Telehealth appointments available statewide in both Arizona and California
Specializing in therapy to manage anxiety, OCD, panic, stress or worry
Anxiety
Anxiety can build up over the day, weeks, and years of someone’s life and often result in a panic attack, intrusive thoughts, or compulsive habits. Symptoms like a racing heart, chest pain or tightness, struggling to breathe can send them to an emergency room, but more so it sneaks up and builds up to something that can feel unmanageable. Ongoing stomachaches, headaches and backaches could also stem from chronic anxiety. People experiencing anxiety can suffer so long and intensely with physical, emotional, and psychological pain that they start avoiding activities, conversations, people and places that they use to enjoy, often resulting in emergency room visits.
I had my first panic attack as a teen and dealt with the helplessness and frustration it brings. Later getting my degrees in psychology helped me to be able to identify the contributions to my anxiety and start to understand how to master it. I began conquering my anxiety through a journey of self-reflection and analysis to develop what I now teach people when they are in their struggle with worry. How I see anxiety is this: we have conditioned our bodies and minds to be anxious, we need to and can retrain it to not be anxious.
Anxiety robs us of time, energy, sleep, and dignity. Unknowingly, you may have trained your body and mind to be anxious and you can condition them to be calm. I teach my clients how to manage the physiological, cognitive, and emotional symptoms of anxiety, worry, panic, fears and stress often without medication. My style is gently direct focusing on solutions and goal oriented. My office feels like a living room and I make people feel like our sessions are like chatting over coffee with a friend.
Techniques include cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for mood and anxiety disorders, CBT for insomnia, and exposure and response prevention therapy for obsessive compulsive disorders, all of which I have certifications. These are the leading researched and science-based treatments for what you are going through. We then move into more individualized solution-oriented approaches to your struggles.
First Responders
Hello tough guys and women of steel. You are absolutely the best of us, sacrificing every day for our community. Few can truly understand the daily stress you and your families are under, but after years of helping police officers, doctors, and nurses, I have a good idea of the pressure and conflicts that face you in today’s world and with the public; uniquely the stress you and your family have been under through the pandemic and recent social unrest.
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You may have started out strong, but the past few months have grown increasingly difficult. Maybe you have started having heart palpitations, questioning your decisions, crying easily, or having vivid images and thoughts from your work.
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I would like to be your confidential, safe place to let your guard down, even if its only a brief hour, so that you may express the stress you're under, the tough decisions you’ve had to make, and even cry if you let yourself, so that you can continue to deliver high quality protection, care and love to our community and your family.
Therapists
I am so glad you found me! I have been waiting to help you. In that time, I have served as a clinician, case supervisor, clinical supervisor, college instructor, clinical director, and program manager. You are sincerely my people to work with because our work is so important and hard! We have a tough job emotionally supporting the world around us. Many of you are also highly empathic and sensitive people who experience this work at a deeper level. Maybe you are being emotionally overwhelmed by its realities or emotionally connected to your clients deeply in a way that you did not expect. We are undergoing a parallel experience right now with our clients, one of which we have not experienced since 9/11 and we need to support each other more than ever.
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In my 20 years of being a therapist, I have had the privilege of hiring, training, providing training & clinical supervision to pre-licensed/ licensed therapists and mental health workers in professional and clinical practice. I have especially enjoyed consulting with other therapists about private practice startups, walking alongside student therapists, through graduate school, their first practicum sites, through licensure and beyond.
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There is no need to feel shame or embarrassment about wanting emotional support for yourself, you need it most, in some ways. We carry the burdens of others daily and make a career of it…the community needs you more now than ever, so get the support YOU need from someone that understands and has been there.
Business Owners & the Self-Employed
My practice has focused on current and aspiring business owners for the past 6 years. The stress of business ownership is unique, often putting stress on personal, marriage and family life. Business owners particularly bear the burden of balance and self-motivation in a way different from an employee, we struggle with juggling priorities, budgets, organization, putting boundaries around our work and home, setting limits to how much we spend on both, how to use our resources of time and money efficiently and decisions about moving forward with our businesses.
I have been helping business owners find balance in their lives for years and I would like to help you. No matter your business, the struggles are universal. Call me to clarify where to go next!