About

“Joy seems to me a step beyond happiness. Happiness is a sort of atmosphere you can live in sometimes when you’re lucky. Joy is a light that fills you with hope and faith and love.”  – Adela Rogers, St. Johns

I believe that we all seek love, acceptance, and belonging. When experiences lead us to internalize a shame message that we are not enough, we can develop ways of interacting with the world that, though helpful in the past, no longer work for us or may even be harmful. I consider it a privilege to join with you in your process of exploring these negative messages and to begin accepting yourself, as you are: Both imperfect and worthy of love and belonging.

Finding the right counselor to work with can be difficult and feel overwhelming. Having done my own counseling, I will not ask you to do something that I have not done myself.  It is important that we create a space where you feel safe, comfortable to be vulnerable, and known.  I utilize a relationship/client-centered and skills-based approach, with Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and experiential therapies. Learning skills to increase emotion regulation, we can begin to address how past experiences are impacting current distress.

I earned a Masters in Counseling from Arizona State University in 2007 and am independently licensed in the state of Arizona. I’ve worked in a variety of clinical settings including public mental health, outpatient clinics, and a residential treatment center.  I have been providing outpatient counseling services since 2007 and am bilingual in Spanish. I have received extensive training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and worked as the Clinical Lead of a DBT IOP at Doorways.  I am also trained in EMDR with additional education in dissociation and complex trauma. I specialize in working with adolescents, adults, and families experiencing anxiety/depression, self-harm/suicidality, risk-taking behaviors, relationship instability, parenting issues and the parent-child relationship, and trauma-related emotion dysregulation, often labeled Borderline Personality Disorder or Mood Disorders.