K Devonne Moore-Dandridge profile image

K Devonne Moore-Dandridge

K Devonne Moore-Dandridge

(she/her)

LCMHC
16 years of experience
Virtual

Hello, my name is Devonne and I have been very passionate about working in the mental health and substance abuse field for several years. I have also become certified as a sexuality coach, as this has been an area of healing that I found a great need for with individuals as well as couples. I am currently in private practice and also working as a therapist at Novant psychiatric Associates. Preferably recognized by my middle name, Devonne. I am licensed in North Carolina with 13 years of professional work experience. I have experience in helping clients with stress and anxiety, coping with addictions, intimacy related issues, & motivation, self esteem, and confidence. I work with my clients to create an open and safe environment where thoughts and feelings can be shared without fear of judgment. Taking the first step to sign up for therapy can take courage and I am proud of you for getting started!

What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?

In the first session, clients can expect a very laid-back and casual conversation more like icebreaking getting to know each other and seeing if there’s an organic connection as human beings. I don’t typically regurgitate information that I can read for myself I think being able to connect with a person in conversation and visualization is very important before getting into sensitive matters. My goal is to earn your trust. I don’t expect to have it just because you came to the platform for Therapy.

Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.

As a provider, I believe that my greatest strengths are being able to connect with people on a genuine level with compassion as a human being. I have a way of making the patients and individuals that I work with feel comfortable and creating a space this safe and free from judgment.

About K Devonne Moore-Dandridge

Licensed in

Appointments

Virtual

My treatment methods

Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)

1. Assessment and Goal Setting: - The clinician collaborates with the client to identify specific goals for therapy, such as reducing symptoms of anxiety or depression, improving coping skills, or changing dysfunctional patterns of thinking and behavior. - The clinician conducts a thorough assessment of the client's presenting concerns, including gathering information about their thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and life experiences. 2. Psychoeducation: - The clinician provides the client with information about the principles and techniques of CBT, explaining how thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are interconnected, and how these interactions contribute to psychological distress. - Psychoeducation may also involve teaching the client about common cognitive distortions (e.g., black-and-white thinking, catastrophizing) and behavioral patterns that contribute to their symptoms. 3. Cognitive Restructuring: - The clinician helps the client identify and challenge negative or irrational thoughts (cognitive restructuring) by examining evidence for and against these thoughts, exploring alternative interpretations, and developing more balanced and realistic perspectives. - Techniques such as Socratic questioning, thought records, and cognitive restructuring worksheets may be used to facilitate this process. 4. Behavioral Activation: - The clinician works with the client to identify specific behaviors or activities that contribute to their well-being and mood enhancement. - The client is encouraged to engage in pleasurable and meaningful activities, even when they don't feel like doing so, as a way to counteract feelings of depression or anxiety and increase overall functioning. - Behavioral activation may involve setting behavioral goals, scheduling enjoyable activities, and gradually increasing engagement in valued activities. 5. Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP): - For clients with anxiety disorders, particularly phobias or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the clinician may utilize exposure techniques to gradually expose the client to feared situations or stimuli in a controlled and systematic manner. - The client learns to confront their fears while refraining from engaging in avoidance or safety behaviors, thereby reducing anxiety and desensitizing to the feared stimuli. 6. Skill Building: - The clinician teaches the client specific coping skills and strategies to manage stress, regulate emotions, and problem-solve effectively. - Skills such as relaxation techniques, mindfulness meditation, assertiveness training, and communication skills may be taught and practiced during therapy sessions. 7. Homework Assignments: - Between sessions, the clinician assigns homework exercises to reinforce learning and practice new skills outside of therapy. - Homework assignments may include completing thought records, practicing relaxation exercises, engaging in exposure tasks, or implementing behavioral experiments. 8. Monitoring Progress: - Throughout therapy, the clinician and client regularly monitor progress towards treatment goals, reviewing successes and challenges encountered during the therapeutic process. - Objective measures, such as symptom inventories or behavioral monitoring logs, may be used to track changes in symptoms and functioning over time. By integrating these CBT techniques into therapy sessions, the clinician collaborates with the client to promote insight, empower change, and foster adaptive coping strategies to address their psychological concerns.

