I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with over 25 years clinical experience working with children, families and adults across a variety of settings including outpatient mental health, school based, crisis intervention, inpatient psychiatric facilities, large non-profit, and private practice. My goal is to assist my clients to feel comfortable in reducing their symptoms and helping them to be their optimal selves.
In our first session, we will learn about the client's presenting problems, define goals and time frame for therapy, focusing on what the best method of treatment to use with them.
My greatest strengths as a provider is building rapport and connection with my clients, and being able to clearly understand the reason for services, and helping them to identify reasonable and measurable goals to achieve overall well being.
I have practiced CBT for the last 25 years with children, families and adults. CBT is a talking therapy that aims to help people manage their problems by changing the way they think and behave. CBT is proven to be effective for a wide variety of mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety.
For the last 7 years, I am rostered in CPP, working with children ages 0-6 and their caregivers. CPP helps children and young people to make sense of sad, angry, painful or confusing feelings and thoughts. Therapeutic sessions include the child and parent or primary caregiver. The primary goal of CPP is to support and strengthen the relationship between a child and his or her caregiver as a vehicle for restoring the child's cognitive, behavioral, and social functioning. Treatment also focuses on contextual factors that may affect the caregiver-child relationship.
I am certified in Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) since 2015. TF-CBT addresses the mental health needs of children, adolescents, and families suffering from the destructive effects of early trauma. The treatment is particularly sensitive to the unique problems of youth with post-traumatic stress and mood disorders resulting from sexual abuse, as well as from physical abuse, violence, or grief. TF-CBT includes the following treatment components: assessment and engagement, psycho-education for trauma, self regulation techniques/skills, affective modulation, cognitive coping, the trauma narrative, in vivo exposure, and enhancing safety.
For the last 20 years, I have used Strength-based therapy in my practice with adults. Strengths-based therapy is a type of positive psychotherapy and counseling that focuses on your internal strengths and resourcefulness, rather than on your weaknesses, failures, and shortcomings. The tenet is that this focus sets up a positive mindset that helps you build on your best qualities, find your strengths, improve resilience, and change your worldview to one that is more positive.