LPC, 30 years of experience
New to Grow
Seeking help is a sign of health, a recognition of a need for change, and a desire to have greater well-being. If it were not for the fact that we humans discovered we needed each other, we would not have survived. Seeking help is not only courageous but also necessary for us to thrive. I aim to walk with you shoulder to shoulder through this process to help you attain the goals in therapy you seek. 'Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the judgment that something is more important than fear.' I received my Master of Arts in Education in Community/Agency Counseling from Virginia Tech in 1995 and my Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Messiah University in 2021. For nearly 30 years, I have counseled in the field of Mental Health and Chemical Dependency in various environments. I have counseled in inpatient psychiatric centers, both state and private, residential and intensive in-home services with youth, mental health emergency services with adults and youth, and in private practice. In chemical dependency, I've worked in outpatient, intensive outpatient, halfway house, correctional, and inpatient settings. I've had the privilege of lecturing at Community Services Boards in Virginia, the Virginia State Emergency Service Conference, and the Virginia State DARE conference, and have presented at Glenbeigh at Rock Creek, Rocky River, Erie, and at the Cleveland Clinic main campus' Psychiatric Grand Rounds. I've worked with people from a wide variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds and members of the LGBTQIA community and have done specialized work with those in the helping professions.
You can expect first that I will care and be compassionate for your situation, with me wanting to know how I can best help you. I believe firmly that I am not an expert but rather, your teammate in helping you get what you are looking for in therapy. I want to get a good idea as to what is happening for you, and what you want from therapy, so I can tailor what we do to fit you.
What sets me apart is that I take a purpose-driven approach to achieving your goals. Everything we will do is designed to help you get where you want to go. I will bring nearly 30 years of experience to the table in service of our team. You have been with you quite a while, so between us, I firmly believe we have the resources together to help improve your life.
I don't know that I have a dream client, but what I can say is that clients who are willing to try new things, and open enough to have a dialog about how those things are working, or aren't, and what may require more tailoring to be more effective, have been my most successful clients. I have specific experience in working with fellow caregivers, whether in mental health, social services, medicine, pharmacy, first response, law enforcement, or law, and may be uniquely suited to help those in these professions.
'As we think, so we become' is the old bromide. I use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help you challenge long-held beliefs that may have been helpful at one time, but have now outlasted their usefulness.
We are in significant pain when our behaviors don't match our values or priorities. We'll explore your 'rulebook' to see if what you live by matches what you want, and if not, how to change the rules in that rulebook.
We are also in our most pain when what we think and believe may not match up with what is happening in our lives. By examining these differences, we can discover what may need to change, and how to go about that process of change.