Acceptance and commitment (ACT)

1. Building a Therapeutic Relationship: - The clinician establishes a supportive and non-judgmental therapeutic relationship with the client, creating a safe space for exploration and growth. - The clinician emphasizes collaboration and partnership, with the client taking an active role in the therapeutic process. 2. Clarifying Values: - The clinician helps the client identify their core values – what is truly meaningful and important to them in life. - Through discussion and exploration, the client gains clarity about their values, which serve as a guide for making meaningful choices and decisions. 3. Mindfulness Practice: - The clinician introduces mindfulness techniques to help the client develop present moment awareness and non-judgmental acceptance of their thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. - Mindfulness exercises, such as mindful breathing, body scans, and mindfulness of thoughts, are practiced both in-session and as homework assignments. 4. Defusion: - The clinician assists the client in recognizing and distancing themselves from unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, and self-critical judgments. - Techniques such as cognitive defusion exercises, metaphorical storytelling, and word repetition are used to help the client relate differently to their thoughts. 5. Acceptance: - The clinician encourages the client to fully accept their internal experiences, including difficult emotions, painful memories, and physical sensations, without trying to change or control them. - Acceptance involves making room for discomfort and allowing experiences to come and go, rather than struggling against them. 6. Commitment to Values-Based Action: - The clinician supports the client in aligning their behavior with their identified values, even in the presence of discomfort or distress. - The client learns to set goals and take committed action towards living a meaningful and fulfilling life, guided by their values rather than by avoidance or immediate gratification. 7. Experiential Exercises: - The clinician incorporates experiential exercises and metaphors to deepen the client's understanding of ACT concepts and promote experiential learning. - Examples include the "passengers on the bus" metaphor, the "tug-of-war" exercise, and experiential role-playing exercises. 8. Relational Frame Theory (RFT): - Drawing from Relational Frame Theory, the clinician helps the client recognize and challenge the language-based processes that contribute to psychological suffering, such as cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance. - Through experiential exercises and metaphors, the client gains insight into how language shapes their experience and influences their behavior. 9. Homework Assignments: - The clinician assigns homework exercises to reinforce learning and practice ACT skills outside of therapy. - Homework may include mindfulness practices, values clarification exercises, defusion techniques, and values-based behavioral experiments. By integrating these components of ACT into therapy sessions, the clinician collaborates with the client to foster psychological flexibility, increase resilience, and promote values-driven action in the face of life's challenges.

Compassion Focused

1. Establishing a Therapeutic Relationship: - The clinician creates a safe and supportive therapeutic environment characterized by warmth, empathy, and acceptance. - The clinician emphasizes the importance of compassion in the therapeutic relationship, modeling compassionate attitudes and behaviors towards the client. 2. Psychoeducation about Compassion: - The clinician provides psychoeducation about the role of compassion in mental health and well-being, explaining the three components of compassion: kindness, mindfulness, and courage. - The client learns about the evolutionary and neurobiological basis of compassion, as well as the impact of self-criticism and shame on emotional regulation. 3. Developing Self-Compassion: - The clinician guides the client in developing self-compassion by recognizing and validating their own suffering with kindness and understanding. - Techniques such as self-compassion exercises, compassionate imagery, and compassionate self-talk are used to cultivate a caring and supportive inner dialogue. 4. Compassionate Mind Training: - The clinician introduces compassionate mind training exercises to help the client activate their compassionate mind and soothe their threat-based system. - Visualization exercises, compassionate letter writing, and compassionate breathing techniques are utilized to evoke feelings of warmth, safeness, and connectedness. 5. Compassionate Mindfulness: - The clinician integrates mindfulness practices into therapy sessions to enhance the client's ability to observe and accept their experiences with kindness and non-judgment. - Mindfulness exercises focus on cultivating present moment awareness and self-compassionate attention to thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. 6. Addressing Self-Criticism and Shame: - The clinician helps the client identify and challenge self-critical and shame-inducing beliefs and patterns of thinking. - Cognitive restructuring techniques may be used to reframe negative self-evaluations and develop more compassionate and balanced perspectives. 7. Emotion Regulation: - The clinician assists the client in regulating difficult emotions by cultivating self-soothing and self-compassion skills. - The client learns to respond to emotional distress with kindness and self-care rather than self-criticism or avoidance. 8. Relational Compassion: - The clinician explores the client's relationships and interpersonal dynamics through a compassionate lens, emphasizing the importance of empathy, understanding, and forgiveness in relational interactions. - The client learns to extend compassion towards others and build supportive and nurturing relationships based on kindness and empathy. 9. Behavioral Activation: - The clinician collaborates with the client to identify values-based goals and engage in compassionate action towards living a meaningful and fulfilling life. - Behavioral activation techniques may involve setting small, achievable goals aligned with the client's values and practicing acts of kindness and generosity towards themselves and others. By integrating these components of CFT into therapy sessions, the clinician empowers the client to cultivate self-compassion, develop a compassionate mind, and transform their relationship with themselves and others.

