Hello! I want to welcome you and praise you for being proactive regarding your mental health. It is a powerful thing to acknowledge there are areas of your life or symptoms you are experiencing that you would like to change, and signing up for counseling is a big step towards reaching your goals. Below is some information on who I am and how I will be able to help you throughout this journey. I believe the cornerstone to therapy is empathetic understanding paired with proactive behavioral change. Together we will create a secure place in which you can explore your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a non-judgmental way in order to understand what they are trying to provide to you. By reframing our cognitive, somatic, and behavioral actions in this way, we can learn to make sense of even the largest, scariest misbehaviors. With that new understanding, we will then discuss and practice applicable techniques you can utilize outside of therapy to achieve that reward in a different, healthier way. In my practice, I use a client-centered, eclectic approach. I have experience in several empirically-proven therapeutic modalities, and I choose which modalities to use based on what changes you, the client, decide you want to make in your life. I tend towards more process-oriented approaches, including (but not limited to) Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Internal Family Systems, and Eye Movement Desensitizing and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR). I have found that these therapies reprocess symptoms clients are experiencing with their somatic, right-brain processing centers and their verbal, left-brain processing centers simultaneously, leading to more integrated and sustainable life changes in a shorter amount of time. I also have experience in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Assertiveness Training, and Behavioral Modification techniques. I am a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker, currently practicing in West Virginia. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Washington College in 2009 and a master’s degree in social work from West Virginia university in 2011. I have been providing mental health therapy in an outpatient setting for the last nine years and have had the pleasure of meeting and helping a wide variety of people learn to understand, process through, and manage a range of symptoms. If this type of therapy resonates with you, I would love to work with you. Regardless of whether you choose me as your therapist, I am very happy you have chosen to start proactively working on your mental wellbeing, and I wish you the best on your journey!