(she/her)
New to Grow
My name is Kirsten and I am passionate about supporting clients as a clinical social worker. Seeking help takes a lot of courage and I’m glad you’re here. As a trauma therapist, my passion in supporting clients on their healing journey came from my own healing journey and having people support me. I practice from a holistic approach and endeavor to foster connections between all parts of you including mind, body, heart, and spirit. I specialize in helping clients that may be struggling with symptoms from trauma and complex trauma using IFS, EMDR, somatic work, and attachment work. I work from relational and trauma informed practices to help you accomplish your goals. I truly believe that you have the capacity and love within you to heal and reconnect with or find yourself.
In our first session, I will start out by introducing myself and sharing about confidentiality. This is your space and I want you to feel safe. The rest of the session is spent getting to know more about your and your goals for therapy and giving you space to ask me any questions. I am a relational therapist and feel it is important for you to be able to feel safe to lean into the therapeutic relationship through being able to know a bit about me if you choose to.
I have walked my own healing journey and continue to foster that healing each day. I understand how difficult healing is and how important having the right people on the journey is. I choose to practice from a holistic perspective because each individual deserves to be seen as a human and not something to be fixed. Instead of asking "what is wrong with me?" I encourage asking "what happened to me?"
I work with client's who have tried therapy before but haven't found it helpful or found that it helped for a little bit but concerns kept arising. Client's I work with typically struggle with navigating relationships, have a loud inner self critic, and often function well on the outside but feel like they are drowning on the inside. The client's typically have experienced attachment trauma, developmental trauma, been raised with emotionally immature parents, and often report symptoms consistent with complex PTSD.
EMDR
I am EMDR trained through an EMDRIA approved training course. I have been using EMDR both in person and virtually for the past 3 years and clients have reported significant relief from burdensome thoughts and behaviors through EMDR.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
I am level one trained in IFS through the IFS institute. IFS is a holistic approach to treatment and is non pathologizing. Clients find the IFS work we do increases self compassion and self acceptance through understanding and connecting with their parts. instead of trying to "get rid of (anxiety, anger, etc)" we build a relationship with it and in turn client's report noticing decreased symptoms/behaviors. I primarily use IFS in my practice as I find it brings healing to clients instead of just coping skills.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
I have been trained in CBT for 10 years and it was the first treatment I learned to use. I will interweave CBT as needed to help with understanding thoughts and implementing coping skills.