Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP)
Certified Youth Mental Health Specialist (CYMHS)
Certified in Personality Disorders (C-PD)
Certified in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (C-DBT)
I’ve been working in mental health in various settings since 1996. I did 3 years of residential work with teens, 5 years elementary school counseling, and I both provided and supervised community crisis services for about 10 years. This was primarily working with teenagers, although it covered all ages from ADHD 5 year olds, to suicidal / self-injurious 30-somethings, to schizoaffective senior adults.
Since 2017 I’ve been providing traditional outpatient counseling focused primarily on teens and adults with issues of emotional dysregulation including borderline personality, trauma / sexual trauma, domestic violence, existential issues, and, of course, anxiety and depression since the pandemic seemed to bring those along with it.
In terms of my professional journey, around the mid 2010s I began focusing on bipolar and borderline, partially because self-injury and suicidality were things I often saw in crisis services. Over time I recognized the effect of unresolved trauma, particularly sexual trauma, on borderlines and ended up re-focusing my attention there. In the last year or so, I’ve also been shifting my focus back toward teens.
My current age range is about 12 years old and up, but to some extent this depends on the specific situation and parent participation in sessions. I try not to do video sessions with anyone under 14 simply due to attention difficulties.
