to bring you fulfillment from wherever you are in life.
I enjoy working with individuals that have experienced substance and/or alcohol misuse, as well as those who have experienced domestic violence and sexual assault. My clients are empowered, even if they may not feel it, and resilient in the face to adversity. My clients may have stigmatized diagnoses like PTSD, depression, or anxiety, and may have trouble establishing and maintaining boundaries. My clients may also still be in toxic relationships, and are having difficulties navigating how to leave, or how to protect themselves and their loved ones. Even so, my clients know that their current hardships don't stop them from doing what they want or need to do, and will do whatever it takes to ensure that, at the very least, they're themselves are okay.
Working with children, adolescents and individuals with substance and alcohol misuse, I have been able to successfully implement CBT in order to identify cognitive thinking errors and behavioral patterns that may hinder someone's progress in life. I make use of visual techniques such as drawing out these thinking errors and anxiety circles in order to better teach how CBT can best help people reach their goals without getting distracted by the miseries life enjoys pounding on us.
I've implemented mindfulness, emotional regulation skills, distress tolerance skills, and interpersonal effectiveness skills into my every day practice with individual and group therapy. With adults and adolescents alike, I teach how you to live based off of your values. I also teach you how to live for yourself and for others, without compromising who you are.
I believe that all people are striving to do their best with what they're given in life, even if it might look odd to others. It's an empowering belief that has allowed me to help guide people to their own goals in life, rather than what others may say is best for them. This has helped my clients find their inner peace and strength to continue dealing with life.
I believe that the person is their own expert. They know their goals, their bodies, and what they want out of life; they just need to find a way to navigate the pain. By using this approach, I am able to provide a voice and autonomy to those who have been robbed of it all their lives, whether that be veterans, those who have experienced abuse and neglect, homeless individuals, and others.
I believe that women have a unique set of challenges they face throughout the world. Bucking up against systems designed to disenfranchise women, it is important that I can provide necessary support for a woman-identifying client. This includes making sure I'm prepared for issues faced by women of color, transgender women, women of different faiths, nationalities, ethnicities, etc. This has helped provide me with the tools necessary to deliver person-centered care and to build therapeutic alliances to those I otherwise wouldn't have been blessed to meet.