I am a licensed clinical social worker serving adult individuals across Texas via teletherapy from the Greater Houston area, with 7 years of client-facing clinical experience as a social worker. I enjoy several different things about therapy -- is one or more of these you?: the mentoring aspects of therapy with young adults, using evidence-based therapies to help people overcome PTSD trauma, such as sleep better, concentrate more, feel safe more, and recover the experience of positive emotions, and helping professionals prevent or manage burnout.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
My first session typically introduces therapy, orients the client, and establishes the foundation and basic expectations of our professional therapeutic relationship, and then the latter half of the first session is really an opportunity for the client to say what brings them to therapy now. After the first session, typically I provide a best practice structured 2-5 session comprehensive bio-psycho-social assessment, the purpose of which is to panoramically understand what is going on in the client's life, and help the client identify and prioritize therapy goals that will be the basis of the interventions to come.
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
Among by colleagues and therapy peers, I am known to always be keenly interested in studying evidence-based practices and interventions, completing continuing education at four times the pace of what's required of licensed clinical social workers. With my clients, I am known to be diligent in identifying and using evidence-based practices to help my clients resolve their issues as well as discover their own solutions. I often help clients to see things from a new perspective. I balance my own inputs into therapy with a high valuation of client right to self-determination and self-direction.
Describe the client(s) you are best positioned to serve.
I have experience using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Mentalizing-Based Therapy to help clients understand and name their feelings. Additionally, I have experience using Cognitive Processing Therapy to help individuals with PTSD, both those recovering from sexual assault and sexual abuse and professional secondary-trauma exposures. I also enjoy helping adults recover from "lesser" young adult traumas called Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE's), such as parental substance use, witnessing domestic violence, parental divorce, etc. I also have experience helping professionals to manage burnout (a symptom of distress), usually by making boundaries, learning how to ask for help, identifying reasonable expectations of oneself, reducing substance use if applicable, and expanding healthy self-care and coping skills. Lastly, due to my prior job experience of three years in the schools, I also enjoy the mentoring aspects of therapy, such as helping young adults transition into adulthood during college years, etc. I like to empower and validate, as well as help people to organize their thinking and understand their experiences.
About Elizabeth Reed
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VirtualMy treatment methods
Cognitive Processing (CPT)
I have completed a Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) CEU and have experience successfully providing this trauma/PTSD therapy such that PTSD symptoms were dramatically reduced. This therapy is appropriate if clients meet certain PTSD screening criteria on the PCL-5, a screening tool which I can provide to you during assessment. This therapy involves 1-2 hours of homework outside of session each week. CPT is an evidence-based PTSD therapy. I'd be happy to provide you more information to help you decide if this is the right fit before committing to this structured 12-18 session intervention.
Eclectic
I frequently draw from multiple modalities tailored to advance clients in their unique therapy goals, coping, and thriving, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), especially DBT skills training (e.g. distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness/assertiveness training), Mentalizing-Based Therapy (MBT), Motivational Interviewing (MI), and Solutions-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT). I also draw from my Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) training to help clients regarding themes such as safety, trust, power and control, esteem and intimacy after "traumas" that don't meet PTSD criteria, such as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE's), e.g. parental substance use, divorce and remarriage, and/or parental incarceration, etc., or attachment trauma. I am also experienced in resourcing and empowering survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV)/domestic violence. I like to help people live whole, well-adjusted, and self-directed lives, with the option and mental flexibility to see the glass half full, the power to experience positive emotions, after validating the ways the glass may have been half empty. I like to help people understand themselves, their feelings and thoughts, their needs and goals, and their own solutions and vision. I also enjoy the mentoring aspects of therapy when working with young adults, helping them adjust through life transitions into adulthood.
Acceptance and commitment (ACT)
In help clients with cognitive behavioral therapy type Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) interventions in order to move toward a pragmatic sense of acceptance (i.e. the quick sand metaphor), identify values across a diverse array of life domains (work, relationships, health maintenance, spirituality if applicable, and leisure and recreation) (i.e. the bull’s eye activity), identify life values, make decisions more aligned with values (i.e. choice point exercise), and mindfully and incrementally hold space for and practice visualize exercises with difficult feelings (instead of avoidance).
Solution Focused Brief Treatment
I used Solutions Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) interventions to help clients imagine what actions they would make if they already felt happy (envisioning the future with hope), identify past exceptions to problematic behavior, and in order to emphasize and praise already adaptive thoughts and behaviors in a strengths-based way.
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
I have trained in dialectical behavioral therapy. I particularly lean into the skills training components, with an emphasis typically on coping skills/distress tolerance (i.e. making a top ten list “distraction plan” and a top ten list “self-soothing using the five senses plan). I also often will teach and role-play assertiveness skills if indicated, defining assertiveness, discussing the benefits of assertiveness versus being passive or aggressive, helping clients identify their own communication style, offering a model assertiveness sentence stem (“When you [factual statement about what happened____. I felt [a feeling word] _____. I would prefer [the client’s wish about what would happen instead] ______.”) Then finally, if indicated, I will role play speaking assertive phrases and hearing assertiveness phrases, with attention to voice volume, posture, body language, and reflections on how it feels. I have also trained in the classic mix in DBT of offering supportive and challenging responses to help the client grow.