LP, 5 years of experience
New to Grow
I am an Ohio native who is passionate about helping youth and families overcome challenges. I have 10 years of training in assessment, intervention, and research with children, teens, and young adults. As a therapist, I primarily use a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy approach. I also offer Parent Management Training for ADHD management and behavior difficulties. I like to apply a Systems lens no matter my treatment approach, which means I consider other external factors (eg, family structure, relationships, medical conditions, life stressors) that may add context for the presenting concern, in order to better understand challenges and move towards more sustainable change.
The first session is the intro and hopefully feels easy. I will ask a lot questions. Some questions may not seem important, for instance, I will ask about friends and family, school, developmental and medical history, mood, behaviors, therapy history, sleeping and eating habits. The goal is to learn more about you as a whole person and during the process of talking, hopefully you learn a bit about my personality and if I might be a good fit for you. Of course I will ask about why you are coming to therapy and we will discuss therapy goals, a plan, and what therapy might look like for you.
People always say I smile all the time, even when I don’t think I am. I am by no means an overly energetic person but I am genuinely pleasant and warm and it’s important for people to feel that warmth from me. As a child psychologist, I have always done well building relationships with children, teens, and parents because I know how to engage people in the way they need and in a way they understand. Most of all, more important than being Dr. Harrison, I am a human, and my ability to connect and support people from a place of human understanding, sometimes setting aside what I learned in a textbook, is what truly helps facilitate the change people want to see in their life.
I primarily serve youth and young adults (5-21 years), with concerns for mood, anxiety, adjustment difficulties, grief, ADHD management/executive functioning skills, parent-child relationship, and chronic disease self-management (e.g., health behavior change, non-pharmacological pain management, medication adherence). Therapy with me is often skills-based, this means you will learn skills and strategies to cope, problem-solve, and manage symptoms (thoughts, feelings, behaviors and/or physical symptoms). By doing this, I teach you to be your own therapist/couch, the goal is to get to a point where you don’t need me. I do make adaptions to my approach as needed to try to meet youth and family’s needs in a more individualized way, dialing back on skills training if needed. I recognize for some clients, sometimes what is needed most is space to process thoughts and emotions in a supportive, unbiased environment and I am here to offer that too. For youth, I believe some parent involvement is important and that looks different for everyone of all ages. At a minimum, this may be brief check ins, for others it may be spending more time in session to support the parent because I understand that as a parent, it can be hard to coach your child in applying therapy techniques if you are stressed, anxious, exhausted, etc.
I have have had over 5 years of experience using CBT based interventions for individual therapy and group therapy with children, adolescents and young adults experiencing challenges related to anxiety, depression, adjustment, grief, ADHD, emotion dysregulation and behavior impulsivity. I have also used CBT-based approach to train parents in behavior management strategies for ADHD and behavior difficulties. Lastly, I use CBT with some elements of Motivational Interviewing and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help youth and young adults adjust to having a chronic disease and to help develop behavioral disease self-management skills (non-pharmaceutical pain management, medication adherence, adherence to medical recommendations).