Experiential Therapy

1. Establishing Safety and Trust: - The clinician creates a safe and trusting therapeutic environment where the client feels comfortable exploring and expressing emotions. - The clinician emphasizes confidentiality, empathy, and non-judgmental acceptance to establish a strong therapeutic alliance. 2. Emotion-Focused Exploration: - The clinician encourages the client to explore and express their emotions in the present moment, focusing on immediate felt experiences rather than intellectual analysis. - Techniques such as empty-chair exercises, role-playing, and expressive arts may be used to facilitate emotional expression and processing. 3. Body Awareness and Sensory Experience: - The clinician helps the client increase awareness of bodily sensations and sensory experiences as a means of accessing and expressing emotions. - Mindfulness techniques, body-focused exercises, and guided imagery may be used to deepen the client's connection with their physical and sensory experiences. 4. Experiential Techniques: - The clinician utilizes a variety of experiential techniques to evoke emotions, promote emotional processing, and facilitate therapeutic change. - Techniques such as gestalt therapy, psychodrama, guided imagery, and expressive arts therapy may be tailored to the client's unique needs and preferences. 5. Role-Playing and Psychodrama: - The clinician may facilitate role-playing exercises or psychodramatic techniques to help the client explore interpersonal dynamics, relationship patterns, and unresolved conflicts. - Through role-playing, the client gains insight into their own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, as well as those of others involved in the scenario. 6. Empty-Chair Technique: - The clinician may use the empty-chair technique to help the client externalize and dialogue with different aspects of themselves, significant others, or unresolved issues. - By speaking from different perspectives and engaging in an internal dialogue, the client gains clarity, insight, and emotional release. 7. Expressive Arts Therapy: - The clinician incorporates expressive arts such as drawing, painting, sculpting, or writing into therapy sessions to facilitate emotional expression and exploration. - The client utilizes artistic mediums as a means of communicating and processing emotions that may be difficult to express verbally. 8. Emotional Regulation and Integration: - The clinician assists the client in regulating and integrating intense emotions through grounding techniques, self-soothing strategies, and reflective processing. - The client learns to tolerate and navigate emotional experiences more effectively, leading to increased emotional resilience and adaptive coping. 9. Reflective Processing and Integration: - The clinician facilitates reflective processing and integration of the client's emotional experiences, insights, and learnings from therapy sessions. - Through dialogue, exploration, and validation, the client gains a deeper understanding of themselves, their emotions, and their relational patterns. By incorporating these experiential techniques into therapy sessions, the clinician empowers the client to engage in emotional exploration, expression, and transformation within the therapeutic relationship.

Motivational Interviewing

1. Establishing Rapport and Collaboration: - The therapist builds a collaborative and non-judgmental relationship with the client, emphasizing empathy, respect, and understanding. - The therapist adopts a guiding style rather than a directing style, recognizing the client as the expert in their own life. 2. Exploring Ambivalence: - The therapist helps the client explore their ambivalence about change by eliciting and validating both reasons for and against making a change. - Open-ended questions, reflective listening, and summarizing techniques are used to facilitate exploration of the client's thoughts, feelings, and concerns. 3. Identifying and Clarifying Goals: - The therapist assists the client in identifying and clarifying their goals, values, and aspirations related to behavior change. - The therapist helps the client articulate what they hope to achieve, why it's important to them, and what steps they are willing to take to move towards their goals. 4. Eliciting Change Talk: - The therapist encourages the client to express change talk, which includes statements indicating desire, ability, reasons, and need for change. - Through reflective listening and affirmations, the therapist amplifies the client's change talk and strengthens their motivation for change. 5. Resolving Ambivalence: - The therapist employs strategies to resolve ambivalence and enhance motivation for change, such as exploring discrepancies between current behavior and values/goals, highlighting the potential benefits of change, and addressing barriers and concerns. - The therapist gently challenges the client's resistance or reluctance to change while respecting their autonomy and self-determination. 6. Supporting Self-Efficacy: - The therapist fosters the client's belief in their own ability to change (self-efficacy) by highlighting past successes, strengths, and resources. - The therapist collaborates with the client to identify and develop strategies for overcoming obstacles and building confidence in their ability to make positive changes. 7. Using Decisional Balance: - The therapist assists the client in weighing the pros and cons of change (decisional balance) by exploring the costs and benefits associated with both maintaining the status quo and making a change. - Through empathic listening and reflective questioning, the therapist helps the client evaluate the significance of their reasons for change and the potential consequences of maintaining the current behavior. 8. Evoking Commitment to Change: - The therapist facilitates the client's commitment to change by eliciting commitment language, affirming their autonomy and choice, and supporting their readiness to take action. - The therapist helps the client set achievable goals, develop a concrete action plan, and establish a timeline for change, while respecting their pace and preferences. By integrating these MI techniques into therapy sessions, the therapist collaborates with the client to enhance motivation, resolve ambivalence, and facilitate meaningful behavior change aligned with the client's goals and values.