About Me
I am an L.C.S.W. (Licensed Clinical Social Worker), a C.M.H.I.M.P. (Certified Mental Health Integrative Medicine Provider), and a Life Coach. My professional background includes acting as Clinical Director for many community agencies, founder and owner of a residential treatment facility using neurofeedback with youth, diagnostic testing and evaluations for community mental health agencies, program development and consulting. I have trained and supervised other clinicians and have worked with diverse populations in residential as well as out-patient settings. I have worked with DCFS, adult and juvenile corrections, the LGBTQ community, individuals, couples, families, children, teenagers and adults.
Areas of Specialization
I offer traditional “talk” therapies coupled with neurofeedback, biofeedback, and mindfulness techniques to assist in reaching one’s potential and achieving a state of confidence and well-being. I have been practicing clinical social work since 1991, have held a private practice along with non-profit and for-profit community service since 1994, and was the second clinician in the state of Utah to begin to offer neurofeedback in 2003.
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My clinical focus has been trauma - in all its complexities – and the ensuing challenges accompanying traumas: mood dysregulation, anxiety, poor focus along with the inability to concentrate, poor motivation in concert with a host of self-defeating patterns. I elect to focus on symptoms versus diagnoses and view my clients as courageous unique individuals with challenges versus a diagnostic label. My shamanic studies, which began in 2000, support my life long view that everything has energy. My years of shamanic practice facilitates my desire to see each individual who elects to work with me as a traveler on their personal journey through life, and I consider it an honor to walk the path with them for a brief and focused period of time.
My Approach
Prior to becoming a therapist, I was an elementary school teacher with an early childhood development focus. I love kids and can see the kid in all my clients. I am known to be rather direct while still offering compassion. Rapport is a tool crafted by clinicians to build relationships with their clients and clinicians are often valued by their ability to foster rapport. I don’t work to gain rapport, but rather instinctively recognize the humanity in people rather than just their observable behaviors. I have a genuine excitement about our ability to co-create our individual realities and I delight in assisting others in discovering their own ability to manifest life experiences that deliver freedom and personal satisfaction as they uncover their uniqueness.
I love the encouragement of Ghandi to “Be the change you want to see in the world”. I have learned over the years to embrace my own unique self. My current philosophy is the more authentic you become, the more you win at life and this provides a much needed, expanded and astoundingly beautiful palette from which to paint our experiences. It’s a wonderful calling to be ourselves. And besides that, everybody else is already taken!
