Licensed Psychologist

I am a Licensed Psychologist with over 30 years of clinical experience working with individuals, couples, and families. Suffocating depression, paralyzing anxiety, sleepless nights alternating with night terrors and night sweats, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts and memories, the devastation of betrayal, paralyzing grief and loss, the terrifying rollercoaster of addiction, life can grind to a stand still when faced with traumatic circumstances or the ravages of mental illness. Therapy can be a place where you find calm in the storm, insight in the midst of confusion and chaos, and support in the journey. Sometimes therapy is a process of solving problems and changing behavior. Sometimes it is unraveling the threads of confusion, shame, and condemnation that weave back through the years and moments of our lives. Therapy can be the process of relational reconciliation and restoration. Discovering what healthy relationships mean for you. Other times it is space to grief losses, betrayals, and the lives and possibilities we will never recover. Each person comes to therapy with his or her own goals and the process, the journey, is unique to each person. My work with you will be unique to you, even as it is informed by the best practices in psychotherapy.

My areas of specialization include trauma, depression, anxiety, family-of-origin issues, betrayal, third culture issues, cross-cultural adaptation, global member care, couples, and spiritual issues. As a third culture kid (TCK), and Director of the Counseling Program at Phoenix Seminary for 16 years, I specialize in working with clergy and their families, missionaries, those preparing for ministry, fellow clinicians and health care workers, and those who have experienced spiritual abuse. I believe all individuals have inherent worth, and I work with individuals regardless of background, including diversity of religion, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, ability, or orientation.

My own journey in the helping professions started when I began volunteering with troubled youth in 1981. I have worked full-time with community mental health, child protective services, and the state psychiatric hospital. I am a member of the American Psychological Association (APA), a professional member and approved supervisor with the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), and former chair of the Arizona Interest Network of AAMFT.