A slightly unconventional therapist

 I am a Licensed Professional Counselor, a National Certified Counselor, and a Beck Institute Certified Clinician in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I specialize in anxiety and addiction. Those are the official credentials. Here is the human behind the letters:

In 2006 I was on an archaeology dig in France when the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina found its way into our rural newspaper. A group of us gathered around the story reading somberly when someone turned to me and asked a question I wasn’t expecting.

“What is it like being here and knowing your people back in America are going through such things?”

A few months later I called my sister and asked her to meet me in New Orleans. We went. We worked. We shed a lot of tears. And I understood something I had been circling for years. What people need most when everything falls apart is not logistics. It’s someone who will sit with them. Listen. Witness their pain.

It took me twelve more years to become a therapist. Not because I was lost. Because I was learning. International development studies in Tanzania, New York, and England. An anthropology background that taught me to listen for what people aren’t saying as much as what they are. A master’s in counseling earned one class at a time at Lehigh University while working full time, non-traditionally, on a timeline that belonged entirely to me.

When I finally finished I wasn’t a fresh graduate. I was someone who had spent over a decade watching how humans survive impossible things. That changes how you practice. It changes what you notice. It changes what you’re willing to say out loud in a session when you know it needs to be said.

My approach is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). We are going to identify the patterns that are keeping you stuck and we are going to challenge them. It is not magic. It is work. But it is the kind of work that actually gets somewhere.

I wrote a book too. Unconditional. It’s about learning to love yourself as fully as your dog loves you. Worth a read if you want to know more about how I think before you decide whether to work with me.

I’m a founding member-owner of the Unleashed Counseling® Collaborative. I chose to build my practice inside a community that holds me accountable to values I actually believe in. You can read more about that at https://unleashedcounseling.com/

If any of this sounds like what you have been looking for, reach out.